For the second straight summer, the Emmaus High School girls basketball team had a strong run through the Awesome Fest A-town Throwdown, held at Cedar Beach in Allentown during the last weekend in July.

The played it’s first summer under a new head coach in Avon Mack, who spent the last two seasons as the girls coach at Moravian Academy. He was satisfied with his first summer with his new team.

“It’s just nice any time I can get out here and coach and get to know them and see them in a pressurized situation,” Mack said. “The way they handled themselves was impressive. We could’ve folded when things got hard and we got down and blamed it on the fact that we haven’t been together or had enough practice time to gain that chemistry and cohesiveness. But I thought they leaned on their defense to figure it out and it was good.”

In pool play, the Green Hornets opened the tournament by defeating Notre Dame Green Pond out of the Colonial League, 18-15.

“[During a late timeout] I said to them, ‘there’s going to be many times during the season I’m going to ask things of you and right now I’m asking you to take offense off your mind and get a defensive stop, grab the rebound and then we should have this game in hand,’” Mack said. “They listened on that sense and they locked in.”

They followed that up with another victory over Eastern Pennsylvania Conference foe Liberty, 31-22. The third and final game of pool play was a loss to Lansdale Catholic 36-16.

Emmaus qualified for the playoff bracket and took down Reading in the quarterfinal round, 35-30, before beating Bethlehem Catholic 25-19 in the semifinals to reach the tournament final and a rematch against Lansdale Catholic.

The Crusaders beat Emmaus for a second time, 40-28, to earn the championship trophy.

“I couldn’t ask for a better start. I’ve been welcomed with open arms,” said Mack. “What Kelsey built is commendable and I’m appreciative of it. I hope she lands in the spots she wants to but I’m proud of where she has the program and allowing me to step in and get them just as far and hopefully even farther.”

Cassie Doemling, Olive Whitney and Sylvia Sokolofski all were named to the All-Tournament Team.