Park Hill is quickly turning into one of the hottest teams in the Kansas City area.
The Trojans, once ranked when the season started, lost their first two games but ran their winning streak to three in a row on Friday, Sept. 21 when Ray-Pec visited Preston Field.
Park Hill upset the Class 6 No. 9-ranked Panthers, 34-14, posting a second straight win against a top-10 team. The week prior, the Trojans won 24-14 against Lee’s Summit North, then ranked No. 4 in Class 6.
The turnaround for the Trojans can be seen in a varsity defense that has allowed only three scores in the past eight quarters.
The offense continues to get better under Ryan Graves, who threw for three touchdowns and ran for another.
“We are getting it rolling, it is all preparation,” said Graves, who threw for 205 yards on 14 of 22 passing with a passer rating of 133.5 and ran for a team-high 97 yards. “I get more comfortable every week. This offense is starting to form a little bit and I like where it is headed. It is a big deal to put that stuff behind us and keep our eyes straight forward, even with these wins we will keep eyes straight forward and look at the opponent in front of us.”
The special teams set up the first score in Friday’s win as Darion Neal got through the line and blocked a punt by the Panthers (3-2), which gave the Trojans the ball at the 18-yard line. On the play prior, the Panthers used a fake punt to pick up a first down but an illegal man down field called the play back.
On 4th-and-goal from the 10, Graves called his own number and ran untouched into the end zone with 4 minutes, 47 seconds left to play.
A roughing the passer penalty kept Ray-Pec’s next drive alive but Gabe Sappington missed a 45-yard field goal.
With less than 8 minutes to go in the second quarter, Graves connected with Jaylin Noel for a 52-yard touchdown on the Trojans’ first play on the drive. Noel, a sophomore, had eight catches for 112 yards.
Up 12-0, Park Hill decided to go for two and Corey Bradford ran in the conversion to make it 14-0 with 7:14 to play.
Another drive for the Panthers stalled out and Graves engineered a five-play, 64-yard drive to push the lead to 21-0. Graves ran for 14-yard on a third-and-4 situation at midfield and at the Panthers’ 39, he hit Payton Stanfield for a touchdown with 4:49 to play in the second quarter.
An interception by Donovan Bustamante, as Ray-Pec was driving, gave the Trojans the ball at its own 16. A 16-play drive followed.
Graves ran for a pair of first down and Noel did on a jet sweep, while an offsides on Ray-Pec gave the Trojans another first down. Suppes caught a 19-yard pass, while Payton Stanfield had a 17-yard gain, moving the ball into the Ray-Pec red zone. Suppes then caught a 16-yard touchdown pass, making it 28-0 at the break.
Neither team scored in the third quarter, though Park Hill missed a field goal attempt from 26 yards away.
Ray-Pec had a drive started with 6 minutes to go in the third and capped with a score with 10 minutes to go in the game. The Panthers twice converted on fourth down to keep the drive alive and on 4th-and-goal from the 6, Grant Miller hit Je’Von Williams for a touchdown.
Park Hill put an exclamation point on the strong defensive effort when DaShaun Powell ran back an interception 30 yards for a score with 9:11 to play.
Ray-Pec scored on the Park Hill No. 2s with a little more than two minutes to play. That came on a drive that started at the 1-yard line thanks to a 55-yard punt by Kolby Heinerikson.
The varsity defense had four total turnovers, with Antonio McCullough and Peyton Sonsa recovering fumbles. Haden Wallace had 12 tackles and two tackles for losses while continuing to play with his right hand wrapped in a ‘club’ to protect it from a hand injury.
Wallace, in the top five in stats for tackles in Missouri on MaxPreps, noted the slow start was a blessing in a way.
“It shows it doesn’t matter how you start,” he said. “We aren’t finished yet, we got to keep on climbing. There are still things we need to fix even though we have been pretty good. The (two losses) was a big wakeup call. We thought we would be big dogs and I think it was good for us. The first halves were bad but we were in the second halves, 10 times better That is what helped us in Week 3, 4 and 5 and we will keep on marching.”
Without Air Force commit Ethan Smith in the lineup, Mikey Miles and Jameel Burns both stepped up with eight tackles each. Defensive lineman James Gore had seven tackles, three tackles for loss and one sack.
Perhaps the biggest thing the Trojans did was slow down Luke Grimm. One of the top receivers in the area, Grimm had an unofficial visit the next day to Iowa State – ironically Gore was there as well. Grimm had only two catches and had zero impact on offense, a far cry from last fall when he had 16 catches for 239 yards and two scores.
Looking ahead
The Trojans will aim for a fourth straight win when they travel to Fort Osage to play on Friday, Sept. 28 in a non-division game.
The two teams haven’t played in the regular season since 2010, though there has been two playoff showdowns between the two. In 2015, current K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson led the Indians to a 42-10 win over Park Hill on the way to the Class 5 state title. The year prior, Park Hill won 21-20 to secure a spot in the semifinals.
“It took us about two weeks to figure out who we are,” Josh Hood said. “And get through a couple thing, figure our personnel and what we can do. And we have stopped shooting ourselves in the foot the last three weeks. We have progressively gotten better. We have started off hot in the past, this year we wanted to make a concerted effort to ascend every week and we feel like we have been in ascending mode. We feel like we got better this year and we feel like we can get better next week.”