Vanessa De Jesus commits to play for Gilas Women with ‘family and basketball’ in mind

June 14, 2023 Times Europe

Duke player Vanessa de Jesus will play for Gilas Women in the Fiba Women’s Asia Cup. –DUKE

MANILA, Philippines—The Gilas Pilipinas Women’s team just got a huge boost in the form of new recruit Vanessa De Jesus.

De Jesus, who has made a name for herself in the NCAA for Duke University, has formally committed to the women’s national basketball team en route to the Fiba Women’s Asia Cup starting June 26 in Australia.

For De Jesus, the decision came easy.

“Two of the most important things in my life are family and basketball,” she revealed in an online media scrum on Tuesday night. “Having the opportunity to represent both on a national level is something I’m very excited about.”

With both her parents being Filipinos, there were not many difficulties in processing De Jesus’ inclusion into the national team.

De Jesus said she is ecstatic with her dreams slowly turning into reality.

“It’s honestly a dream come true and I’m just waiting for the moment to go out and play with them (Gilas Women),” she said.

De Jesus is set to fly to Melbourne on Friday to meet the whole team.

There will also be a bit of familiarity between De Jesus and Gilas member Jhazmin Joson from Ateneo as they both competed in AAU years before.

“Jhaz, I played with her back in AAU so I knew her pretty much since high school,” she revealed.

De Jesus, Joson and the rest of the Gilas Girls will compete under coach Pat Aquino in the Asian meet and are grouped with Chinese Taipei, Japan and Australia, whom they will face on June 26.