FOUR AREA BASEBALL PLAYERS HEAD WEST

Four of the area's best baseball players from this last high school baseball season will be attending the same college.

Notre Dame's John O'Rourke and Todd Friend and Kelly's Justin Simpher and Jon Heuring will all be playing at Maplewood Community College in Kansas City next year.

"All of them are pretty good friends and are playing together on the Chaffee Legion team," Kelly coach Mike Scott said. "The thing with the kids, is that no one wanted to go to Kansas City by themselves. I think this gives them the opportunity to at least have some people there they'll be familiar with.

"Maplewood is a very good team; at one time this year they were ranked 11th in the nation."

Maplewood has an excellent reputation, Scott said, at sending players to four-year schools.

Maplewood has been getting a lot of attention lately. It was the school where St. Louis Cardinal rookie sensation Albert Pujols attended.

Simpher and Heuring composed Kelly's battery this season. Simpher, a pitcher, went 6-3 with a 2.63 earned-run average this season. His final ERA was inflated after a couple of poor outings late in the season. He ended up striking out 101.

Heuring hit five home runs and knocked in 28 runs. Defensively, he threw out 25 runners.

O'Rourke, a shortstop, and Friend, a center fielder, helped Notre Dame to a 17-7 season. O'Rourke batted a team-high .462, while Friend hit .328 with three homers and 16 RBIs.

Other recent signees include Chaffee's G.P. Glueck and Jeremy Lynn to Shawnee Community College; and Cape Central's Dusty Barrows to Meramec Community College.

Meadow Heights hires new basketball coach

Meadow Heights has announced that Tom Brown will be the next basketball coach, replacing Jerry Tucker, who will remain the Meadow Heights athletic director and baseball coach.

Brown has more than 15 years experience as a teacher and head basketball coach.

For the past five years, Brown has been the head coach at Viburnum. He was also the head basketball coach at Marquand for eight years.

"We had an opening for an elementary physical education instructor and assistant basketball coach," Tucker said. "When we received his application, it only made sense to see if he would be interested in becoming the head basketball coach. This is really going to be a plus for the students."

Meadow Heights Superintendent Duane Schindler said Tucker would like to expand the sports offered by the school and being lifted of the head coaching duties will allow him time to develop additional programs.