Dee-Mack’s DeJesus wins 2026 Clutch Sports Media Small School Girls Basketball Player of the Year

There is no basketball player from Dee-Mack more accomplished than Dalia DeJesus. 

The senior forward broke several records, led the Chiefs to an unprecedented four-year stretch of success and played a major role in the team winning its first ever state title in 2026. The Quincy University-bound star is Clutch Sports Media’s 2026 Small School Girls Basketball Player of the Year. 

DeJesus was named an IBCA Class 1A first team all-state selection and an Illinois media Class 1A Co-Player of the Year after putting up 20.2 points, 9.8 rebounds, 4.5 assists, 3.3 steals and 2.7 blocks per game while shooting 53 percent from the field. She led the Chiefs to a 34-3 record and continually produced for them all season and especially in Dee-Mack’s two games at state. DeJesus scored 31 points and brought in 10 rebounds in its 48-35 state semifinal win over Rockford Christian and added 16 points and 13 rebounds in the Chiefs’ 49-34 win over Mt. Pulaski in the state championship game. 

DeJesus made big impacts in each of her four varsity seasons and is Dee-Mack’s all-time leading scorer — boys or girls — with 2,522 career points and is the Chiefs’ girls all-time leader in rebounds with 1,376 rebounds. In the 2025-26 season, she broke her own school record for points (720) and rebounds (354) in a season. Her 76.9 career free throw percentage is also a Dee-Mack record. During her career with the Chiefs, DeJesus led Dee-Mack to a 127-16 record with four 30-win seasons, four regional titles and two sectional titles. 

Her extensive list of honors include being a IBCA first team all-state selection in each of the last three seasons and a second team selection her freshman year. DeJesus earned first team all-Heart of Illinois Conference honors all four years and was a unanimous selection each of the last three years. She also earned a spot on the HOIC’s all-defense team in the 2025-26 campaign. DeJesus picked up first team honors on the first Clutch Sports Media Girls Basketball All-Area team.

Hear more about DeJesus’ season and career in our interview with her below. Some answers have been minimally edited for clarity.

What have you been able to reflect and look back on since the season has ended? 

“I definitely think in the last couple of weeks, I've had a lot to process, just from what we all achieved and to how much I'm going to miss playing here and miss playing in this town when I move on,” DeJesus said. “But I really do think just the biggest thing that came from this year for me was just the love of the game, I've always loved basketball my whole life, I've always had a great time with it but this year, winning a state championship I feel like in some way pushes me to want to do more, if that makes sense. I am just so incredibly grateful and blessed to have won a state championship, but I'm not satisfied with it. I don't want to sound greedy, but it makes me want to push myself even harder in college. I'm trying to work myself as much as I can in the little time that I have left here to try and just get stronger and faster and prep myself for what's next.”

What inspired your love for basketball?

“I have an older brother, he's four years older than me, and then I have an older boy cousin and he's two years older than me, so we would always just play together whenever we were little,” DeJesus said. “I just remember we had a little hoop on the side of my aunt’s cul-de-sac and whenever we'd have family dinner, we'd just go out there and play. Just getting to compete with them, I really think pushed me to want to play on the team. I played boys basketball when I was younger before there were any girls teams but just getting to be a part of a team and just something greater than myself, I feel like has always just been a blessing to be able to do. I feel like those are just my earliest memories of basketball.”

Were there any games from this past season that you felt were a turning point of the year?

“In a weird way, this can sound very odd, but we lost to Eureka in our conference tournament in the semifinal and that game was just, there were a million and one things that went wrong in that game,” DeJesus said. “I do think that was really a turning point for us, not in such a way where we were performing so well [and] we could see our potential, but we were really getting our butts kicked that game, the entire game. For us, it was more of just like ‘Hey, this happened, but it's not going to happen again for the rest of the year,’ and I think that loss really, really pushed us to reach our fullest potential. I'm so glad that we were able to see beyond that and it worked out well for us.”

What was special about your teammates and the culture within your team and school?

“I just think this year, everyone's mindset was a little bit different,” DeJesus said. “I feel like everyone was really on the same page probably 90 to 95 percent of the time. We all had one goal in mind and it was to do whatever we could, to be as good as we could be, and just have fun with whatever we were doing while we were playing, and just enjoying each other on and off the floor. I think just having great mindset spread across your entire team, and not having one or two people that are like, ‘I don't really want to do this,’ or ‘I'm not really going to try as hard’ or ‘I'm not gonna show up this day but maybe I'll show up tomorrow.’ I think everyone being on the same page really just helped us in the biggest way possible.”

Was it difficult for you to push through a slight illness while playing at state?

“In a weird way sometimes when I'm sick, I feel like I play a little bit better, like I have it in my mind that I have to make up for whatever my body's not up to, if that makes sense,” DeJesus said. “I kind of just had that mindset going into Saturday's game because I wasn't feeling great on Thursday, but I wasn't sick yet. I definitely was sick on Friday, so that mindset really just got me through the game on Saturday. Then also seeing the way that Anna [Schmidgall] was actually very sick on our super-sectional game — she's just so resilient and just so awesome and she's just grown so much this year — but really, watching her play through that and literally punching our ticket to state while she was that sick really just made me want to work just as hard as she did.”

What’s a motto or mindset you take when you’re competing?

“Before a game, I kind of tried not to think about too much,” DeJesus said. “[When] actually playing, our coaches do an incredible job of handling all the worry for us if we feel like things aren't going our way officiating-wise. Our expectation is just to go out there and literally just play basketball and have so much fun and play cohesively and just play a whole team sport. I think being able to relax a little bit and having our surrounding players being able to step up whenever they needed to and our coaches handling the rest really helped me this year.”

Aside from winning, what was your favorite memory of the season? 

“I think just being in the hotel with everybody was super fun that state weekend,” DeJesus said. “Even though we were all kind of not feeling great, we all spent time together, we watched the boys game together on Friday night. On Thursday night, we were in the conference room playing games together, watching [the other state games] so we were able to spend so much time together throughout the entire weekend. It kind of had me missing travel basketball a little bit but I was grateful to experience something like that with the girls on my team.”

Speaking of travel basketball, what’s your relationship like with your travel teammate Avery Tibbs?

“I met Avery when we were 12, I started playing [for] HOI the year before COVID hit so really, I just feel like we've grown up together in that kind of way,” DeJesus said. “This is really just like a full-circle moment and nothing's better than winning a state championship your senior year, but to get to share that moment with a longtime teammate of mine, I'm so beyond blessed. She's just a great person and great athlete, which everyone knows, but just the time I was able to spend with her in travel basketball are some of my favorite memories that I'll have forever. I'm just super proud of her, she's been on the big stage for forever and she's just exceeded expectations. I just love her so much and I'm very excited to get to play against her next year but I know she’s going to do big things.”

What stood out about Quincy University and what made you want to play there in college?

“Right now, I'm planning on majoring in sports communications or journalism with a minor in sports management, so we'll see what I choose,” DeJesus said. “I'm not really sure yet, but I want something broad so that I wasn't super stressed out about picking something. I talk about this all the time but the biggest thing that stood out to me with Quincy is just how it's so crazy to me how much it feels like Mackinaw. Obviously, it's a little bit bigger, which is kind of nice. There's tons of stores, tons of food options and all of that so I'm just excited to get down there for that stuff. But I've just heard nothing but great things from the school and the coaches are actually married. The head coach, Ali [Schwagmeyer-Belger], she's just an incredible person, and coach Courtney [Belger] is her husband, he's awesome as well and they just have a very tight-knit, family-oriented culture that I just can't wait to be a part of. I don't really know how to explain it, I'm just so excited to get down there. They have great development programs and skills programs and they run their own AAU program so I know that I'm going to develop as much as I want to and they're going to put as much time and effort into me as I do to them.”