It wasn’t easy by any means, but the Emmaus High School boys basketball team reached its goal of playing on Sunday in last weekend’s Bash at the Beach basketball tournament at Cedar Beach. In the double-elimination tournament, the Green Hornets dropped their first game and were already in a hole, but they dug themselves out with six straight wins to reach the semifinal round, before bowing out to rival Parkland.

“We were very pleased with the growth of our team during the weekend at Bash at the Beach,” said assistant coach Eric Farkas, who serves as head coach during many summer games. “We went from losing our first game on Friday night to a very good Liberty team, to finishing the weekend with a 6-2 record. We had 15 guys on our bench and in most of the games, all 15 of those kids saw meaningful time.

“I think we were able to get a good feel of what we have moving forward and are looking forward to working with this group.”

Emmaus had a strong showing, numbers wise, and that carried over on the court as multiple players stepped up, as was needed playing eight games in three days in the July heat.

“We had a lot of individuals who gave us great performances,” Farkas said. “Will Barber was named to the All-Tournament team and really did a little bit of everything for us. Jametric Harris was probably a strong candidate for All-Tournament as well. He was great offensively and is a huge inside presence on the defensive end. Other role players like Teague McCourt, Mike Rooney, Jack Csensits and Owen Hafner, just to name a few, had great weekends and impacted different games in various ways. We were very happy with the efforts of all 15 of the boys.”

Throughout the weekend, the Hornets earned victories over Bangor, Pocono Mountain East, Ephrata, Berks Catholic, Muhlenberg and Phillipsburg.

“All were very good wins against quality schools,” said Farkas. “We felt defense really set the tone in all of the games. In the Phillipsburg game, in particular, we were down by 15 points at two different times and our boys dug in defensively and found a way to beat a really good Stateliners team.”

Farkas and the Emmaus coaching staff hopes this momentum continues over the next two weeks of summer as the Hornets will be competing in the Lehigh Valley Summer League playoffs, followed by the A-town Throwdown tournament.

“As a coaching staff, we are very happy with the way our boys battled all weekend,” Farkas said. “It would have been easy to give up after losing our first game, but that wasn’t the case. These boys were hungry and showed that they didn’t want to lose at all, even in our last game against Parkland. We were down 20 points and the boys continued to fight and brought the game back to four points.

“This toughness we hope will carry over to the summer league playoffs and to the A-town Throwdown later this month. The summer is all about growing as a team and I feel we did a lot of that this weekend.”