Trojans Wrestlers dominate districts, set their sights on state championship

The culture of wrestling is unlike any other sport and where a team’s outcome relies heavily on individual performances, the team mentality can be as strong as any. Shortly after Park Hill Wrestling coach Bill Erneste’s team completed a highly successful district tournament which included eight first place finishes and ten qualifiers for the state tournament next weekend, it wasn’t those who would be competing for state titles on his mind, but those that wouldn’t.

“My number one thing is we left two seniors, Corey Sterling and Ryan Sutten,” Erneste said. “These two men are very special to me. I feel sorry for those two seniors because this is their last year and they’ve worked as hard as everyone else.”

They didn’t qualify all 14 wrestlers, but Park Hill was very pleased with their district performance of 250.5 team points, 98.5 points in front of runner-up Lee’s Summit. They’ll now look to the state wrestling tournament this weekend at Mizzou Arena in Columbia, Missouri where they hope to bring home their second consecutive Class Four team championship. The ten wrestlers going on to compete in the tournament is more than last year’s nine qualifiers and is tied for second this year with Lafayette. Francis Howell Central’s 11 qualifiers lead the field.

After Paxton DiBlasi took third at 103, the Trojans won four consecutive first place matches in the 112, 119, 125, and 130 weight classes. Bricker Dixon at 112 improved to 42-0 and sported a spirited buzz cut with the Park Hill logo trimmed on the side. After suffering his first loss of the year last week, Skylar Wood at 119 came back strong to finish ahead of the wrestler who dealt him his sole defeat and Alan Waters at 125 continued his pursuit of perfection to go 43-0 as he looks to be become part of a handful of wrestlers in state history to win four state championships.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing highlights of the weekend was in the 130 championship match between PH’s Russ Coleman and Lee’s Summit’s top-seeded Spencer Courier. Coleman, a freshman who just recently earned his varsity roster spot, was down 2-1 with under a minute to go before mounting a series of moves leading to a pin and bringing a Park Hill crowd to its feet with a standing ovation.

“He truly believes, never made an excuse and just battled,” said Erneste. “Russ Coleman is only a freshman by grade. He doesn’t say he’s hurt or walk away, he just keeps coming back at them.”

Preston Crouse (140), Kaleb Friedley (145), John Eblen (189), and Hayden Bock (215) earned district title medals after their victories while Nolan Smith took third at heavyweight.

“We’re going to train like we always do,” Erneste said of state preparations. “Our main key is to focus on the things we can control and make sure it’s done right.”

They’ve been favored since the beginning to take home the title, but the Trojans aren’t naïve about the competition they’ll be facing. Francis Howell Central and Blue Springs, along with familiar district teams like Lee’s Summit and Liberty are all vying to bring home hardware.

“Everyone keeps telling us we’re the front-runner and we like to know we’re the front-runner, but we’re battling and we know anything can happen. There are a lot of people that go to Columbia to win a state championship,” Erneste said. “We just want it to be us.”

Park Hill hopes to win rematch of season's first game, this time for district title

After having beat every team in their district except for Liberty (16-5), it was expected the Park Hill Trojans (17-6) would be seeded below them as the two seed in the upcoming Class Five, District 16 Boys Tournament, but high school basketball fans from around the area will be highly anticipating what could be a Liberty/Park Hill district championship game. It was way back on December 1st, both teams’ first games of the season, when Park Hill nearly pulled out the upset at Liberty before falling 73-68. Since then, it’s easy to say the Trojans have been looking forward to a rematch. But both teams will have to do their part in winning their district semifinal games before any rematch can take place.

With the top two seeds receiving first round byes, the Trojans will wait for the winner of third ranked Oak Park and sixth ranked St. Joe Central. Even though the Indians are ranked last, for those familiar with St. Joe, there is no doubt they will have an advantage as the host school and a match-up with the young, inexperienced, but full of potential Northmen could lead to an interesting match-up in the tournaments opening round. This should leave a rested Park Hill with a leg-up against either team, both of which the Trojans were able to handedly defeat during the regular season. In either case, Park Hill will likely present a more athletic and up-beat tempo compared to their opponent in the second round game to be played February 24th.

In what was anticipated as an encore performance of an overtime thriller earlier this season between rivals Park Hill and Park Hill South, both schools’ supporters showed up at Park Hill South last week as purple and red reflected on opposite sides of the gym. Park Hill came out a little timid on the Panthers’ home court as they gave up some second chance points off defensive missteps, but took a halftime lead of 26-15. Brady Kreitzer took the Trojans on his back in the third quarter as the games leading scorer finishing with 19 points and the offensive cylinders started rolling as they gradually increased their lead before finally sealing the victory at 63-40. Justin Leathers and Chris Nsenki both added 17 points as they remained undefeated in conference at 8-0 and officially clinched the Big Six Conference Championship for the first time since 2002.

As they complete their last week of the regular season, Park Hill thanked their four seniors on Tuesday night, Bryan Willis, Steven Clark, Austin Kepler, and Justin Leathers, as they hosted William Chrisman. They’ll visit Winnetonka in the season finale Friday, February 19th before heading into post-season play.

Lady Trojans look to Districts, rematch with South

The Park Hill and Park Hill South girls’ basketball teams have already met twice this season resulting in two hard fought games with victories being split between the two. This past weekend they received news they’ll be meeting a third time, but it’ll be more than a regular season game as it will be in the first round of the Class Five, District 16 tournament on February 23rd for an opportunity to go on to play the host school, St. Joe Central, in the second round. Park Hill received the third seed with a record of 14-9 while Park Hill South received the sixth seed with a record of 3-16.

Park Hill was likely one win shy of receiving a beneficial two seed and first round bye, but the nod was given to St. Joe Central (13-7) probably due to the fact that the Lady Indians beat the Trojans 51-41 two weeks ago in a head to head match-up which gave them a stronger resume. Liberty received the first seed and will likely play in the championship game to be held February 27th pending a letdown between the winner of the Winnetonka/Oak Park game.

Park Hill will come into the game against the Lady Panthers favored, but it has yet to be seen how much of an effect the loss of senior Laura Bennett will have on the Trojans scoring. Coach Brian Rockers has leaned on his seniors all season and they’ll be looked towards again as they head into the district tournament. Senior Katy Plummer will be an important key in the post as a leading rebounder and point scorer while it will be important for sophomore Kyleesha Weston and senior Emma Gossett to stay out of foul trouble and be aggressive as the leaders of the Trojan offense.

The Trojans have one more regular season game against William Chrisman on Thursday this week. It’ll be Senior Night at Park Hill for a group which has had a majority of its playing time at the varsity level over the last three years. Last week they defeated Grandview by a score of 48-34 with strong performances from Plummer with 11 and Michele Rupard with ten points. Weston and freshman Sydney Hultz added seven a piece.