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GODFREY — Kavon Lacey ended his Alton boys basketball career in 2007 with a school-record 1,499 points and a 100-27 record.
His scoring record fell last winter. His victory total still stands as the Redbirds boys standard.
But in the Lacey family, 100 wins no longer buys bragging rights.
Those belong to his daughter. And it’s not close.
Like her father, Kaylea Lacey was an impact freshman at Alton. Unlike anyone before her in Redbirds girls basketball, she walked away with 125 wins, 11 losses, four Southwestern Conference championships, four regional titles and a state trophy.
After averaging 16.1 points for a 28-3 team as a senior, Lacey is the 2026 Telegraph Large-Schools Girls Basketball Player of the Year.
“It just shows that I’m a winner, personally,” Lacey said. “And it shows that the teams we had, and the players we had, we were good. Even with my family, I was saying, I’m going to have the most wins. And I’m going to have the least amount of losses. That competitive aspect with the family is kind of fun.”
Competing comes with Kaylea Lacey’s DNA. So does winning.
“That hits it right on the head,” Alton coach Deiondre Riney said. “A real winner, whatever it takes. Kaylea’s just the ultimate winner. One of the smartest kids I’ve coached. Wants to get the job done, puts everything on her shoulders with no complaints. She had just a great senior year. Didn’t try to do too much, didn’t try to do things that weren’t expected of her. She did exactly what we needed her to do.”
That meant winning.
Lacey came in as a freshman to add another weapon one class behind Kiyoko Proctor, Jarius Powers and Talia Norman as a transformative core for the Redbirds.
Lacey’s four seasons delivered four Southwestern Conference championships with four regional and two sectional championships. An Alton program that had endured a 62-game SWC losing streak a decade earlier and had gone 37 years without winning a regional claimed its first state trophy with a third-place finish in the Class 4A tourney in 2025.
Along with Proctor, Powers and Norman, the Redbirds also said goodbye to their coach when Deserea Howard resigned after six seasons. Alton did return seven players from that state team as seniors, but a heavy burden was placed on Lacey to lead.
“She is the engine that is going to get us going,” Riney said of Lacey.
“I wouldn’t say it was the biggest change,” Lacey said of her leadership role as a senior. “Even in the prior years, I felt like I always had that role. Now, when it comes to being more vocal, I would say I had to grow into that role more because I wasn’t a very vocal kid. Still, even my senior year, I wasn’t the most vocal, some of the other seniors were more vocal than me. I feel like I’m more of a leader by example. I’ve carried that through all my years, but mainly my senior year. I can’t do it alone, we had to do it together.”
At 5-foot-9, Lacey was the ‘athlete’ in Alton’s deep stable of thoroughbred basketball players. A state track medalist in the high jump as a sophomore, Lacey was fast, strong and tenacious. A slasher who could help break the press and finish against it.
And while Alton fell short of 30 wins – after seasons finished at 31-2, 32-3 and 34-3 – they remained a powerhouse with Lacey the headliner as a senior.
The Redbirds fended off threats from Belleville East and O’Fallon to run the table at 12-0 in the SWC. And Lacey finished her career without ever experiencing defeat at home, with the Redbirds going 42-0 in the AHS gym to push their current home winning streak to 45.
Lacey won four SWC titles, four regional titles and finished with a 125-11 record. She laments the 11.
“It really could have been single-digit losses,” she says, “but you win some, you lose some. But, definitely proud of those accomplishments, for sure.”
Lacey enjoyed her time on the track team, but she was mostly a one-sport athlete. “Basketball was always my bread and butter, what I loved most,” she said.
Her father, now the men’s basketball coach at LCCC, loved it, too. Kavon Lacey was a dual-sport Telegraph player of the year as a basketball guard and football quarterback. That pops was a big deal in Alton was not a secret for long to the girl that called him dad.
“It was talked about a lot within our family,” Lacey said. “So, I understood that probably before I was a teenager. Even with my uncles, too, because they played. All of that talk, your dad was this, your dad was that. A lot of people know him in Alton, so from a young age, I knew my dad was good. I knew he was a hooper. And he was good in football, too. He was quite the athlete.”
So is the daughter, who is in Kansas this summer working out with Shocker teammates before her first season of Division I women’s basketball at Wichita State.
At Alton, Lacey’s first three seasons put up scoring averages at 6.2, 8.2 and 8.8 points per game for teams with many options on offense. The 16 a game she scored as a senior put her past 1,300 in her career, joining Proctor, Powers and Norman in Alton’s 1,000-points club.
Even with the family ties, Lacey did not show interest in Redbirds girls basketball until she became a Redbird.
“Not so much,” she said. “When I was younger and I was just getting into basketball, I was more focused on AAU, when I was in elementary school. Middle school even, it wasn’t my biggest focus. High school, I really didn’t watch any of it until the class before me got up there. I didn’t really watch any high school games before that.”
For all the success that came from her first 135 games as a Redbird, it was only frustration that came from game No. 136. Two early charging fouls in the first quarter and a blocking foul in the second kept Lacey on the bench for much of the first half in a sectional semifinal vs. Belleville East at Fletcher Gym in Collinsville.
Alton rallied to within one point after trailing 26-11 at the half, but saw its season end with a 45-40 loss to the Lancers. More foul trouble limited Lacey to three minutes of playing time in the second half and she finished with two points. The dream of leading the Redbirds back to state as a senior was over.
“Everyone wants to go to state, and win state,” Lacey said. “So, it did not exactly meet the expectations I had on that end. But, besides that part, I did feel like, yes, the season went how I wanted it to. We won more than people expected. How it ended sucked, but I’m definitely proud of the seniors, and myself, for getting 28 wins, with just three losses.”
But that third loss, and how it came to be, was not the goodbye performance Lacey had envisioned.
“Of course, it was very hard,” Lacey said. “After going to state and having that expectation again with how our season was going, and how we had played against (East) in previous games, it was unfortunate. We didn’t get the calls our way, whatsoever, the whole game. But it’s over now, what can I do? What is, that’s what you think about now.”
What is for Kaylea Lacey is college basketball at Wichita State. What was for Kaylea Lacey is a legacy unmatched by any Redbird before her.
“I’m glad,” she said, “that we were able to get Alton on the map.”
