Jason Lawrence
Special to the Citizen
Anthony Hall found himself in a zone Friday night.
From the moment he first touched the ball at the 7:52 mark of the first quarter until throwing his final pass of the night with 8:47 to play, the Park Hill senior quarterback could do no wrong on his way to a career night that easily ranks among his best ever.
“No. 1,” Hall said of where Friday night’s 45-17 win over Lee’s Summit (2-3) sits among all the games he’s played. “No. 1, by far.”
There’s not much arguing with him after he completed 22 of 32 passes for 395 yards and six touchdowns, which equaled his season total coming into the Week 5 matchup.
“He did a lot of great work in preparing,” Park Hill head coach Josh Hood said of his quarterback. “There were some details that he’d been missing the first several weeks of the year that we kind of let slide. He did a wonderful job over the course of the last week to week-and-a-half of fixing those details and really paying attention to them. You saw it tonight. He had a great game and you could really tell the confidence he’s starting to exude.”
For the first time this season, Hall and the Trojans were also able to play in front of some of their peers, with seniors allowed to attend the Homecoming game, albeit with heightened social distancing requirements, mask enforcement and contact tracing measures in both the bleachers and on the field.
“Our administration did an outstanding job of making the concern for Homecoming tonight about the kids that go to Park Hill High School,” Hood said. “We didn’t have a lot, but they allowed the seniors here. I thought it was wonderful. The kids got an opportunity to see a game; what a great game for them to see. Kudos to our administration for allowing this to happen.”
After the Trojan defense stiffened to force a punt on the game’s opening drive, Hall quickly went to work, looking to senior receiver Jaylin Noel for 22 yards on the first play from scrimmage then connecting again on a short push pass that Noel took 38 yards around the right edge to the end zone for an early 7-0 lead.
“We’ve been preaching all week: start first, start first, start first to get better in the first quarter and have energy,” Hall said. “Instead of having energy at 6 o’clock in warmups, we came with it at 7 o’clock and it showed.”
After a three-and-out by Lee’s Summit, senior kicker Grant Pella capped a short drive with a 24-yard field goal to give the Trojans a 10-0 advantage near the end of the first quarter.
“Our No. 1 thing was to win the first quarter,” Hood said. “I thought we’d spent four weeks maybe feeling teams out in the first quarter and it didn’t do us much service. We decided we were going to come out and make a point to win the first quarter. The kids understood that we weren’t trying to feel people out, we were trying to go make plays the first series or two.”
On their first drive of the second quarter, Park Hill marched 68 yards on nine plays, the final one an 8-yard touchdown pass from Hall to junior tight end Jake Powell, who finished with 87 yards on five catches. Two drives later, the Tigers got on the scoreboard on a 40-yard field goal from Troy Huffman.
Hall and the Trojans immediately responded. Following a 33-yard connection from the senior signal caller to his No. 1 receiver, Noel, Powell caught a pass that was tipped by a defender then raced 47 yards to paydirt to extend the lead just 26 seconds after getting possession, and set a new season-high in points scored for the home team.
“We had a couple mismatches we thought we could take advantage of and I thought the kids did a good job of that,” Hood said. “That kind of allows for the big play and we’ve run the ball pretty well the last couple weeks, so I think that opened up some things in the passing game, got the safeties up close and we were able to get behind them.”
Lee’s Summit trimmed the deficit to 24-10 with just 11 seconds remaining in the half. A 46-yard pass from Tommy Lock to Niseme Brewer moved the Tigers into the red zone then two plays later Jaylen Johnson punched it in from 5 yards out.
Both defenses buckled down to start the second half with neither team scoring on either of its first two drives. However, Park Hill broke through twice in the last 3:10 on just six total plays. Taking over after a three-and-out, Hall found junior PJ Caldwell who had six catches for 114 yards, running wide open down the seam for a 59-yard score; then, after a turnover on downs by the Tigers at Park Hill’s 36-yard line, Noel capped the five-play, 64-yard drive with a 41-yard catch and run to extend the lead to 38-10. The Iowa State-commit finished the night with 10 catches for 183 yards.
“I know I throw it to him (Jaylin) a lot because he’s a ‘dude,’ but we have so many dudes that it opens up for us,” Hall said. “Eighty-seven Jake Powell, 12 (Caldwell), 1 (Sammy Hall) and 3 (James Noel), all those guys, they’re all dudes that I can get the ball to.”
Another turnover on downs by Lee’s Summit – on senior linebacker Presley Cathcart’s third sack of the night – led to Hall’s sixth and final touchdown pass, a 10-yard strike to Powell, who drug a pair of Tiger defenders to just break the goal line, for his third touchdown of the night, and fifth in the last two weeks
Lock orchestrated a 13-play, 80-yard drive, capped by a 6-yard touchdown run by Devin Andrews, to cut the score to the final margin with 1:33 to play.
Park Hill (2-3, 1-2 Suburban Gold Conference) now turns its attention to Liberty North (2-3, 1-2 Suburban Gold), which defeated Park Hill 24-3 last season in Liberty and is coming off a 42-7 win over Blue Springs last week. Quarterback Joe Kroenke completed 9 of 10 passes for 169 yards and four scores while Zac Willingham-Davis ran for 132 yards and a touchdown on seven carries to pace the Eagles’ attack.
“They’re going to pound the ball,” Hood said of Liberty North. “They’ve got a great quarterback that’s pretty dynamic. We’ve got to do a good job of not letting kids behind us and shutting down their run game. We just have to do a good job of simulating that in practice this week and do the best we can to take advantage of anything that they give us.”
Kickoff is slated for 7 p.m. Friday night at Preston Field.