The Platte Perspective

"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own."

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Winter Round-up: Jan. 16-23

Park Hill Girls Basketball
….took third place in the Basehor-Linwood Tournament last week with two wins in three games. They kicked it off with a 44-32 win over Pembroke Hill after being led in scoring by Dominique Broadus’s 12 points. Falling behind early, they weren’t able to recover against the eventual title winner Holton as they fell 58-36. Kyleesha Weston led the Trojans with 17 points. Park Hill clinched third place with a 37-22 victory over St. Joe Benton. Weston led again with 15 points.

Park Hill next hosts North Kansas City on Thursday before participating in the North Kansas City Tournament next week.

Park Hill South Boys Basketball
…saw two close wins to begin last week at the North Kansas City tournament propelling them to a title game appearance against Truman before falling short in the championship game. In the opening round, Park Hill South edged Oak Park 38-37 by winning the fourth quarter by a 10-5 margin. Anthony Woods led the Panthers with 12 points. South followed that performance up by pulling another close win out in the closing moments as Anthony Woods hit a three pointer with seconds remaining to give them a 44-43 win over North Kansas City. Spencer Welty led in scoring with 15 points in addition to Woods’s 10 points. The magic would not last for the Panthers in the finale though. While the Panthers remained within striking distance for a majority of the game, Truman steadily pulled away with a 59-46 victory.

Park Hill South is now 12-6 and squares off against Park Hill at home Friday night.

Park Hill South Girls Basketball
The Panthers seem to be hitting their stride as they convincingly cruised through three victories last week on the way towards a first place finish in the Oak Park Tournament. Facing the host school in the opening round, the Lady Panthers beat Oak Park 53-26 behind 17 points from Madeline Homoly and nine points from Jessica Lee. In a redemption game from two weeks ago, the Panthers beat Fort Osage 51-48 with scoring leader Samantha Roy putting in 12 points along with Homoly’s nine. In the final round, Park Hill South blew out Ruskin 62-24 with evenly distributed scoring from all, particularly Homoly’s 15 points, Roy’s 14, and Lee’s 11. South scored in double digits in each quarter while holding Ruskin to single digits on the defensive end.

Now 10-6 on the year, the Panthers are quickly approaching their entire 2010-11 season win total of 12. While the tough conference loss they suffered to Fort Osage makes the league title difficult to get back into, South is aiming for a close second place finish and what appears to be a familiar field of teams and a preview of end of the season competition in the North Kansas City tournament next week.

“It’s a prelude to districts,” Coach Jenny Orlowski said. “When it comes down to districts any given night we’ve got a shot.”

Consistently playing seven to eight players, Orlowski says she started three freshmen last week, which is something she believes is a key to getting over the stigmas some young teams face.

“We kind of got over that early on. Once the freshmen got over, it didn’t matter anymore,” Orlowski said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re starting or not, everyone holds it together pretty well and once the game starts everyone gets pretty even playing time.


Park Hill Wrestling
Leading up to the championship round of the Winnetonka Tournament last weekend, Park Hill head wrestling coach Bill Erneste knew it would come down to his Trojans and the Blue Springs Wildcats for the tournament team title. With five of the first six championship matches featuring Trojan wrestlers in the lower weight classes, Park Hill would have to mount enough points early on to hold a slight lead before Blue Springs heavier weight classes came surging forward later in the round. In the end it came about as close as it could, but the Wildcats would eventually pass up Park Hill, just barely, as they took the tournament title with 426.5 team points compared to the Trojans 412 points.
 Park Hill gave them a run for their money though, setting the bar high with four first place victories in the first six title matches with a second and third place finish in the other two matches. Freshman Ke-Shawn Hayes (106) and sophomore John Erneste (113) dominated throughout the day with performances which resulted in several quick results. In Erneste’s four matches leading up to his 6-2 title match victory, he had pins in every match meaning he had only wrestled a total of 5:12 the entire day. Colston DiBlasi (126) and Russ Coleman (132) had three and four pins, respectively, leading into their title watches which DiBlasi won handedly 17-2 and Coleman winning by a 3-1 decision. Derek Rens finished a runner-up after losing his title match 138 while Hunter Roberts (120) and Conner Shene (145) secured third place finishes.

It would be at the 145 weight where Blue Springs staged their surge as they place first in that weight class along with three more at 160, 170, and 220 to match Park Hill’s four individual titles. Down bracket finishes and margin of victory came into play at that point as Blue Springs edged the Trojans for the title in front of a televised audience as part of the Metro Sports Wrestling Slam.

Other notable finishes for Park Hill included Nick Harper’s sixth place finish at 152, Malik Colding’s fourth place finish at 160, and Nolan Smith’s third place finish at 285.

Park Hill South
The Panther wrestlers also saw success at the Winnetonka Tournament last weekend. Park Hill South placed nine wrestlers in the top five of their respective weight classes.

While South finished in sixth place with 282 team points, their performance is partially deceptive due to falling just short of title match appearances in several cases, which would’ve propelled them to higher point totals. In the one title appearance, the Panthers did break through to, Alex Weatherly (152), who dominated throughout the day, fell short of first place in a 9-3 decision. Chase Gray (182) and Nick Gillespie (195) came home with third place finishes. Gray’s third-place match went into overtime before he jumped forward to a 10-5 victory.

South had a handful of fourth place finishes with Alex Fortuna (113), Jimmy Carpenter (132), Justin Haughenberry (138), Adam Weatherly (145), and Tyler Blythe (220). Kendrick Cook finished in fifth place in the 170 weight class.

The Panthers are slated to wrestle in the Liberty Invite this weekend.

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