It’s hard to believe, but Emmaus boys soccer season reached the halfway point Monday night with a 5-0 win over Pocono Mountain West.

Through the first nine games, the Hornets have remained undefeated, going 7-0-0 in the EPC and 2-0-0 in nonconference games. Emmaus joins Liberty (7-0-0 overall, 7-0-0 EPC) as the only two unbeaten teams in the EPC. On the season, Emmaus has outscored their opponents 27-5.

Against Pocono Mountain West (6-3-0, 4-3-0), Emmaus outshot the Panthers 21-2 and got two goals each from Andrew Gaines and Patrick Walsh, with Nathan Romig adding the fifth goal.

One of the keys to the success this season has been a balanced scoring attack. Patrick Walsh and Hudson Peck lead the team with six goals each, while Jake Groh has five, Andrew Gaines four and Marco Silva has three.

Three other players have one goal each for the Hornets.

“Our guys aren’t selfish,” said Hornet head coach John Cari. “They communicate well and they look for who has the best shot and work to get the ball to him. The fact that we’ve got a number of guys who can score makes it difficult to defend against us.”

Gaines leads the team with five assists, followed by Josh Whalen, who has four, and Silva, who has three assists on the year.

Against Easton last week, Peck and Groh each scored two goals, with Silva adding one and four players – Peck, Walsh, Groh and Silva – scored in the 4-0 win over Freedom. Groh had scored goals in three straight games coming into the meeting against Pocono Mountain West.

The schedule hits a bit of a lull over the next five games. Emmaus hosts Dieruff (0-7-0, 0-6-0) and then has games at Pleasant Valley (4-3-1, 4-2-1) and East Stroudsburg South (3-3-1, 3-3-1).

The stretch winds up with a home game against Central Catholic (3-5-0, 3-4-0) and then a second meeting with Northampton (3-5-0, 2-5-0), who Emmaus beat 4-0 early in the season.

Cari isn’t concerned about his team losing any intensity during the stretch and believes it can use the time to continue to work on little things that will make them even better and to keep piling up some wins.

“There are always things you’re working on to get better and this team has a real drive, so I don’t worry about them slowing down or taking anybody for granted,” he said. “They know how disappointing it would be to lose a game now when it’s one that you should win, so they’re not going to coast through any stretch of the schedule.”

The biggest tests of the second half will come in rematches against Parkland (5-2-0, 5-2-0) and Whitehall (5-3-1, 4-3-0).

Emmaus went to overtime to beat the Trojans 2-1 in the third game of the season and pulled out a 3-2 win at Whitehall in early September. What the schedule doesn’t have is a regular season meeting with Liberty. The two teams will have to wait until the postseason to get a look at each other.

“It’s just the way the schedule worked out this year,” said Cari of not playing Liberty. “We would love to play them and I’m sure we’ll get the chance at some point, maybe even a couple of times in the playoffs. They’re a good team and it will be a great game when we do get to face them.”