Last season, Emmaus' boys tennis team gave Parkland a scare when it fought a prolonged battle on Emmaus' home courts. This year, the two teams met at Parkland and the outcome was different than it was a year ago, with Parkland sweeping all seven matches to move to 4-0 on the season. The loss drops Emmaus to 2-2 after back-to-back losses to Nazareth and now, Parkland.

The highlight of the Emmaus and Parkland matches have been at No. 1 singles where Matt FitzMaurice has faced Parkland's Nick Kshatri in some classic battles. This one took on an unfortunate look when FitzMaurice began noticeably favoring his right shoulder as he went deeper into the match. The result was a 6-4 win in the opening set for Kshatri, which he followed up with a 6-1 win in the second set.

Emmaus head coach Dmitri Diamandopoulos asked FitzMaurice if he wanted to concede when he went down 4-1 in the second set, but the junior decided to play on. Kshatri broke serve and then went on to put the match away quickly.

"Matt was really hurting, but he stuck it out and played hard," said Diamandopoulos. "It's a shame, because those two are really good competitors and they really play each other very well."

In other singles matches, Sanket Narayana lost a 6-1, 6-1 decision to Nate Lyman and Kyle Jaeger dropped a 6-2, 6-3 match to Peter Harrison.

"We're just right there, but we can't quite get over the hump to move to the next level," said Diamandopoulos. "We've got a lot of good players who work hard and we're getting there. We've had a couple of tough matches here early on and it's really just a matter of getting more time on the court for these guys and working out some minor issues."

The weather has played havoc with practice time for high school teams, leading them into the season with not nearly as much of an opportunity to work on their game as they would have liked. The cold, windy weather at Parkland on Monday also made it tough on players for both teams.

For Emmaus, Diamandopoulos believes he may still be making some changes to his doubles teams as the season goes on, because he hasn't had the opportunity to see different combinations of players work together.

"I think there's still a lot of competing going on with our team," he said. "The singles are pretty well set, but there are some things we might do differently with our doubles as we try to get the right combination of players working together."

Emmaus opened with wins over Pocono Mountain East and Stroudsburg before its current two-match skid. Emmaus plays at Southern Lehigh on Thursday in a nonconference match before playing road matches at East Stroudsburg North and Allen on Monday and Tuesday of next week.