With three district titles in the last four years, postseason success has become an anomaly for the Park Hill boys’ soccer team that was a late goal away from back-to-back trips to the Class 4 State Semifinals last season.
Park Hill’s Ethan Howell was a starter last fall when the Trojans went to the Class 4 State Semifinals.
After advancing to the Final Four the year prior, the Trojans made it to the state quarterfinals in 2021 where they coughed up a late goal in a scoreless contest to fall to Rockhurst. Park Hill aims to use success in recent memory to continue the dominance in 2022.
“This senior class has worked hard to build something special these last couple of years,” Park Hill head soccer coach Josh Marchbank said. “They all bought into each other and worked their tails off to achieve postseason success. They’ve got a taste of that success and I’m certain they’ll be ready to fight for it again.”
The Trojans have a loaded senior class, with seven total: James Betz, Daniel Lynn, Lucas Hrisak, Gabe Athie, Chandler Henshaw, Nathan Keterew and Scotty Robertson. Betz, Lynn and Robertson were all starters last fall.
“We’ve just been trying to emphasize that the last two successful seasons weren’t because we had some incredibly talented teams. While we did have talent, that success came from having a blue-collar mentality and outworking our opponents,” Marchbank said.
Braedon Nichols, Tanner Poirier, Caden Duarte, Daiggen Gaar and Ethan Howell will add experience to this year’s squad after being regular starters in 2021. The Trojans have a lot of mouths to feed on offense as there will likely be a variety of goal scorers this fall.
“I think our goals are going to come from a lot of different places. We have a lot of really dynamic players in the attack that have quite a bit of varsity experience,” Marchbank said.
After knee injuries limited his time on the field during his sophomore and junior campaigns, Hrisak is set to finally return to action. He’s one of the numerous Trojans who has potential to find the back of the net throughout the year.
“Lucas (Hrisak) is a natural goal scorer that is eager to finally get some games under his belt. I think he and Luka Andonovski could be a dangerous combination for other teams to handle since they’re both very clever players that understand the game at a deep level,” Marchbank said.