Since the Lady Hornets loss to Easton in the East Penn Conference quarterfinals last week, the team has regrouped and set its sights on the District 11 tournament, which begins this week.

Emmaus (12-11) has a matchup with Nazareth (16-7) Friday night to be played at Whitehall High School. Both teams were exempt from playing in the pigtail round and will move directly into Friday’s quarterfinals. The meeting will be the first of the season for the two teams who did not have each other on their EPC schedule during the regular season.

Nazareth suffered a hiccup in the middle portion of its regular season schedule, but the Eagles showed themselves to be a tougher team than they were during a three-game losing streak against three of the tougher teams in the EPC. Undaunted by losses to Easton, Bethlehem Catholic and Northampton, the Blue Eagles rebounded to win seven of their final nine games and earned the No. 6 seed for districts. The wins included beating the Golden Hawks in a rematch before nearly knocking off undefeated Easton, who escaped their visit to Nazareth with a 57-53 victory.

The Blue Eagles are led by senior Kelly Leszcynski, who is the school’s all-time leader in three-pointers with 169 over her four high school seasons. Leszcynski led the team in scoring this season by averaging just over 13 points per game for Nazareth, helping her to make the first team EPC all-stars list for the season. Nazareth coach Rich Bickert stands at 298 wins in his career and looks to reach the 300-win milestone during districts.

“Obviously, Nazareth is a very good team,” said Emmaus coach Kelsey Gallagher. “At this point in the season, you are not going to catch any breaks on the schedule because everybody deserves to be here, and you work your way through one good team after another. We have to keep our confidence up and go into the game looking to do the things that we know we do well and focus on our strengths.”

Since Gallagher’s arrival five seasons ago, the Hornets have become a defensive-minded team and allowed an average of 38 points per game this season. Trying to control Leszcynski will be a key for any team going up against Nazareth in districts. The old saying that you cannot stop her, but only hope to contain her is true and Gallagher is conscious of that.

“She is obviously a very good player, and you realize that she is going to get points,” said Gallagher. “You just work to not give her open looks or let her have a huge game against you. You want her to have to work for everything that she gets.”

The problem for opposing teams in trying to stop Emmaus, which enters districts as the No. 6 seed in Class 6A, is that the Hornets never rely on just one player for scoring.

While nobody on the team averaged 10 or more points for the Lady Hornets this season, they have five players who are all within two-and-a-half points of each other for the team leadership in scoring. Six different players led Emmaus in scoring during regular season games.

“We have a very unselfish team, and they are used to spreading the ball around and just finding who has the best shot on that particular possession or who has the hot hand in that game,” said Gallagher. “They pick each other up very well and we have done a decent job of not forcing shots.”

The winner of the Emmaus and Nazareth matchup will face the winner of the Freedom (11-11) and Northampton (20-5) game, which will follow the Emmaus game Friday night at Whitehall High School.

The Lady Hornets beat Freedom during the regular season but fell to the Konkrete Kids in both of their EPC regular season games.

Northampton went as far as the EPC finals where it fell to Bethlehem Catholic in a game played at the PPL Center.