Park Hill soccer breaks out offensively

Judging by the scoreboard halfway through last week’s game against Ruskin, you wouldn’t guess at this stage of the season the Park Hill girls’ soccer team is having trouble scoring goals. The 6-0 score which was eventually doubled before halftime to an impressive 12-0 meant a second half was necessary according to the ‘mercy’ rules governing Missouri high school sports. The win came on the heels of a 7-0 victory against North Kansas City earlier in the week to improve their record to 3-4 on the year and serves as a hopeful boost going into the heart of their conference schedule.

“Our goal tonight was to just continue working on the same things we’ve been working on in practice. Good passing, being aggressive, and choosing our shots,” assistant coach Dustin Sollars said. “We’re still kind of shaky scoring goal, which is hard to believe after tonight.”

Hinting at leaning on strength of speed on the outside in preseason workouts, Park Hill is looking to wear teams out with their quickness and what they believe is the advantage of being in slightly better shape than the competition.

“I think we’re more fit than most of the teams we play,” Sollars said. “We just have to use that to our advantages, win the ball, possess a little more, and make the other teams chase us to make them tire out more quickly. We’re in really good shape, just need to work on the soccer specifics more.”

Led by captains Rayci Lee, Holly Maier, and Shelby Blanchard, the Trojans have seen an infusion of young talent from Maggie Lanham up front along with Lyndi Plattner and Katie Hibbeler at midfield. They’re adding depth to their quickness which allows them to rest players at key points in games in order to always have an attack threat.

“It’s coming along pretty well. We’ve got some pretty good outside midfielders and we’ve got several of them so we can rotate them and keep them fresh,” Sollars said.

Bringing that depth at the midfield position to the field for its optimal effect along with continuing to wear down opposing teams is something the Trojans will work to work on implementing as they head into the second half of their season.

“We have to be able to competitively match up against everyone else in our conference that we’ll be playing starting next week against Oak Park and Park Hill South a little later, sure up our defense a little bit, and capitalize on some opportunities in order to be where we want to be,” Sollars said.

Victory over South tops Trojans' week

The Park Hill boys tennis team had a solid string of victories against Oak Park, North Kansas City, and Park Hill South before hitting a patch of rough matches in the Pembroke Hill Invitational last weekend where they lost to Blue Valley Northwest (2-1), Pembroke Hill (3-0), and Blue Valley North (3-0). All three teams are considered some of the best in Kansas and Missouri.

"We've had some pretty decisive wins at the 5 and 6 spots, that's kind of what we've been seeing. We're making them do things they don't like to do always in terms of style, but we're stretching them and seeing them develop into stronger players," Coach Tim Kalis said.

Michael Jones, Blake Barnad, Christian Reinmiller, Drew Nickell, and Max Schoettger all won their individual matches in racking up a 7-2 victory over Oak Park to start off last week. Ian Pauley added to the mix the next day against North Kansas City with his 6-3, 6-2 victory along with the doubles pairs of Jones/Barnard and Schoettger/Nickell. The Trojans concluded their victory streak against Park Hill South in what could be considered a mild upset with a 6-3 win. After South's top players Griffin Smith and Zach Royal won their singles matches, the Trojans rattled off four straight singles victories from Reinmiller, Nickell, Schoettger, and Chris To capped it off with his first varsity victory. That setup the momentum for the doubles team to finalize the win heading into the weekend invitational.

"They're a solid team and they have their top couple kids back. They're extremely strong at the top," Kalis said of South. "It could have gone either way, possibly been a 6-3 swing the other way as well."

"They really feed off each other. Their leadership as captains (Nickell and Jones) has been excellent," Kalis said of the mix between classes his team has. "It's good for a freshmen (Barnard)to play with one of our captains (Jones) in doubles because it has allowed him to step up as well."

"So far we've exceeded where the expectations probably were at the beginning of the season, but the goals have never changed," Kalis said.

Spring Weekly Roundup: April 4 - 9

Park Hill South Girls Soccer
... cruised through another week with three victories to increase their impressive record to 9-1. All three games were blowouts with wins against Raytown South (10-0), Winnetonka (9-0), and Fort Osage (7-0). Katie Riojas and Emily Hanlon are leading the team in goals with 10 and 9, respectively. Abbey Johnson and Courtney Claassen follow with seven a piece. Claassen has also contributed 13 assists. Alexis Mikulich continues to dominate as the Panthers' goalkeeper as she has only allowed three goals all season and has recorded eight shutouts in nine games. The Panthers are currently 4-0 in the conference as they look to run the table undefeated. They'll host William Chrisman before playing in the Blue Springs South Invitational next week.

Park Hill South Girls Track
... had several athletes excel at the Kearney Classic last Friday afternoon. Leading the pack for the Panthers was Hannah Carlson's second place finish in the 300 meter hurdles. Also placing in that event was Audrey Rothers with her eighth place finish. Blake Reser finished third in the long jump with a distance of 15', 8.25". Reser also placed fifth in the triple jump. She was accompanied with several other fifth place finishers in the likes of the 4x800 and 4x100 meter relay teams, Audrey Rothers in the 110 hurdles, and Samantha Roy in the 800 meter dash. Their next competition with be in the Winnetonka Invitational at Staley this Thursday.

Park Hill South Boys Track
... Max Rodgers in the pole vault and Cody Kildow in the discus led the Panthers with third place finishes in the Kearney Classic last week. The 4x100 relay team placed third with a 44.86 time while James Bowlin placed fourth in the 1600 meter run coming in with a time of 4:31. South hopes to improve on some of their performances with higher finishes this week in the Winnetonka Invitational.

Park Hill Baseball
... went 2-1 last week with victories against Truman (5-1) and Ruskin (18-0) while their lone defeat came to Blue Springs (7-0). The Trojans are now 6-6 on the season. They'll play at North Kansas City in their only scheduled game this week before competing in the Northland Tournament next week.
 
Park Hill South Baseball
…. went 2-1 last week with all three games being decisive. The victories included Raytown South 10-0 and Belton 5-0. John Christopher pitched a complete game and only allowed three hits against Raytown South while gaining run support from Sam Laney and Kendrick White who went 2-3. Adam Schemenauer struck out 18 Belton batters while Blake Phillips went 3-3 with 4 RBI’s. The sole loss on the week came at the hands of Liberty by a score of 11-1. Kyle Willenbrink and Ty Elley both went 1-1 in their plate appearances. Coach Josh Walker said their defense didn’t help them any in their loss against Liberty, but sees improvement overall even though they occasionally see setbacks.