Bates, Verhulst win 2020 DiRenna Awards as best high school basketball players in KC
.jpg "Tamar Bates, left, who has thus far starred at Piper High but will play his senior season at Florida’s IMG Academy, and Bishop Miege senior-to-be Payton Verhulst, who has verbally committed to Louisville, are the 2020 winners of Kansas City’s annual DiRenna Awards.")
Piper’s Tamar Bates and Bishop Miege’s Payton Verhulst have won the 2020 DiRenna Awards as the top high school basketball players in the Kansas City Metro.
The awards were bestowed this week via a virtual online show because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. They’re usually handed out at a banquet held in conjunction with the annual Greater Kansas City Basketball Coaches Association’s annual prep all-star games, which were canceled for 2020.
Bates, who just finished his junior year, has drawn interest from many colleges, including Kansas, Missouri and Kansas State. A 6-foot-4 combo guard ranked as the No. 94 player in the country in the recruiting class of 2021 by Rivals.com, he recently announced that he’s decided to leave Piper and attend IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, this fall.
He averaged 22.1 points, five rebounds, 4.1 assists and two steals during his junior season at Piper, which finished 22-1 before the state tournament was canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. A team captain, he shot 58%, 46% from three-point range, and was 88% from the free-throw line.
Bates also leaves Kansas as a Class 4A Player of the Year award-winner.
“I’ll definitely miss Piper,” Bates recently told The Star’s Gary Bedore. “Though this decision was nowhere near as easy as people may try to make it out to be, Piper showed me love and they’ll always have a special place in my heart.”
As for his future after IMG, Bates said, “I have a lot of options.”
Other finalists for the DiRenna boys award included senior Byron Alexander of Staley, sophomore Mark Mitchell of Bishop Miege, junior Reggie Morris of Grandview and senior Kian Scroggins of Raymore-Peculiar.
Verhulst, a senior-to-be at Bishop Miege, was a repeat DiRenna finalist who verbally committed to Louisville in April. She helped the Stags (21-2) to the Eastern Kansas League title, averaging 17.3 points per game, and was named this year’s Gatorade Girls Basketball Player of the Year for the state of Kansas.
But her exploits haven’t been limited to domestic soil. Last year Verhulst helped Team USA’s U16 national squad to the 2019 FIBA Americas U16 championship in Chile. Her team went undefeated through the tournament.
She comes from an athletic family of six kids, several of whom have played or are still playing college basketball — older sister Ashton Verhulst will play at Central Florida in 2020-21.
“I think it’s just something great for women’s basketball to have this type of recognition, along with men’s basketball too,” Verhulst told KC television station KSHB, “so I’m just glad that we get the kind of recognition we deserve.”
Other girls finalists for this year’s DiRenna Award included senior Paige Allen of Oak Park, senior Eylia Love of Olathe North, senior Olivia Nelson of Liberty and junior Kennedy Taylor of Shawnee Mission Northwest.
The DiRenna Award for boys players has been around since 1954. It was created by Kansas City physician James DiRenna Sr., and continues to be administered by his son, Dr. James DiRenna Jr., and the Greater Kansas City Basketball Coaches Association, or GKCBCA. The girls award was added in 1997.
Last year’s boys winner, Christian Braun of Blue Valley Northwest, now plays at Kansas alongside the 2018 DiRenna winner, Ochai Agbaji of Oak Park.
The 2019 girls DiRenna recipient is at KU, too: North Kansas City grad and two-time DiRenna honoree Chandler Prater will be a sophomore for the Jayhawks’ women’s team in 2020-21.
This story was originally published May 21, 2020 at 12:33 PM.