The Emmaus boys swimming and diving team rolled to a 138-34 win over Northampton recently to keep their season on the right path at 9-1 overall and 7-0 within the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference.

Hornet swimmers grabbed the top two spots in every individual event apart from the 100-yard backstroke, where Northampton’s Ryan Franke placed second. Meanwhile, Emmaus swept the top two spots in all three relays.

Junior Andrew Taylor and senior James Manley provided stiff competition for each other throughout the meet. This time around, it was Taylor gaining the advantage with first-place finishes ahead of Manley in both the 200 freestyle and 100 breaststroke events.

“We’ve been working on being a closer and more cohesive team this season,” said Taylor. “I know our current group of seniors experienced a lot of hazing from the older swimmers when we were just getting started and we have gotten away from that. We have worked on keeping all the classes closer and working together.”

In addition to his two individual top finishes, Taylor was also a part of the 200-yard freestyle relay team that edged out another Emmaus squad by just .85 seconds to claim first place. Joining Taylor on that team were fellow junior Ryan DeJohn and seniors Bobby Perose and Seth Metzger. The second-place team had seniors A.J. Lamack and Alex Magditch paired with junior John Engel and sophomore Garrett Longbons.

Metzger’s day consisted of four first-place finishes, three of which were in relay events.

In addition to the 200-freestyle relay win, Metzger was a member of winning teams in both the 200-yard medley and 400-yard freestyle relay events. The senior swimmer also won his individual swim in the 100-yard butterfly. Longbons was also a member of each of the 200-medley and 400-freestyle teams.

Lamack put together a good day with a win in the 50-yard freestyle and as a member of two winning relay teams, while DeJohn won the 100-yard freestyle and was on the 200-freestyle relay team that won that event as well.

Ethan Ferris won his individual event with a time of 1:00.17 to best Franke by just over two seconds in the 100-yard backstroke. Ferris then competed as part of the winning team in the 400-freestyle relay.

A few days before the Northampton meet, Emmaus suffered its only loss of the season when it fell to Wilson West Lawn 104-79. Hornet head coach Tim O’Connor feels that his team learned a hard lesson in the loss to the Bulldogs.

“I enjoyed our meet against Wilson, and I think the kids did as well,” he said. “I think they see now why I encourage our kids to continue to strive to be better each week. Sometimes they don’t see why I push them so hard and am so diligent about why I want things done a certain way. Then you come into a meet like that one, and suddenly Wilson dropped a hammer on us. Now they understand why those things really do matter and seeing what the difference between them and some other swimmers is, and they work on those little things to get better.”

With that lesson behind them and districts coming up quickly, Emmaus looks to put those little things to work as they look for a 15th consecutive District 11 championship.

“The whole team is working on things like their underwater work and breakouts during practices and incorporating those things into our races,” said Taylor. “For me especially, I have been working on my push-offs and turns. All those things really matter, and I have been working to improve them.”