While both the Emmaus boys and girls swim teams picked up easy wins against Pocono Mountain West and East Stroudsburg North and South on Saturday, the quad-meet was anything but dull. The four schools all piled into the natatorium at Emmaus to do battle and the energy level was high right from the first heat.

The Emmaus boys and girls teams are both 10-1 on the season, with two competitive meets against Liberty and Parkland to wrap up the regular season.

Athletic Director Dennis Ramella was on-hand and compared the meet to the energy of the District 11 event, which is coming up next month at Parkland High School. Emmaus head coach Tim O’Connor agreed.

“It was a lot of fun,” said O’Connor. “The swimmers were really into the competition and I think they looked around at everybody and thought, ‘hey, let’s get at this and have a great meet.’”

With the two big meets remaining, O’Connor used the meet to experiment a little, getting swimmers into different events and encouraging them to try things that may be a little out of their comfort zone.

“I told everybody that I could move some people around and get some younger swimmers into events here that I won’t be able to do in the meets against Liberty and Parkland,” O’Connor said. “This was the perfect situation for even the more advanced swimmers to try different things and maybe experiment a little.”

The Emmaus swimming program is consistently competitive and one constant that has helped is the participation of siblings on the Hornet teams. There are three sets of siblings on this year’s team and each contribute to the success. In previous seasons, there were almost always siblings on the team and there are more coming along through the Emmaus Aquatic Club pipeline.

“It’s funny with siblings, because sometimes, they want to swim together in every relay that they can and they don’t like the direct competition,” said O’Connor, whose brother Patrick coaches swimming at Salisbury High School. “And then with others, they want to be completely separate, and that’s fine, too.

“The thing is to find that out and figure out what drives them when it comes to that sibling rivalry. Sometimes, there’s nothing like being pushed by a sibling when it comes to competition.”

This season’s team features Katie and Maggie Champagne, Colby and Cooper Kocon and Jason and Jordyn Yerger. In Saturday’s meet, the Champagnes, who are both in their sophomore season, competed together in the 400 freestyle relay on a team that finished fifth in the event.

“It was a lot of fun,” said Katie Champange. “It usually never happens, but it was a lot of fun and we really push each other.”

“Since we never really get to swim any relays together,” said Maggie Champagne, “today, it was like ‘yes, I’m swimming with my sister.’”

For the Champagnes, there’s an element of both camaraderie and rivalry that swimming is just a natural part of and contributes to both elements of their relationship.

“We’ve been swimming since we were really young and it’s been fun, because we’ve sort of grown apart in some ways, but we come closer together in swimming,” said Maggie Champagne. “But there’s more competition between us.”

For any of the differences, and in any ways that the pair have gotten into different things, swimming has been a constant and when asked if it has always been a major part of their relationship, the pair both flashed big smiles and answered in unison with a simple “yeah.”