{"id":661173,"date":"2026-05-10T04:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T04:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/661173\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T04:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T04:48:12","slug":"south-ripley-senior-who-honors-lauren-hill-to-continue-basketball-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/661173\/","title":{"rendered":"South Ripley senior who honors Lauren Hill to continue basketball career"},"content":{"rendered":"

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(VERSAILLES, Ind.) \u2013 A South Ripley senior who has paid homage to Lawrenceburg graduate Lauren Hill will continue her basketball career in college!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kaiya Rinear scored more than 1,000 points as a Raider and did so while wearing #22<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She picked that number to honor the former Mount St. Joseph basketball player who was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lauren inspired people around the world with her \u2018Never Give Up\u2019 attitude and brought global attention and fundraising to the disease known as DIPG.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kaiya was just 7-years-old when Lauren battled the terminal disease and had no connections to the family.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After watching a documentary, Kaiya was convinced that Lauren\u2019s story was far from over and decided she would wear that signature #22<\/a> for as long as she could.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough I never got to meet her, she is a very special young woman and just her love for the game of basketball has inspired me a lot,\u201d Rinear told The 812.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Kaiya had a dream of playing college basketball herself. And that came true this week!<\/p>\n

Rinear made it official by signing with Indiana Wesleyan University during a ceremony with her family, teammates and coaches.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kaiya also plans to pursue a career in occupational therapy because she loves working with children.<\/p>\n

RELATED: Lauren Hill\u2019s dad heard about Kaiya\u2019s tribute and surprised her during a game this past December. Watch that story here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(VERSAILLES, Ind.) \u2013 A South Ripley senior who has paid homage to Lawrenceburg graduate Lauren Hill will continue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661174,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-661173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}