South falls short of Final Four appearance

Park Hill South ended the team portion of their season with a loss to Lee's Summit North in the state quarterfinals 5-2. The Panthers fell just short of advancing to their first Final Four appearance in school history after defeating St. Joe Central in the sectional round 5-2. Adele Royle will play in the individual portion of the state tournament this weekend after winning first place in districts and sectionals last week.

FALL PREVIEW: Park Hill South Girls Tennis

Coming off conference and district titles in 2011, the Park Hill South girls tennis team returns in 2012 with five of their six varsity starters from a year ago including doubles state qualifiers senior Marie Gehrke and sophomore Adele Royle. Coaches Glynis Chambers and Ian Cunliff believe they have a team that can build off the strong foundation last year’s success brought..

“We’ve got a lot of younger depth that we didn’t have last year,” Cunliff said.

With one more year’s experience under their belt, a talented group of young players become a strength for the Panthers. While the makings of a successful season are there for South in 2012, they believe one key factor that gives them an advantage this year over last is something that can’t be measured by the scoreboard.

“Maturity (last year), it wasn’t really anything on the court. A lot of it was just mental.”

In a sport which is almost exclusively individual in the offseason, players are required to practice on their own.

“They’ve all been working on things,” Cunliff said. “I gave them a ‘wish list’ of things to work on over the summer.”

Park Hill South will lean heavily on their top two in Royle and Gehrke, who established themselves as dominant forces in Northland tennis last year both individually and as a pair. The two advanced to the state tournament before falling in a close 2-1 loss in the sectional round.

“Marie is very consistent and steady; Adele is a big hitter and goes for a lot of hard shots. She hits a lot of winners,” Chambers said. “They went to state in doubles last year. We’ll just have to see what their success is like at the end of the season on whether they will do singles or doubles.”

More experience and skills on the players’ end mean the coaching staff can implement more effective strategies to win on their end.

“Since there are nine matches going on in one dual, it’s not like we focus on one unit. In tennis, we kind of know the main players and how our players should play them, but we also have a generic game plan as well. It’s up to us coaches to modify that for each of the nine matches,” Cunliff said. “The better our players are, the more detailed we can get as coaches.”

Fall Roundup: Aug. 22 - Aug. 27

Park Hill South Softball
.... went 3-2 in their season opening tournament last weekend in Joplin. They were able to score victories against Bartlesville (9-3) and Neosho twice (12-11, 7-5). They were beaten by McDonald County (2-0) and Carl Junction (5-2). Coach Josh Walker's team was able to make contact and hit the ball pretty well with an overall batting average over .330, but Walker said his teams fielding was an area which needed to improve on. They'll play at Raytown and Winnetonka this week.
 
Park Hill Girls Tennis
The Park Hill girls tennis team started the season off with a 6-3 victory of Liberty last week. Led by top player Suzanne Barth, the number one Lady Trojan in singles defeated Kristen Filardo with an impressive 10-2 before teaming up with doubles partner Anna Karasiewicz to beat Filardo and Cassidy Paul 10-4. They were unable to maintain the hot start against Pembroke Hill as they suffered an 8-1 loss in a poor performance for Park Hill. Barth was able to edge out Pembroke's McCray 10-8 in the top doubles matchup, but McCray was able to exact revenge in doubles when she and teammate Czerwinski downed Barth and Karasiewicz 10-4. They'll host St. Theresa's Academy Thursday in their only scheduled match of the week.

Park Hill Girls Golf
Park Hill girls golf saw high quality results in their first week of the 2011 season. Placing sixth at the Liberty Invitational, Anna Kloeppel and Adrianna Elliott tie for 16th place while Bailey Warlen just a few places behind in 23rd. They capped off their week with a 51 stroke win over Platte County when they shot a team score of 193 compared to the Pirates 244. Adrianna Elliott led Park Hill with a score of 45. They play at Staley followed by a match at Winnetonka and Oak Park this week.

Park Hill South Girls Tennis
Lady Panthers tennis began their season with a 7-2 win over Blue Springs. Top singles player Adele Royle defeated the Wildcats top player with a quick 8-0 victory. Marie Gehrke followed it up with an 8-3 win over Blue Springs number two player. Royle and Gehrke reaffirmed their solid play with an 8-0 victory in their doubles match. They host Liberty and Oak Park in separate matches this week.

Park Hill South Girls Golf
Park Hill South placed third in the large field of 23 teams at the Liberty Invitational last week. Junior Lindsey Gile placed fifth while senior Kelli Mulligan placed ninth out of 89 players. Later in the week they defeated St. Joe Central with a team score of 207 to Central's 220. Gile was a medalist with a score of 46 just eight over par.

GIRLS TENNIS PREVIEW: Park Hill South's expecations remain the same, despite rebuilding

Park Hill South had a breakout season last year. After going 14-2, winning the conference title, and not even losing a match in the district tournament, the Panthers advancing to the state sectionals before falling to Park Hill by a score of 5-3. They also saw senior Michelle Royle take third place at state in the singles bracket.

“We did well, finished pretty well as a team, had a girl finish 3rd at state, so we had both team and individual success,” assistant coach Ian Cunliff said. “The hard part for this season is going to be trying to fill the void that those seniors left.”

With a new season upon them, the Panthers will rely heavily on returning varsity players Marie Gehrke and Samantha Burford to lead the way towards another winning season. Joining them will be juniors Emily Jackson, Lindsay Plattner, and Katie Smith. Coming straight into the varsity lineup as a freshman will be Adele Royle who will be right in the mix with her upperclassmen teammates.

Once again this year, South will have their sights set on rival Park Hill who dealt them their only regular season loss last year and brought an early end to their playoff run through the Missouri state tournament. They feel confident in their ability to defend their conference title and will compete strongly in the district tournament. Telling competitions for South will be matches against Liberty and St. Theresa’s as well as the Winnetonka and Northland Tournaments. As the Panther program has grown by size and reputation over the last several years, they hope 2011 is the year where they prove they can reload by taking it to the next level.