Emmaus came into the season with a young team featuring just two seniors on its roster in Zoe Stein and Kiyae White. Both have been through rough times with the program, including seeing White lose her junior season to a knee injury and going down with a second knee injury against Central Catholic Friday night that appears to have ended her season.

Stein has been a constant. While she doesn’t put up gaudy stats, she’s a quiet leader on the team and is the type of player that makes the team better by contributing in ways that don’t show up on stat sheet.

“Zoe has worked so hard for us,” said interim coach Chris Basile. “She always brings that positive attitude and she’ll be the first to absorb what the coaches tell her and ask her to do, and that means so much, because other girls see that and it has an impact.”

Stein is headed to King’s College in Wilkes-Barre to continue her education, majoring in exercise science. As for basketball, she’s still undecided if she wants to continue playing in college or perhaps find other interests. Playing on a team that has had it’s share of disappointments over the past few seasons, and having played under three different coaches has been difficult, but Stein has enjoyed the experience and valued her senior season and will miss the experience once it’s over.

“I have a couple more practices and a couple more games, and it hasn’t really sunk in yet, but it will,” said Stein after the loss to Central Catholic. “This year started with a lot of hope for the season and to be on a team like that in my senior season is just amazing.”

Against Central Catholic, Emmaus got off to a strong start, building a 9-0 lead and eventually stretching that lead to a 10-point edge in the second quarter. The Vikettes (7-8, 8-13) didn’t take their first lead of the game until there third quarter and didn’t take the lead for good until the end of the third quarter when a jumper by Jess Davis put them up 26-25.

Emmaus led 13-6 with 6:45 left in the second quarter when White drove for a layup and got tangled with a Central Catholic defender, dropping hard to the court. The senior laid on the court face down banging her fist into the floor as trainers attended to her before helping her off the court. When the Auburn University-bound White did return to the gym, she was on crutches.

“I think in some ways, that sort of deflated our team,” said Basile. “To know that they weren’t going to have her back hurt us on the court and, I think the girls all feel for Kiyae, because they genuinely just like her a lot and were hoping it wasn’t going to be that serious.”

Without a big presence inside, Central Catholic juniors Margaux Eripret finished with 14 points, and teammate Diana Kocsis scored with 13 points. Bri Hart was the top scorer for Emmaus, finishing with 10 points.

On Monday night, Emmaus traveled to Nazareth (13-2, 18-3) and lost 67-32, leaving the Hornets at 7-8 in the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference and 9-12 overall this season. The Lady Hornets will salute both Stein and White Wednesday in their senior night game against Whitehall (4-11, 6-15), needing a win to reach district playoffs.