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GODFREY – Deiondre Riney was introduced as Alton Redbirds girls basketball coach in July 2025. He inherited a program that had quickly grown into one of Illinois’ top girls basketball powers.
Despite the loss of three 1,000-point career scorers and the coach who helped elevate the program, Riney sustained Alton’s status as a state power.
In his first season as a high school head coach, Riney led the Redbirds to a 28-3 record, Southwestern Conference and Class 4A regional championships, and recognition as the 2026 Telegraph Large-Schools Girls Basketball Coach of the Year.
After Deserea Howard resigned following six seasons that produced a 123-51 record, including a 97-8 mark over the final three years, Riney was charged with keeping the program on course. Any skepticism tied to his limited high school coaching experience was quickly erased.
“It definitely was a big change,” Telegraph Player of the Year Kaylea Lacey said of playing for a new coach in her senior season. “I’d been playing for coach Howard my first three years and thought she would be staying for my last one. It was definitely a big change. I was coming in with coach Riney with an open mind. I wasn’t going to shut him out just because the coach I had been with had left.
“I had to learn his style of play, his goals for us and how he wants to change the program. Hearing all that, and giving him my thought process of what things looked like and how we expected things to go and what we were used to, I feel like we worked together and I enjoyed it. I appreciate him as a coach and I definitely enjoyed my time playing for him.”
Lacey moved on from high school along with six other seniors who helped make the transition easier for Riney, a 2019 Missouri graduate from St. Pius X High School in Festus.
“They just showed up every day,” Riney said of his seniors. “That’s the biggest key that a lot of young kids don’t understand. You show up every day, you work hard and you will get what you’re supposed to get. Instead of making any excuses, they never did. They showed up, they had fun, they sacrificed for one another. … Just great kids, great representations of Alton High School.”
Also a coach and assistant director at The Bridge Sportsplex in Edwardsville, Riney guided the Redbirds through an 18-game winning streak after a November loss to Morton and a December holiday tournament loss to Breese Central.
“With the newer style of play — we were a smaller team and switching up our game — I feel like as the season went on, we started building up that chemistry,” Lacey said. “We started learning our strengths and weaknesses, our rotations, and we really dug into that. In the back half of the season, you could really see us getting better and connecting and getting better and being more consistent in games. We really meshed well.”
The Redbirds ran the table in the SWC, finishing 12-0 to claim a fourth straight title after going 30 years without winning the conference. Alton also went 9-0 at home to extend its homecourt winning streak to 45 in a row since a January 2022 loss.
Alton beat Edwardsville on the Tigers’ home court to win a regional title — the Redbirds have now won 10 straight against Edwardsville after once enduring a 61-game losing streak in the rivalry — before falling to Belleville East 45-40 in a sectional semifinal at Fletcher Gym in Collinsville.
“We got everything we wanted out of those girls, they gave everything they had,” Riney said. “Obviously, we didn’t go as far as we wanted. We thought we’d be back in the super-sectional, at least. We fell short against Belleville East, a very talented team.”
Riney’s first season was built around a senior core of Lacey, Kyridas Orr, Ja’Kayla Steen, Justice Haynes, Lauryn Wimbley, Aryanna Anthony and Ava Harris.
They became the answers to the questions left after Howard resigned and Kiyoko Proctor, Jarius Powers and Talia Norman graduated in 2025 after four spectacular seasons ended with a third-place finish at the Class 4A state tournament.
Now Alton must replace another large senior class, but Riney expects winning to remain.
“We still have a lot of talent,” Riney said. “Granted, next year, we’ll be young. You graduate seven seniors, that’s obviously a big thing. But we’ll be talented, we’ll be competitive. We’ll be better in January than we are in November, but we’ll be good. The last few years has really inspired the community to take basketball a little more seriously, especially on the girls side. With that foundation, we’ll be good to go.”
