For the third consecutive fall, the Park Hill football team will have a new leader.
Park Hill South senior Drew Paulakovich played some quarterback last year before getting injured and will be back under center this fall.
Following Alan Wilmes’ departure from the historical 2021 season when he accepted a position to rebuild Blue Springs South, Benny Palmer came over from Winnetonka last year but resigned after the season ended. The Panthers have brought on Justin Poncy, who has been an offensive line coach at Park Hill since 2014, whose had an interesting journey back to the football field.
“I got my degree in business, so my first job was at Cerner and while I was working there, one of my high school teammates asked me to help him coach a youth football team,” Poncy said. “I truly fell in love with coaching and kind of being around the game again, so I left the business world, got into education and coaching and went back to get my degree in teaching.”
Poncy has the privilege of inheriting a program that has reached the Class 6 District 4 Championship each of the last two seasons, falling to Liberty North both times. Park Hill South won its opening 11 games in 2021 – which was a school record in consecutive victories – before going 6-6 a season ago.
“It’s been nice that the cupboards’ not bare, we have talent here, we have guys that have played in big games and have made deep postseason runs and all that kind of stuff. The starting from the ground up things that you worry about on day one, these guys already have a good understanding of what it takes to win,” Poncy said.
The 2022 senior class will be tough to replace, especially on the offense and in the rushing attack. Briggs Bartosh and Darrien Jones, who have since headed off to Navy and UNLV, leave a void to be filled in the running game.
“We have three pretty good juniors that we feel confident about and then we have a freshman running back that’s getting some reps on varsity as well. We have Tobi (Falubi) and Tommy (Lisenby) who were sophomores last year and were kind of stuck behind two workhorses,” Poncy said.
Drew Paulakovich was the week one starter under center in his junior campaign but had some injuries midway through last fall that kept him off the field. There was a quarterback battle going into 2023, and he won it.
“We knew we had Drew, a senior, Bryce Aldridge, a junior, and Braison Cockrill, who’s a sophomore, so I had one at each level. The first spring morning, I’ll never forget watching Drew drop back and the ball flew off out of his hand and I was like, yeah, this is going to be our guy,” Poncy said.
Kyle Dunaway is a veteran weapon to add to the versatile offense, who’s started the last couple of years, along with tight end Marcus Parker who committed to Navy earlier this summer. Sophomores Chance Taylor and Brock Flowers will fill out the receiving corps.
“I think we have experience where you want it and a little bit of inexperience where you can cover it up a little bit. That’s the benefit of those guys who may not have played but they’ve been in practice to late November,” Poncy said.
Park Hill South has a loaded defense, returning senior defensive end Kiros Martin who had 62 tackles, six sacks, one safety and a blocked field goal in 2022. He’s joined by junior Brock Harmon up front, while linebacker Kadin Sabree is coming off 51 tackles, seven TFLs and one sack in his junior campaign and the Panthers ‘secondary is deadly with seniors D’Ante Wells and Carter Strohm.
“Our defense I have a feeling is going to be pretty special; I think our secondary is going to be one of our strong points of the team that will be of out of a 3-3-5. Kiros has been phenomenal to coach, to be around and truly one of the biggest deep breaths when we went up to Northwest; it was awesome getting to watch all the other schools not be able to block him,” Poncy said.