Behind Bennett Stirtz’s rise is a coach father and a track-athlete mother who shaped his game and endurance.
Bennett Stirtz, born October 3, 2003, in Liberty, Missouri, is a senior guard for the Iowa Hawkeyes of the Big Ten Conference.
He previously played at Northwest Missouri State and Drake, and his path – from a Division II program with zero Division I offers out of high school to a projected first-round NBA Draft pick – is one of the better stories in recent college basketball.
He stands 6 feet 4 inches and weighs 190 pounds, averaging 19.9 points, 4.4 assists, and 2.6 rebounds per game in 2025-26.
He is the third of four sons born to Roger and Renee Stirtz, and both parents played college sports.
That detail isn’t just biographical color. It’s basically the blueprint for everything Bennett has become.
Roger and Renee Stirtz: Two Athletes Who Raised Four Sons Built for Competition
Roger Stirtz played Division II basketball at Emporia State University in Kansas before returning to Liberty to coach. He spent 28 years in the Liberty school system – the last 23 as head coach of the Liberty High School varsity boys basketball team.
That’s the same program Bennett played in. Roger didn’t just coach his son. He coached him through a state runner-up season in 2021, watched him make the All-State team twice, and knew before anyone else that the kid who barely cracked Division I recruiting radars was something rare.
His career record at Liberty was 435 wins and 202 losses, with eight conference championships, 11 district titles, four Final Four appearances, and a state championship in 2001.
He won the Paul Lambert Award – given to the Kansas City metro area’s top high school boys basketball coach – twice, in 2002-03 and again in 2020-21. In 2023, he was inducted into the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Roger Stirtz wasn’t just Bennett’s dad at the gym.
He was one of the best high school coaches in the state of Missouri.
What Roger instilled wasn’t primarily skill. It was awareness. From youth basketball through high school, Bennett had a habit of reading the game two passes before everyone else – and Roger noticed that before anything else about his son’s ability stood out.
“He would never, ever be the high scorer, He would always distribute. His goal would be, ‘Hey, how many assists can I get?'”
Roger Stirtz
He also started his son’s 5:30 a.m. gym sessions during Bennett’s sophomore year of high school – a routine that took some early convincing.
“Success breeds success,” Roger said. Once the results started showing, the motivation became internal. It’s been that way ever since.
Renee Stirtz ran track and field at Kansas State University. She doesn’t appear in interviews as often as Roger, but her contribution to Bennett’s game is something Bennett himself talks about plainly.
Ask him where his endurance comes from – the kind that makes him the NCAA leader in minutes played per game in 2024-25 at 39 minutes and 20 seconds – and he points to his mom.
“I’m grateful for many people who have been involved in this process,” Iowa’s feature on Bennett’s endurance noted, with Renee directly credited for passing down the smoother running stride and natural conditioning base that sets him apart from most guards his size.
Roger, for his part, stopped playing pickup basketball around age 40 because of the pounding on his knees. He switched to cycling and has since completed a 206-mile gravel race and ridden the entire RAGBRAI route across Iowa – over 430 miles. He still rides at 5 a.m. multiple times a week. The Stirtzes don’t really do sedentary.
Four Sons, One Household, and Family Vacations No One Would Call Restful
Bennett is the third of four boys. His older brothers are Mason and Caden. His younger brother is Cooper. All four grew up in the same house in Liberty, competing against each other on the driveway before they were old enough to compete anywhere else.
Renee described the family’s vacation style directly: “Our vacations to a large majority of the population would not be considered restful. It’s how we relax, by being really active.”
Mason has tackled multiple Colorado ’14ers’ – peaks over 14,000 feet. Caden once completed the Grand Canyon’s rim-to-rim-to-rim trek, roughly 45 miles, in a single day. Cooper is described by his parents as being “part mountain goat” for his love of climbing.
Bennett is the only one of the six family members who suffers from severe altitude sickness, which means he’s also the only one who didn’t exactly shine on the mountain trips. He made up for it everywhere else.
In eighth grade, Bennett ran three 800-meter races in a single track meet and set a personal best in each one. His final time that day was 2 minutes and 12 seconds. That was also his last competitive race. He chose basketball.
Roger has since said his son “would have been an amazing 800-meter runner.” Bennett admits he regrets not running cross country and track in high school. But watching him play 40 minutes with the same energy in the fourth quarter as the first, you get the sense the conditioning showed up regardless.
Roger, at his MBCA Hall of Fame induction in 2023, thanked his family publicly. “I would like to thank my wife Renee of 31 years,” he said, “sons Mason, Caden, Bennett, and Cooper, and also my in-laws Ken and Mary Russell, who rarely missed a game.”
That last part lands differently when you know Roger spent 23 years coaching in the same building where his sons grew up playing.
Bennett has talked openly about his faith as a guiding force in his career decisions – including turning down more lucrative NIL deals to stay loyal to coach Ben McCollum through two transfers.
He credits daily Bible study and uses basketball, in his own words, as a platform “to give glory to Him.” His father describes him as exceptionally loyal and simple in how he makes choices.
That tracks with the player Iowa fans have watched all season – someone who hits game-winning free throws without blinking, who gave teammates career-highs instead of taking scoring records for himself as a kid, and who followed his coach from a Division II school to the Drake Bulldogs to the Iowa Hawkeyes without hesitation.
On February 8, 2026, Bennett scored a career-high 36 points against Northwestern, shooting 12 of 20 from the field, including 4 of 6 from three, and converting all 8 free throws.
Afterward, his dad made a point of letting him know who still held the family record – Roger’s 34-point game for Emporia State.
“My dad let me know because his career high was 34, and he let me know I didn’t beat it,”
Bennett
“So I’m gonna let him know right after this press conference. I’m gonna give it to him.” Roger’s record has since been erased. The Stirtz family record now belongs to Bennett.
Additional Information:
- Roger Stirtz won the Eddie Ryan Award in 2007, given annually to the Kansas City area’s top high school boys basketball coach, and was a five-time Gold Coach of the Year in the Kansas City region across his career at Liberty.
- Bennett has started 111 consecutive games across his college career at Northwest Missouri State, Drake, and Iowa – a streak that reflects the durability Renee’s track background helped build.
- At the 2023 MBCA Hall of Fame induction, Roger specifically credited his in-laws, Ken and Mary Russell – Renee’s parents – for attending nearly every game during his 28 years of coaching, a detail that says a lot about how tight the whole family has stayed around Bennett’s journey.
