With winter sports under way, new teams and new standouts are ready to step into the spotlight. Basketball, wrestling and hockey are all looking for greater success.
As a club sport, the hockey season starts earlier than the other winter sports. Rockhurst remains winless on the young season.
They lost multiple talented players from the 2024 class, including Mike Torlina, Hayden Holmes and Tracey Jarvis. However, one bright spot on the team is senior forward Jonathan Greco, who is among the team leaders in goals and points.
“We’ve lost 12 seniors and have a young team that is new to high school hockey,” Greco said. “Having patience and proper leadership to lead the underclassmen will definitely be necessary to improve.”
Rockhurst has 14 games left to go in their season with their next on Saturday against the KC Stars.
“We can compete and will compete against anyone, especially our rivals the Wichita Thunder and Creighton Prep,” Greco said.
A year after coming up short, Rockhurst basketball broke through in 2023-2024 and won their district, beating Lee’s Summit West in double overtime. They fell to Central (Springfield) in the first round of the state tournament, but advanced that far for the first time in six years. Their 20-8 finish was their best record since 2018-2019.
Expectations are really high with a good amount of experience returning, including a strong junior class led by Max Moylan, Cohen Robinson and Kevin Sullivan, all of whom received significant minutes last year.
However, 6-foot-7 senior Callen Eskew is the breakout candidate on the roster, as he’s supposedly made strides in the offseason. Last year, Eskew averaged 6 points and 2 rebounds, but with work put in over the summer, RedTapez, a KC basketball news Instagram account, labeled him “the most underrated player in the city.”
“I prepared in the off-season by not having a day where I’m not training,” Eskew said.
He will need to elevate his game in more ways than just his rim-rocking dunks for Rockhurst to achieve even greater heights this season, though, as the team will need to replace some significant production from last year’s seniors, including points-per-game leader Brady Maher, point guard Luke Johnson and big man Andrew Sprague.
After spending the summer playing club and AAU ball, along with senior George Effertz, Eskew looks to have his role increased this season on and off the court.
“I strive to be someone that people on the team look up to and work towards,” Eskew said. “I’ll be a shot-blocker, a scorer, sound defender, and a high-flier… and maybe catch a couple bodies.”
Rockhurst kicks off the season Dec. 3 with a district championship rematch against Lee Summit West. They’ll face a challenging schedule that includes three different tournaments, one of which will be in New Orleans over Christmas break.
“You can expect our team to be great,” Eskew said. “We have played together a lot and we understand each other’s skills and assets.
“I believe that this team has what it takes to become state champs.”
Wrestlers often refer to their sport as a “quit” sport rather than a cut sport. Unlike some other sports, there aren’t any roster cuts in wrestling, which means the only way off the squad is to quit. At Rockhurst, typically, several athletes quit within the first couple of weeks, which means the wrestling team is often smaller relative to other sports at Rockhurst.
This year, however, many freshmen came out on Day 1, along with most of last year’s varsity squad.
While the team didn’t find much success last year, it had more to do with the size of the varsity group rather than the quality of the wrestlers. Head coach Rich Wikiera believes wrestlers should earn their way to varsity, even if it means the team loses competitions on technicalities.
Rockhurst only lost two seniors from the varsity team last year, Robert Purcell and Bobby Clemons. However, these losses were significant, with Purcell making it to the third round of state last year, and Clemons being a consistent winner and leader.
This year, senior Anthony Totta will be the cornerstone of the team. He wrestled to a 39-11 record last year and made it to the second round of state. He will compete at 175 pounds again this year.
“Only difference is I’m much bigger and stronger,” Totta said.
After last season, he traveled around the country to participate in high-level clinics and compete in national tournaments. Among his achievements, he placed first in his weight class at the Kumite Greco Championship in June and third in the Ultimate Freestyle Wrestling Tournament, two prestigious Missouri tournaments.
Totta says he has greatly improved since last season and is ready to be a team leader in this, his senior swan song.
“My goal is to win state,” he said. “I can achieve that if I keep working as hard as I am on and off the mat.”
