A week from now, the regular season for high school tennis will be over, and the Eastern Pennsylvania Conference Tournament will have crowned a champion. For Emmaus, a big 6-0 start has shrunk to a 6-3 record, with losses to Nazareth (10-1, 11-1), Parkland (11-1, 12-1) and Northampton (7-5, 8-5). The losing skid has come at the hands of some of the best teams in the area, and everybody knew the final stretch of the season was going to be a difficult one.

“When we were 6-0, I kept telling everybody that we had tougher matches coming,” said Emmaus head coach Dimitri Diamandopoulos. “We hit that stretch, and we found out that there are a lot of really good teams out there with a lot of really good players.”

There are still four regular season matches to squeeze into the schedule over the next week, with Emmaus playing Liberty (10-0, 10-0), Central Catholic (9-2, 10-2) and Pleasant Valley (5-5, 5-5) this week, and then playing a make-up match against Whitehall (7-2, 8-2) next Monday. The EPC Tournament is set for Friday and Saturday at Freedom High School.

“We have some good players, but our kids don’t have the match experience that players at a lot of other schools have, so that’s where we’re at a disadvantage,” said Diamandopoulos.

The team has also had to struggle through a rash of injuries that have seen it lose its number-one singles player, Marko Maricic, for the season after the season’s opening win against Bethlehem Catholic. Austin Long, who took over at number-one, has been battling elbow soreness throughout the season as well, as he battles to stay on the court.

“I don’t really remember a season where we’ve had as many injuries as we’ve had this year,” said Diamandopoulos, who is in his 24th season as the team’s coach. “It’s been difficult because we’ve had to readjust things and see who’s available to play.”

Against Parkland, Emmaus was swept in both singles and doubles. They rebounded to give Northampton a battle before falling 4-3. In that match, Long was the only singles player to pick up a win, with Emmaus splitting the four doubles matches.

“I can say that we’re seeing development in our young players, and I think the early schedule was good for them, because it gave them the confidence that they needed as they got experience on the court,” Diamandopoulos said. “Now, they just need to keep gaining experience and they’ll do that playing against top players, and they’ll find the areas of their game that they can work on and get better at.”

The bad weather early in the season limited the time that Emmaus was able to spend on the courts, and also bunched up the schedule, which eliminated practice time throughout the season.

“It’s been difficult to do much coaching,” Diamandopoulos said. “Between the schedule and the injuries, you’re just sort of going match-by-match.”

Last season, Emmaus finished 12-2 in the EPC and 14-3 overall on the season.