Last season had the potential to be a very interesting one for the Emmaus girls basketball team. The Hornets planned on having senior Jenna Lessel team with junior Kiyae White to provide great size and shooting ability from the two twin towers. Unfortunately, an ACL injury ruined White’s season and Lessel was without the other big player to help draw attention away from her. Now, Lessel has graduated and White is the senior leader for the team.

“I’ve always tried to lead where I could,” said White after the team’s scrimmage against Pennridge. “So it’s not really that different being a senior. I do want to make this a great season though and help us to win as many games as possible.”

White is completely healed and ready for the season. Zoe Stein, who had somewhat of a breakout season last year, is the only other senior on the team and stands poised to help White in the leadership role that she started to grow into last season.

“Zoe and Kiyae are great girls and they’re great players,” said second-year coach Carl Scheitrum. “I’m really looking forward to having them on the court together and seeing what they can do. I have no doubts in their ability to lead as seniors, that’s no question.”

The team also includes a class of six juniors.

“Our junior class is really good and they’re working hard,” said Scheitrum. “Some of them saw significant playing time last season and they really made the most of that time on the court. Then, this summer, I saw them develop even more in our summer games, so I think they’re going to be in good shape.”

While Stein and White figure to be in the starting lineup, the rest of the starters are going to be almost on a game-by-game basis for Scheitrum.

“I think the best approach for us is to look at the matchups and see who might be able to do the best job in a certain situation. I’m not convinced that we’re ever going to have starting lineups” explained Scheitrum. “We have a number of girls who have the ability to be starters and we can make the most out of that if we mix-and-match well against teams.”

Throughout the preseason, Scheitrum has had his team working on playing a more uptempo style of basketball and it showed during scrimmage games. One problem is finding that fine line between playing uptempo and waiting to find the right shot, which is somewhat of a work in progress.

“The energy that the team is showing is just fantastic,” said Scheitrum. “We’ve been working hard in our practices to really drive the mindset of uptempo, push the ball in transition and if it’s not there, set up our play, but let’s see if we can move the pace of the game.”

Defensively, Scheitrum is seeing a lot of good things start to come together for his team as it approaches the season opener Saturday at Wilson West Lawn.

“We started off a little sloppy, but we’ve started picking that up as well and the more we communicate on the court, the better our defense has gotten,” said Scheitrum. “I’m very pleased with how we’ve played so far, it’s just a couple of little things. If we just clean up those little things, we’ll be okay.”

Last year’s team finished at 6-16 and Scheitrum isn’t ready to make any predictions, but he believes this year’s team can definitely be better than that.

“It really was unfortunate last season that we didn’t have Kiyae, because that could have gone much different for us,” said Scheitrum. “This year’s team has some talent. I’m not one to make predictions, but I think that they have the right approach and the right energy so that we can improve this season and continue turning things around for the program.”