Baniewicz name removed from baseball field at Maur Hill Mount Academy after Archdiocese ban

ATCHISON, Kan. — KSHB 41 News anchor/I-Team reporter Sarah Plake covers a wide range of story topics. Have a tip? Send Sarah an email.

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Over the last few years, KSHB 41's Sarah Plake has done extensive reporting on Phil Baniewicz’s hiring and firing at Bishop Miege High School, and, more recently, his ban from the Archdiocese.

We’re still seeing the aftereffects in the places he worked before.
 
The sign on the scoreboard at Maur Hill Mount Academy’s baseball field used to say “Baniewicz Field,” named after Baniewicz, who served as the Catholic boarding school's president and baseball coach.

Former MHMA student

He’s also the former president at Bishop Miege in Roeland Park, who was recently fired and banned from the Archdiocese due to inappropriate behavior with minors.

Now, the sign at Maur Hill sits empty after the school board recently decided to remove his name. What they’re renaming it is still unknown.

KSHB

"I'm glad that they came to this conclusion. I'm happy to hear that it's down," Taylor Kelsey, a former Maur Hill student, told KSHB 41.

Kelsey was one of those calling for the school to remove the name.
 
"I feel so much closure," Kelsey said. "A lot of validation because it would have been easier for me to just let it go. But I tried to let it go, and it was eating away at me inside on the potential for more damage that could be done."
 
Kelsey has been vocal about her experience at the school, reporting Baniewicz’s inappropriate behavior. 

She reached out to KSHB 41 in 2023, when we reported on his hiring at Bishop Miege and the community’s concern when his previous child sexual abuse allegations from Arizona resurfaced.
 
Parker Valdez, another former student who reported Baniewicz’s behavior, was also relentless in her calls for change.
 
"I have no intention of letting up on that goal of keeping children safe and advocating for change and accountability," Valdez said in a recent interview with KSHB 41.
 
As we’ve reported, Baniewicz was fired from Miege in 2025. In August, after a lengthy investigation into 16 allegations of inappropriate behavior with minors spanning 40 years, Baniewicz was banned from working in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas.
 
Maur Hill’s school board would not tell KSHB 41's Sarah Plake anything about the decision to remove Baniewicz’s name or provide any documents from its board meetings.

"That is the subject of board deliberations which are bound by Confidentiality Agreements," Dan Pombo, board chairman, said in an email. "We cannot comment at this time."

Nothing on the school's website or social media accounts shows it announced the renaming.

"I would have liked to have seen or heard even just a sentence put out there recognizing it, because so much of this work is done quietly," Kelsey said. "School funds went to building that sign. School funds went to putting it up, and school employees were paid to take it down. It costs money for them to have been wrong, and it costs heartache."

Maur Hill named the baseball field after Baniewicz in 2022.

According to an article in The Leaven, the Archdiocese's official newspaper, Baniewicz went 133-77 as Maur Hill's baseball coach.

Baniewicz served as president of Maur Hill from 2010 to 2023. Before that, he worked at Benedictine College in Atchison.

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