Who is No. 1?
It’s official: The Mill Valley Jaguars are the 2003-04 Kaw Valley League champions.
Mill Valley has been crowned this year’s top KVL athletics department.
¢ Schools were awarded points for each sport they had a team.
¢ League winners earned 10 points, while second place earned nine points and so on.
¢ If teams tied for a place, they each received that point total and the next team received fewer points. For instance. If two teams tied for first, each received 10 points. The next team, which would place third because two spots were taken, would score eight.
With six league titles, MVHS clearly was the overall best program.
Through a scoring system that tallies points based on a team’s league finish in all sports, Mill Valley clinched the first edition of The Mirror’s All-sports Team of the Year.
MVHS tallied 113 points, outlasting Tonganoxie and Lansing, which each accumulated 90.
Mill Valley was a juggernaut in most sports. In 13 sports, MVHS won eight league titles. From there, the Jaguars finished third once, fourth twice, fifth once and sixth once. The school’s best season was spring when Jaguar teams won four of five titles — baseball, softball, girls track and golf.
Tonganoxie, meanwhile, had three league titles — football, girls basketball and boys track. The team earned a second-place finish in boys cross country and third in volleyball.
Lansing had just one league title with girls cross country, but the Lions also had three second-place finishes and three third-place finishes.
De Soto came in a close fourth with 88. Just more than five years ago, DHS was the only school in the USD 232, but with the population growth into Shawnee, the district added another high school. Mill Valley was born and the Jaguars steadily have become a powerhouse in the KVL.
De Soto, meanwhile, will leave its district rival and head for the Frontier League in the fall.
Big schools rule
The larger the school, the better they are. That’s not always the case, but this year that’s been the trend of the KVL.
For football, teams are divided into the large-school division and small-school division.
These schools, Basehor-Linwood, Bonner Springs, Tonganoxie and Lansing, are in the larger division. De Soto, Immaculata, Perry-Lecompton, Piper and Santa Fe Trail are in the smaller division.
With that in mind, four of the top five schools in the overall league standings are large schools. Basehor-Linwood bucked the trend, finishing eighth in the 10-team league.
Mill Valley –surprise — had the most students in grades 10th through 12th for the 2003-04 school year with 554. Bonner Springs, the KVL’s other 5A school, had 509.
Last-place Perry-Lecompton was the smallest 4A school with 259, while 2A Immaculata had 127. The Raiders finished the all-sport race in ninth.
In fairness to the smaller schools, however, the tally favors schools that produce more teams. Mill Valley, for instance, has full teams in all 13 sports.
Immaculata, meanwhile, fielded full teams in just eight sports. Other teams not carrying the full 13-sport rosters were Piper and Basehor-Linwood (12 each) and Santa Fe Trail and Perry-Lecompton (11 each).
On to state
Although no Kaw Valley teams won state titles in 2003-04, the league had several state appearances.
The KVL had three teams reach state tournaments in volleyball as Mill Valley advanced in 5A, Lansing in 4A and Immaculata in 2A.
In boys basketball, Immaculata advanced to the state basketball tournament for the second consecutive year, while the Santa Fe Trail baseball team tied for third at state. The Lansing softball team also registered a third-place state finish in 4A.
De Soto boys soccer was the most successful league team. The Wildcats finished second in the 4-1A state tournament.