Things could have been very different for the Emmaus baseball team in its first season with Mike Mihalik as head coach. The season ended with a 6-5 loss in extra innings to Stroudsburg last week, which eliminated the Hornets from the District 11 playoffs.

If Emmaus had not dropped its final regular season game to Scranton Prep, it would have come into the district playoffs as the number five seed instead of as the seventh seed. That would have given the Hornets a slightly easier road to through the district bracket, matching them up with Bangor and then Liberty and a rematch with the team that bounced them from the East Penn Conference playoffs.

Even so, Emmaus battled a Stroudsburg team that had lost just two games this season. One of those games was a regular season loss to Emmaus, which was the first of the season for the Mounties. This time, a barrage of errors eight of them in all led to a loss against the district's number-two seed.

"I'm not convinced that team is better than ours by any means," said Mihalik after the loss. "We played them twice. We faced their ace [Mike Nikorak] twice and we've taken them to extra innings twice. I feel like we could have won both games."

In addition to making eight errors, Emmaus picked up just five hits in the game. After taking a 1-0 lead in the first, Stroudsburg came back to tie the game in the bottom of the inning and then scored three more times in the second to take what appeared to be a commanding 4-1 lead. Nikorak exited after just three innings and two innings later, Emmaus went to work, scoring three times to tie the game. The game remained 4-4 through eight innings, thanks in no small part to the pitching of senior Trey Hinkle, who threw 130 pitches in the game.

In the top of the ninth, Joel Bartoni delivered an RBI single to give Emmaus a 5-4 lead. In the bottom of the inning, Teja Venigalla came on in relief of Hinkle, but again, an error hurt Emmaus. After the Mounties tied the game 5-5, Brett Yarnall delivered an RBI single to drive home the winning run, ending the season for Emmaus.

The Hornets started the season 1-3 and Mihalik believes that even with that start, they should have finished better than their 13-10 mark had the team been able to harness a little more energy at times throughout the season.

"It was a very up and down season for this team," he admitted. "Our wins were great and some of our losses were horrendous. If we have better energy in some of those games, there's no reason to think that we shouldn't have won at least a couple more games."

In Mihalik's second season he'll have the task of replacing six seniors Austin Anderson, Joel Bartoni, Trey Hinkle, Teddy Tucker, Teja Venigalla and Lukas Weider in his lineup, which won't be easy.

"A lot of credit should go to our seniors," said Mihalik. "They've been here and have battled and they all played important roles with our team. We lose our two, three, four and five hitters, two tough pitchers and a catcher, who was a big part of our success. There's definitely going to be some opportunities next season for kids to step up to fill those roles."