Measuring stick: Park Hill, PH South skippers use season-opening tourney for evaluation

Seeing a season start off on a good note is something all coaches strive for, but after all the games are played at the end of the season it’s what you accomplish in those key conference and district games that count the most. Those sentiments were echoed last week from Park Hill and Park Hill South coaches Greg Reynolds and Josh Walker as neither team walked away from the KC Metro Leadoff Tournament satisfied with their first performances of the year.

“You can either go into this thinking you need to win all five games in order to get a good start to your season or you can approach it like spring training and get a better idea of what you have. We used more pitchers than we usually would,” Reynolds said. “I like it because you find out a lot about your team.”

Park Hill went 2-3 on the week with victories over Lee’s Summit North (13-6) and Ray-Pec (10-9). Other than Rockhurst, two of their three losses came in games where they carried a tie into the sixth inning, but gave up four runs each time to end the game. Those losses were at the hands of Staley (5-1) and Oak Park (13-9).

“I was pleased we were in every game except against Rockhurst,” Reynolds said. “With so many inexperienced guys on varsity, I think it woke some guys up.”

Reynolds says he was glad to see the ability to use the sacrifice bunt as well as they did, but would like to see improvement on their base running despite not having great speed. He expects Nathan Shores and Luke Burnidge to contribute on the pitching mound while three or four others attempt to player their way into the rotation. Park Hill also hopes a strong closer will emerge in the coming weeks that will be able to prevent those costly runs associated with fatigue in later innings.

Park Hill South didn’t see very much success either as they fell in four of their first five games last week in the lead off tournament. Their sole victory came with a 9-2 win over William Chrisman. The Panthers also saw two close games slip away in the late innings. In fact, they went to extra innings both times. The first was an eight-inning pitching duel against Blue Springs South 3-2 followed by an 11 inning game against Lee’s Summit West in which they eventually fell 10-6.

“We did not have a good week,” Walker said. “We made a lot of errors, but our pitching was pretty good. Nick Ferraro had the best week on the mound.”

While their defense was shaky, the first week did show signs of optimism in the Panthers’ hitting which was initially a concern. Scoring runs did not seem to present a problem for South as they averaged a strong seven runs a game over the course of their first five games.

With the season now well underway the 1-4 Panthers look to Staley, Fort Osage, and Raytown this week to establish more winning ways while the 2-3 Trojans Liberty, Oak Park, and St. Joe Central.