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Dean To Puerto Rico: Gracias
by Dustin Dopirak, Daily News-Record
It’s Yanni El’ DeJesus’ first practice since Christmas break, because he’s been suffering from strep throat ever since, and the sickness has obviously weakened him.
But in just two offensive plays during a scrimmage, he shows why Eastern Mennonite University basketball coach Kirby Dean feels so fortunate that the 6-foot-4, 205-pound swingman came to the mainland from Caguas, Puerto Rico.
First, DeJesus drives to the middle of the lane and does a behind-the-back crossover dribble in traffic, dodging his defender for an easy, underhanded layup. On the next play, he drives baseline for an impressive reverse lay-in.
The stretch has obviously taken a lot out of the freshman swingman, and when his split squad gathers to huddle, he subs out to walk over to the bleachers at the side of the court at University Commons, leaning on them to catch his breath.
But in that short stretch, he’s made the point — the kid can play.
EMU freshman Yanni El’ DeJesus shoots during a team scrimmage Thursday. DeJesus has started nine games for the Royals. Photo by Michael Reilly
"He’s very skilled offensively," Dean said Thursday. "He shoots the ball well, he passes well, he has a great understanding of movement within an offense."
Which is why the soft-spoken small forward has started all nine games for the Royals (5-4 overall, 1-1 in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference), who play at Lynchburg at 1 p.m. Saturday in their first game since the holidays.
DeJesus is averaging 7.8 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.0 assists while playing 25.2 minutes, and Dean said he could be considerably better than that.
"I told him the only things standing between him and being a first-team All-ODAC player," Dean said, "are tenacity on defense — and I mean digging in and really guarding somebody — and offensively not settling for being a jump shooter. If he will duck his shoulder, go to the rim and try to ram it on somebody, those are the only two things. Neither one of them involves skill. They both involve mentality."
Mentality, of course, comes with experience, and if time grants DeJesus what he needs to be a star in the Division III league, the story of how he ended up in Harrisonburg could become a Park View legend.
DeJesus actually grew up playing soccer in Puerto Rico and didn’t start playing basketball until he was 13 and his brother asked him to play in a tournament. He picked up the sport quickly and worked his way onto a Puerto Rican AAU team.
Before his junior year in high school, he decided he wanted to move to the mainland. To facilitate that goal, he played in a tournament in Puerto Rico where he knew U.S. coaches often scouted.
"I was trying to get a different experience," DeJesus said. "I wanted to make myself better as a person and do something for me. … I was looking to move. I was ready to move, but I just didn’t know where to go."
Tony Pujol, then the coach at Northwest Christian Academy in Miami, discovered DeJesus and his friend, Melvin Felix, and tried to bring them in. Before he could complete their transfer, however, Pujol was named an assistant at Appalachian State, so he set up DeJesus and Felix with Grant Smithers at Salem High School near Roanoke.
Two months later, the duo moved from the Caribbean mountains – Caguas is inland -- to the Appalachian mountains.
Smithers, who had to retire from coaching after last season because of skin cancer, was grateful. DeJesus and Felix helped Salem to the Region III playoffs in both of their seasons together. As a senior, DeJesus averaged 13.2 points, 9.1 rebounds, 4.1 assists and 2.3 steals, helping the Spartans to the regional semifinals and first-team all-district and all-region honors. Felix, now a senior at Salem, has also starred and is being heavily recruited by EMU, DeJesus said.
"I was amazed at how polished he was as a player," Smithers said of DeJesus. "He was such a good passer, and such a good rebounder. He could do a lot of things."
Learning the English language was a much more difficult hurdle for DeJesus than figuring out American basketball. It took him about a year, he said, to learn to speak with enough fluency to have a conversation, and even now it’s less than perfect. Though he’s by all accounts an intelligent young man, it was a challenge for him to graduate from Salem because of the language barrier.
Still, he managed, and he was receiving interest from numerous Division III schools in his senior year, the most notable being defending national champion Virginia Wesleyan.
Dean was trying to recruit DeJesus as well, but he ran into trouble finding contact information for him. Opportunity knocked at the ODAC tournament, however, when Dean spotted DeJesus in the stands at the Salem Civic Center watching Virginia Wesleyan play the Royals.
"I walked up in the stands, set down beside him and introduced myself," Dean said. "… Early that next week, I was sitting down in his coach’s office meeting with him and talking about Eastern Mennonite and in a very short period of time I developed a really good relationship with his host family."
DeJesus picked EMU over the defending D-III champs, he said, because he would be able to play immediately.
"People say, ‘Why do you do that?’" DeJesus said. "But I thought about playing time, the chance to play, and I know they need me more here than Virginia Wesleyan did."
Especially if he lives up to Dean’s hype.
