The 2017 tennis season is turning out to be a very difficult one for Emmaus and longtime coach Dimitri Diamandopoulos. After graduating seven of his nine starters from last season, Diamandopoulos knew there was some heavy lifting to be done, but when his two remaining returning starters both suffered injuries, things got really tough.

“In my 25 years of coaching, I’ve never had a season like this where we’ve had so many injuries,” said Diamandopoulos. “We’ve been able to hang in there against some teams, but it certainly hasn’t been easy.”

Coming into districts this week, Emmaus got just one player, senior Austin Long, qualified for the singles championship tournament. Long has been battling a sore elbow throughout much of the season, but has stayed in the lineup, looking to battle. He faced Nazareth’s Nate Tauber in the first round of districts Monday and lost 6-1, 6-2, ending his shot at a district medal.

“He’s not anywhere near 100 percent, but he wanted to play, and I wanted him to play because he deserved the chance to go out there and see what he could do,” said Diamandopoulos. “He didn’t have an easy draw, and with the injury, it made it even tougher, but he gave it his all.”

It’s likely that Long will sit out the District 11 doubles competition, leaving number-two and three singles players Aman Malik and Kevin Ge to play in doubles competition. Malik is a junior and Ge is a sophomore. Diamandopoulos explained that Long deferred to having the two underclassmen play in the doubles because they can gain more experience for down the road, and it will also give Long a little needed rest.

The doubles portion of districts begins May 8, with the team portion set to be played beginning on Saturday.

Emmaus still has regular season matches remaining against Whitehall (8-4 EPC, 9-4 Overall) and Southern Lehigh (3-10 Colonial, 4-10 Overall), which will determine whether the team makes it into the District 11 team competition. The Hornets need to win one of the remaining matches to qualify for team districts.

“The conference has gotten much better,” noted Diamandopoulos. “Teams like Northampton and even Whitehall and Southern Lehigh are teams that I don’t think we’ve ever lost to, but now, they’re pretty good teams and they’re getting some pretty good singles players out there to make them competitive.”

Emmaus opened the year with six straight wins, but the schedule got tougher midway through the year and they’ve now lost six straight, including a 4-3 loss to Northampton earlier this month.

“Where the injuries have really hurt us have been in the matches against teams like Pleasant Valley and Northampton, teams that we can match up against very well, but with the injuries and having to juggle the lineup, we’ve struggled,” said Diamandopoulos. “The thing is that I have great kids who haven’t given up, and they want to play and they want to win, so it hasn’t really been frustrating because you can’t feel too bad about things when you’ve got this group of kids.”