Emmaus High School recently celebrated 20 student athletes who signed letters of intent to attend Division 1 or Division 2 college. The group is the largest group of student athletes to get scholarships for colleges and universities from Emmaus for as long as anyone connected with the school can remember.

Not just the amount of students is staggering, but the numbers and accomplishments achieved by those students is astounding, even to athletic director Dennis Ramella.

“This group has done so much, not only athletically or even academically, but in the community,” said Ramella. “We have students who volunteer at area hospitals and nursing homes and work with Special Olympics and volunteer at food banks, it’s amazing how much good they do.”

The 20 scholarships came to players from eight different sports and represent over $2-million in funds. The average GPA of the group is 3.32 and they include one National Merit Semifinalist, eight National Honor Society members, six Spanish Honor Society members and the school’s first Music Honor Society member. Four of the students have GPAs over four, with the highest being Eric Cichocki’s 4.7, followed closely by Kira Koehler’s 4.5. Many of the students also competed in more than one sport during their high school careers.

“It gets difficult sometimes, but you just have to stay focused on what needs to be done and plan things out and stick to that plan,” said Koehler, who played on the field hockey team which has conquered two straight state championships. “Sometimes, it’s a matter of prioritizing and finding those few minutes where you can do some studying or get something taken care of before you move on to the next thing.”

While the group is impressive, a number of longtime members of the East Penn School District administration and coaches weren’t surprised to see such a big group of students receiving scholarships. They also weren’t surprised by the number of accomplishments that the students achieved. A number of coaches talked about hearing about these players when they were in middle school and even youth sports in the district and were looking forward to having them on their varsity teams.

“It’s so much fun when you hear about a group’s potential and then you actually see them exceed their potential, and that’s what happened,” said Ramella. “When you look at what we’ve done this year, top to bottom, it’s been an unbelievably exciting year and it’s all due to the kids and the coaches. It’s so much fun to watch them.

“The NCAA has an ad that talks about how student athletes like we have here all turn pro, because they’re pros in business and other fields because of the hard work that they put in to their academics. I don’t know if there are any professional sports players in this group, but I know that we have 20 pros in the making at whatever they put their mind to doing in the future.”

The declared majors of the students range from bio-medical engineering and forensic science to sports management, business management and kinesiology.

The scholarships given out by sport include five field hockey scholarships, four for soccer, three for football, two for lacrosse, two each in baseball and basketball and one each in volleyball and golf.