On one hand, Park Hill South, who won the Lee’s Summit North Invitational over the weekend, has one of its most experienced and talented teams in recent memory and is currently off to an almost flawless start to their season; one which might have them on course to be one of the state’s final four teams at the end of October. A closely contested loss last week to Lee’s Summit West is the only blemish on the Panthers record, which also includes a national tournament victory in Orlando, Fla. over Labor Day weekend, where they won every set they played.
“That’s kind of how we’ve been playing,” Park Hill South coach Debbie Fay said. “We’ve got some pretty good talent. There isn’t anyone kid who is our go-to. We’ve got seven kids that play and they have pretty dominant roles and they do them right every night.”
With high expectations coming into the season, Fay says her Park Hill South squad has met them all.
“My expectations with all the kids have been right on, they’re living up to them,” Fay said. “There isn’t one kid that jumps out or is taking control more. Ashton (Anderson) is doing a real good job of running the offense and giving them opportunities. If anything can improve it is just return a real aggressive ball more efficiently, but that just takes practice. It’s hard to do because there aren’t a lot of opportunities to face that."
On the other hand, Park Hill is trying to put the pieces together as a team that has pushed through the struggles of being a young squad in previous years and fulfill the potential of its players. Park Hill coach Lindsey Hood says it is just a matter of the players growing into their positions.
“We just have to get stronger,” Hood said after the loss. “We’re still lagging in offense where we don’t have the go-to hitters that can put the ball down. We have good ball control and can find holes in the court, but we’re lacking that go-to person right now.”
The Trojans rebounded over the weekend with quality performances at the Lee’s Summit North tournament by beating Grain Valley, Columbia Hickman, and Staley after a slow start to win the consolation bracket. Park Hill is looking to use that momentum towards the rest of the season and see that good-to-great transition to take place, which they believe will happen.
“They were excited, focused and I could not have asked for more out of them,” Hood said of their tournament performance. “They showed team work and got the task at hand done.”
What Park Hill South faces, and even to a broader extent Park Hill, is an increasingly competitive Kansas City volleyball scene, which could leave even the best of teams at home when it comes to playing in the state playoffs. Part of that is a positive indictment of the quality of play in the area while the other is a state playoff format which has seen little change from its original format.
“There are probably four or fives teams good enough to make the Final Four, but the problem is only one gets to (from Kansas City). Every year there are more and more good teams, so it keeps getting harder and harder to get out of the Kansas City area. It’s just the level of play has grown that much. We may be just as good as some of the Park Hill South teams of the past that made the Final Four, but so are the other schools,” Fay said. “In every other sport besides volleyball, they’re taking more teams to the playoffs or adding classes, but the format is the same now as it was 30 years ago when I first started.”
Park Hill hosts St. Joe Central Thursday while Park Hill
South hosts Truman. The two teams next play each other on October 9th.
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