It’s hard to believe, but the regular season is almost over for high school tennis.

Parkland has just three matches remaining after beating rival Emmaus 7-0 on Tuesday at Emmaus High School. The Eastern Pennsylvania Conference tournament begins next Thursday and with a 9-3 record, Parkland is looking to play a big role in the postseason.

In the sweep against Emmaus, Murong Yao, Joanna Wu and Jess Tseo all picked up wins in singles competition. In doubles, the tandems of Riley Mang and Anabel Stein, Jessica Marks and Sophia Lee, Maanasi Gothoskar and Aditi Pallod and Punya Bhasin and Amanda Freeman were victorious for Parkland.

“I’m looking forward to postseason play,” said Parkland head coach Mike Hingston. “At this point, most of our matches are over and we’ll see how things shake out in the district rankings. I’m looking forward to the EPC tournament and district play. That’s where you really get a sense of where you stand with the rest of the competition and I like our matchups in certain areas, so we might be a surprise to some people.”

After a slow start, Parkland has won eight of its last nine matches, with just a loss to Nazareth standing in the way of a perfect nine match streak. The loss to Nazareth (10-2), one of the better teams in the EPC, was a tough 4-3 decision. Parkland was able to get wins in two of three singles matches, but Nazareth went 3-1 in doubles, with two of the three wins going to three sets.

As the postseason approaches, Hingston has seen the type of development out of young players that he was hoping to see throughout the season. The team is better than the one that started the season simply because of the progression of young players with little experience in match play before this season.

Parkland lost two of its first three matches this season with losses to Freedom and Easton, teams that currently have a combined record of 23-0 on the season. While Freedom picked up a 6-1 win, Parkland battled Easton much tougher, falling 4-3. At the time, Hingston had said that he would be interested to see how his team would compete against those teams later in the season.

“It’s going to be very interesting and I’m having a great time with these kids and looking forward to the rest of the season and beyond,” Hingston said. “At this point, a lot of people say ‘they’re no longer freshmen anymore,’ because they’ve played so much tennis. The postseason though is a little different, so we’ll see how that plays out, but I’m very optimistic.

“We have a couple [players] with postseason experience, but even there, some of them are used to playing postseason as a doubles player and now they’re playing singles, so that makes a difference. Even just in terms of the format, some of them are confused by how it all works when you explain it to them.”

Between now and the start of the EPC Tournament next Thursday, Parkland has three home matches against Northampton (7-5), Southern Lehigh (12-1) and Whitehall (6-7).