KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The Mid-America Intercollegiate Athletics Association announced its winners of the 2024-25 Ken B. Jones Award at the 2025 MIAA Awards Celebration Ceremony on Monday, June 2 in Kansas City. Tyler Kahmann of Emporia State University and Katie DeGarmo of Fort Hays State University took home the Association’s highest honor, being named the male and female student-athletes of the 2024-25 academic year.
 
Tyler Kahmann and Katie DeGarmo heard their names called on stage at the 2025 MIAA Awards Celebration, hosted Monday night (June 2) inside Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum Auditorium. The Ken B. Jones Award presented by Summit Pointe Financial Group recognizes the Association’s top male and female student-athletes each academic year.
 
Biographies on this year’s Ken B. Jones Award recipients are below. To view the ten MIAA student-athletes named finalists for the 2024-25 Ken B. Jones finalists, click here.
 
For more information on the Association’s Ken B. Jones Award presented by Summit Pointe Financial Group, visit theMIAA.com/KenBJones.
 
2024-2025 MIAA MALE STUDENT-ATHLETE OF THE YEAR:
Tyler Kahmann – Emporia State Football
Tyler Kahmann is the fourth Emporia State student-athlete to be crowned the Association's Male Student-Athlete of the Year and first since the 2019-20 academic year. Kahmann was a consensus First Team All-American wide receiver in the 2024 football season. Along with being a unanimous First Team All-MIAA selection, Kahmann earned All-American honors from the Walter Camp Foundation, American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), Division II Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA), Associated Press and the Don Hansen Football Gazette. He was also named an Elite 100 selection by D2Football.com.
 
Kahmann, a 6’3” receiver from Haysville, Kan., was the only player in any level of college football (Junior College, NAIA, DIII, DII, DI, FCS or FBS) with at least 100 receptions, 20 touchdowns and 1,000 receiving yards. He led the nation in touchdown catches, receptions per game and receiving yards per game. He led the MIAA and ranked fourth in the nation in scoring, set an MIAA single-game record with 296 receiving yards against Nebraska Kearney, and set an MIAA career record with 54 touchdowns in his career. He also set virtually every Emporia State football receiving record with five touchdown catches in a game, 20 touchdowns in a season and 54 in his career. Kahmann was the only MIAA male student-athlete to be named a consensus First Team All-American in their sport and a First Team Academic All-American by the College Sports Communicators (CSC). Kahmann recently signed as a Priority Undrafted Free Agent with the Indianapolis Colts.
 
Off the field, Kahmann graduated Magna Cume Laude with his bachelor’s degree in business in 2023 and just recently graduated with his MBA in May before going to Indianapolis for the Colts’ minicamp. He was named a First Team Academic All-American as a senior in 2024 after earning Second Team honors in 2023. He’s also a three-time MIAA Scholar-Athlete and a four-time member of the Association’s Academic Honor Roll.
 
Also an active student-athlete on campus and in the community, Kahmann volunteered his time with various events and organizations. He assisted with the Kansas Special Olympics Polar Plunge, helped out with the Laps 4 Landon event for Cystic Fibrosis awareness, and helped set up special event testing at Olpe Grade School recess. He also actively participated in High Five Fridays at various Emporia USD 253 elementary schools and volunteered for the Dynamic Discs Open disc golf event, a softball charity event for the Emporia Recreation Center, and helped out with high school powerlifting meets at Basehor -Linwood High School and various Emporia State track and field meets.
 
 
2024-2025 MIAA FEMALE STUDENT-ATHLETE OF THE YEAR:
Katie DeGarmo – Fort Hays State Basketball
Katie DeGarmo, formerly Katie Wagner, is the Association’s defending Female Student-Athlete of the Year after winning the Ken B, Jones Award in the 2023-24 academic year. She's the fourth MIAA student-athlete to earn back-to-back Ken B. Jones Awards in the award's 32-year history. She's only the third Fort Hays State student-athlete to be named the MIAA's Female Student-Athlete of the Year, following Whitney Randall (2020-21) and Kate Lehman (2014-15).

After another exceptional women’s basketball season, DeGarmo was crowned the MIAA Player of the Year in the 2024-25 season, becoming the league’s first back-to-back women’s basketball Player of the Year since 2003-04. She was also named a two-time All-America by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) and the Division II Conference Commissioners Association (D2CCA) and earned First Team All-MIAA honors. A fifth-year graduate student from Maize, Kan., DeGarmo led Fort Hays State to a runner-up finish in the MIAA regular season and the MIAA basketball championship. She led the Tigers with 17.2 points and 8.6 rebounds per game and ranked third in the league in both categories. DeGarmo started all 33 games and averaged 31.5 minutes per game while scoring over 450 points for the fourth straight season, finishing the year with 567 total points. She ends her career at Fort Hays State as the program’s leading rebounder (1,248) while ranking second in career scoring (2,299 points), field goals (865), free throws made (512), free throws attempted (661) and steals (236). She also ranks fourth in the Tiger record book with 408 career assists.
 
DeGarmo was one of only 16 women’s basketball players to be named an Academic All-America in the 2024-25 season. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration in accounting in December of 2023, earning magna cum laude honors with a 3.87 GPA. She now owns a perfect 4.0 GPA as a graduate student, working towards her MBA. DeGarmo is a five-time member of the MIAA’s Academic Honor Roll and a four-time MIAA Scholar-Athlete.
 
DeGarmo completed an accounting/analyst internship at Koch Industries in Wichita, Kansas in the summer of 2023, where she learned and developed new skills through hands-on experience in the accounting profession. She was nominated as the Accounting Student of the Year by the University’s Department of Economics, Finance and Accounting in 2024. She was also nominated and selected by the accounting faculty for a Graduate Teaching Assistantship following her December 2023 graduation. DeGarmo has created a new deferred revenue schedule for the business she supported at Koch Industries, along with conducting balance sheet reconciliations, collaborating with a team on month-end closing procedures, and actively participating in identifying process improvements and cost-saving opportunities.
 
In her free time, DeGarmo serves on the leadership team for Hays’s Encounter Young Adults, a Christian ministry affiliated with Celebration Community Church. She also volunteers for various events and organizations such as Tim Tebow’s Night to Shine and Hays’s Bethesda Place – a residential community for individuals with disabilities. For a second straight year, DeGarmo and the Tigers’ women’s basketball team partnered up with Team IMPACT, which is a non-profit organization that matches children facing serious illnesses and disabilities with college sports teams. She’s also helped instruct and facilitate Fort Hays State University’s IDD Sports and Fitness Nights for local Special Olympic athletes.