Park Hill grad contributes to Auburn's trip to National Championship game

While many kids back from college have time to enjoy at least one more week of winter break, there is one Platte County native that will be experiencing the thrill of a lifetime next week. During the 2009-2010 school year, we brought you coverage of then Park Hill athlete Steven Clark on the football field and basketball court. An All-State and nationally ranked punter for the Trojan football team, The Citizen was the only source to cover his recruitment and official signing with Auburn University early last year. After a 12-0 record capped off with an SEC Championship in December, the Auburn Tigers will face the Oregon Ducks in the BCS National Championship in Glendale, Arizona on January 10th.

Clark, a 6-5, 232 pound freshman, was thrown into the fire early this season as questions arose to whether he could perform better than the more experienced punter in front of him at the time. In the heart of their conference schedule, Clark saw action in five games from October to November. He booted nine punts averaging 34.9 yards/punt, which don't reflect the height that Clark has notariety for. Five of those punts ended in fair catches and two were downed inside the 20-yard line, two key stats punters are judged by. Probably his most successful game came against LSU when he punted three times for 112 yards in a 24-17 victory for the Tigers. In recent weeks, seniority has ruled as Auburn has decided to re-assign starting duties to senior Ryan Shoemaker, who has slightly improved. While coaches have been quoted saying Shoemaker is inconsistent, they also agree that for Clark to perform well enough to maintain the starting role over the senior would be tough for a freshman, but that he is young and has time to improve.

Glancing through both teams' rosters, you'll have to look closely to find anyone from the midwest being represented in the game. Auburn's Clark is the only player from Missouri while Oregon has one player from Kansas. So while you watch Auburn's Heisman Trophy Winner, Cam Newton, possibly lead the Tigers to a National Championship next week which they are currently favored to do, Park Hill alums and residents of Platte County can be proud that one of their own is a part of it all. Stay tuned next week for more of the Citizen's coverage of Clark's journey to the National Championship.

Lady Panthers come off break slow, but show fight in near comeback against Chrisman

After a two week winter break to work on tuning up their fundamentals, the Park Hill South girls didn’t come out of the gate Monday night against William Chrisman like they wanted. An athletic and aggressive Chrisman team jumped out to an early lead that eventually led to a 29-11 halftime score. The combination of South’s poor shooting performance and Chrisman’s ability to convert on second chance points was tough to overcome for the Panthers in the first half.

“I think our first half we just played tentative and scared, not sure if it was the break or what,” Coach Jenny Orlowski said. “They (Chrisman) rebound very well; they kind of push up from behind the basket and position themselves real well.”

Down 18 points, Park Hill South had to change it up in the second half. While the general approach to stopping a fast team is to slow their pace down, it didn’t work in the first half for the Panthers. So they came out in the second half needing something different. With more pressure on the Bears, including a full-court man press, they forced pressure on Chrisman at every opportunity.

“We tried to slow the game down in the first half by staying back in the zone and it didn’t work very well, so when you’re down 18 points you have be a little more aggressive,” Orlowski said.

Initially, this also put more pressure on the weight of South’s young guards to prevent the margin from widening and the key bench players needed to run such a defense. Frustrating at first, the Panther defense stuck with it and slowly but surely narrowed the margin to 48-41 with less than four minutes to play in the game. Additionally, the shots began to fall as Tori Kerr and Stephanie Griffith’s timely scoring put the Panthers in a position to mount a comeback. Griffith converted 3 three-point plays in the fourth quarter as part of an impressive 19 point performance.

“Stephanie is a solid player for us, not real flashy, but gets things done when we need it,” Orlowski said of her senior guard.

As the seconds ticked off the clock, the momentum wasn’t quite enough as Chrisman took advantage of several late fast break layups to increase the final score to 63-47.

“A lot of our bench players really stepped up tonight, that’s what we want in broad terms of a total team effort,” Orlowski said.

While Monday was only the first game of 2011, South will be looking to build throughout the second half of the season upon the things they discussed over the break.

“We talked about turning things around and beating a team we’re not supposed to beat,” Orlowski said. “They can play with Chrisman, and they believed that in the second half. It’s about believing in themselves.”

The Panthers are now 3-6 on the year with home games against Belton on Thursday followed by Winnetonka on Monday.

William Jewell Roundup: Dec. 27-31

Park Hill Boys Basketball
The Trojans were one quarter away from playing for the Patterson Division title last week at the Bank Midwest William Jewell Classic. They took a one point lead of 42-41 over Liberty into the fourth quarter of what was pretty much a neck and neck game throughout. Liberty swung a three-point advantage in the fourth into a 59-57 victory over Park Hill. The Trojans' leading scorer was Chris Nsenki with 24 followed by Brady Kreitzer's 12. Park Hill battled Rockhurst in the third place game, but fell for the second time this year in a 65-61 loss. Park Hill gave up 22 points in the fourth quarter to give up a seven-point lead they had coming into the last quarter. Nsenki had 20 points along with Flint's 14 and Kreitzer's 10 points. The Trojans are now 7-3 on the season with a game at Oak Park Wednesday and St. Joe Central on Friday at home.

Park Hill South Boys Basketball
Park Hill South was much in the same boat as Park Hill when they fell just short of a title game appearance in the Cardinal Division when O'Hara tipped in a last second shot to edge the Panthers by a score of 47-46. Christian Hildebrandt and Rocky Benson led South with 16 and 13 points, respectively. After an exciting overtime victory over Blue Springs South earlier in the year, the Panthers experienced a rare lack of offense in their third place game as they fell 45-32. Hildebrandt was the only player in double digits for South with 13 points. South is now 8-3 on the year with roads games against Liberty and Raytown this week.