Trojans bring home tourney championship

The Park Hill Girls Basketball team is off to quite a start after winning the Fort Osage Tournament this past week to start the season 3-0. A 69-44 victory over Ray-Pec in the first round featured a strong performance from the starting five as they all score in double-figures with Laura Bennett, Spenser Rhodus, and Helena Hudson all scoring ten points apiece along with Kyleesha Weston’s 11 points and Katy Plummer’s 17.

“We played well for our first game,” coach Brian Rockers said. “I was very pleased with our balanced scoring and total team effort.”

Next, the Trojans faced off against the host team, Fort Osage, in the second round. A second half adjustment to full court man to man defense allowed the Trojans to pull away after a close first half to win 53-41. Bennett hit two three-pointers on her way to 20 points added in with Weston’s 11 and Plummer’s 12 points.

In the championship game, Park Hill went up against Kansas City Central. And what a title game it was, with the two teams neck-to-neck the entire game. Central took a 21-18 lead going into halftime in what would be a low-scoring, defensive-oriented game. Going into the fourth quarter the Trojans had narrowed the margin to a score of 30-28 with Central still ahead, but an unusual strategy was taken by Central on offense as they held the ball for nearly four minutes to force Park Hill out of their half-court zone defense. The Trojans were eventually able to force a steal and convert it into a score to tie it up. Central sank two free throws to go up by two with 23 seconds remaining in the game, but sophomore Kyleesha Weston came up big when she received an inbounds pass with 3.2 seconds and hit a three-pointer to win the game along with bring home the championship trophy. The three-pointer was the only of the game for Park Hill and made up for three of Weston’s seven points. Plummer contributed 11 points and Bennett added 8.

“Gutsy effort from our girls as they held on and fought through some strange things to pull it off,” Rocker said.

They’ll come home to play Ruskin this week in their first home game, then play two tough conference games at Oak Park and Truman next week before playing a key game against Platte County on Dec. 18th.