The story behind how this Bishop Miege star made the Team USA under-16 national squad

Payton Verhulst is open about it all. She’s a picky eater. She’s taken Spanish classes, but she doesn’t speak the language. She’s never traveled outside the United States.

Bishop Miege’s star junior-to-be, who helped the Stags to an undefeated 2018-19 girls basketball season that ended in a Kansas Class 4A state title, has a little more than a week to get ready to prepare to face all that inexperience.

She’s one of 12 players on Team USA’s U16 National Team, whose roster was announced on May 30, and the club will travel to Puerto Aysén, Chile, from June 16-22 for the 2019 FIBA Americas U16 Championship.

The good news for Verhulst: It was all part of the plan.

“They told us ahead of time that’s where we would go if we made the team,” Verhulst said. “Knowing that while I was trying out, I was like, ‘I mean, I’m playing the sport I love, and I get to do something that I’ve wanted to do my entire life.’ It’s a plus on top of basketball.”

For Verhulst, it’s the reward for securing the latest accolade in her blossoming basketball career.

The process was simple, but challenging.

It went like so: Verhulst received her invitation for the trials — tryouts, in other words — on March 8. She sent in an application to compete at trials; then, by April 15, the team committee confirmed her selection.

The trials, Verhulst said, were another beast. They took place May 23-27 at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where the pool of competitors was trimmed from 152, to 42, to 18 and finally down to 12.

Players began the early stages with traditional drills and skill work, showing off fundamentals to coaches, but when cuts started to roll in, they scrimmaged for most of the day.

In the early stages of cuts, Verhulst and the players through to the next round were notified by a sheet of paper with their names printed on it. Then, as the group of competitors shrunk to 18, National Federation of State High School Associations representative Jill Schneider gathered the players and announced the names of those who had made the final rounds.

At that point, Verhulst said she was confident. She had played well, and because she had made it so far already, she figured she stood a fair chance of advancing.

Then she realized something: The announcements were made alphabetically, and her last name starts with a V.

“I was always the last one,” Verhulst said with a laugh. “It was the people around me who were nervous, so I was like, ‘Maybe I should be nervous.’”

As it turned out, she had no reason to be. She survived each round of cuts, including the final one, when she was called into an office with Schneider and team head coach Mark Campbell, who informed her that she had made the team.

That, actually, was when Verhulst experienced the least nerves.

“The couple sessions before we got up to that moment, I had played really well,” Verhulst said. “I felt really confident in how I played. I was just like, ‘Whatever is going to happen is going to happen.’ I trusted the process.’”

Since then, Verhulst has been working out with Miege, her high school club. That’s what most of June is for. In fact, the day after the Team USA trials ended and Verhulst made the team, she traveled back to Roeland Park for practice.

“She was one of the kids again,” Bishop Miege coach Terry English said. “Not acting like a big shot, just right there, encouraging all the kids who were there and all the new kids that are out. That just tells you what kind of kid she is, right there.

“A lot of kids would have taken a couple days off, and I wouldn’t have blamed her if she wouldn’t have shown up. I probably would have told her, ‘Get some rest, and get yourself ready. Don’t worry about anything here right now.’ But she was there.”

Verhulst is on the map. College scouts came to Miege’s games last season — even practices, English said — to watch the class of 2021 star. Almost every school in the country has shown interest and offered her a scholarship, according to Verhulst, save for two: UConn and Notre Dame.

Those are the only schools she hasn’t heard from. She’ll have her pick otherwise. Verhulst said she’s “keeping an open door” at the moment, but when the summer comes to a close, she plans on narrowing down the list of schools she wants to pursue.

For now, though, as the summer continues, Verhulst will play for her club team, Next Level Eclipse. The team will compete in tournaments later in July, and while she isn’t sure where this year’s will be, the squad has previously played in tournaments in Chicago and Indianapolis, among other cities.

When June 16 arrives, though, those won’t be the farthest places Verhulst has traveled for basketball.

Next stop for Verhulst: South America.

“I’ve tried to learn a little bit,” she said of Chile. “I’ve tried to figure out what kind of food they have. Just kind of doing it for more of a personal decision.”