The Emmaus girls track and field team had a phenomenal season in 2018. Everything seemed to come together for the Hornets as they went unbeaten (11-0) in Eastern Pennsylvania Conference meets to earn the league’s co-championship for the regular season.

But that could be just the beginning of the story for this unit. With nearly all of it’s top point-scorers returning for next season and some for two or three more, the Hornets are stacked up to be one of the league’s best teams for years to come.

“I’m really excited because our sophomore class is strong,” said first-year Emmaus head coach Kami Reinhard, who was a sprint coach with the team for three years before taking over the top job prior to this season. “Hopefully with two years under their belt they can maybe get up in the top spots at leagues. That’s what we need to win a meet like [last week’s league championships].”

Emmaus had just three individual medal winners and three relay medal winners at last week’s league meet (see story on Page 9). But the team also had many point-scoring finishes from several others, such as freshman Madison Brown (400) and sophomore Laurel Widdoss (triple jump) earning sixth-place finishes, while freshman Kera Reinhard (seventh in 1600), junior Hannah Lingold (eight in discus) and junior Abby Heilenman (eighth in 800) also helped the team earn points. Another sophomore, Kayla Smith got seventh in the 200 and was just outside of earning points with a ninth-place finish in the 100 last week.

Senior Kaitlyn Carter also came close to scoring with a ninth-place finish in the 3200.

Not only do the Hornets have a bevy of talented young athletes, they also have someone in every discipline that can help earn points.

“We were balanced,” said Kami Reinhard of this year’s team. “We’ve had a lot of kids who had not been top performers become top performers, especially in the field. Sprints kind of got faster. Distance did the same”

Coming into the season the team knew it had some talent all around, along with a league title contender in Dalton. But the freshmen and sophomores were a question mark early on, although it didn’t take long to realize they were ready to compete at the varsity level.

“It started off at the Parkland meet (March 28), which was an unexpected win,” said Kami Reinhard. “It was 77-73, so it wasn’t like we won by a lot.

“Per all of the reports, we knew Liberty was going to be strong. Once we beat Liberty (on April 23) is when they were like ‘Wow, OK. Now we’re good.’ The girls for the most part have stayed healthy, which is a blessing.”

The team has several athletes it counts on to score in every dual meet. In addition to the names above, Reinhard mentioned Naomi Deveray (throws) and Edna Creelman (jumps, hurdles) as two other consistent performers for the team.

Hornet senior Abby Dalton, a four-year member of the team who ran as many as four events during dual meets this season, was happy to be part of such a strong team during her final season and is excited to keep track of her old team while she’s running for Muhlenberg College next season.

“We lost a bunch of really good seniors [after the 2017 season],” Dalton said. “We had a whole bunch of freshmen coming in. We have some great depth going on. It looks like the team is just going to strengthen as time goes on.”