Dayion Thompson is making a name for himself not only in the Utica University community but also in D3 basketball, and hopes to lead his team to another championship. 

Thompson, a junior business management major, is from Beacon, New York and graduated from Kimball Union Academy High School. He started playing basketball at the age of 10, but his athletic career started in football, which he really loved. He was a quarterback and became good at it.Thompson started to take a liking to basketball because his family members also played the sport, so he wanted to give it a try.

“Seeing how skilled and dedicated my family was to basketball made me want to give that same dedication,” he said.

Now in his junior year on Utica’s basketball team, Thompson said the current team and previous teams are both special and different. Previous teams played together for a long time so the chemistry was already there. The current team is special and talented, “but we had to try new things out and build our chemistry,” he said. 

Thompson said one of his career highlights is when his team won the Empire 8 championship. 

       “Seeing my team win the championship was a different feeling, a feeling that was well deserved and earned and I want to feel that feeling again,” Thompson said. 

He’s faced challenges as well, including tearing his ACL in 2024, which was a huge challenge for him because he couldn’t do the one thing I love the most, which was play basketball. 

“Something that I wasn’t used to was just taken away from me for a good period of time,” he said. “Missing a few games was very difficult to watch and experience but I had to get back healthy for my teammates. (Having) surgery and trying to regain my strength was also changeling. I was facing but I had to stay dedicated and determined to get back healthy.”

He has rebounded well in the current season. A game-winning shot on Jan. 24 is a moment that will stay with him forever. Facing the Hartwick Hawks, Thompson just beat the buzzer and netted a jaw-dropping three-pointer to give the Pioneers a big conference win. 

 “That was a feeling I’ll never forget,” Thompson said. “During that game I was locked in and knowing my mom was there watching me was a great feeling, knowing she got a chance to see me at my best .”

In his free time, Thompson enjoys playing NBA2K on the XBOX, but his main focus is staying healthy for the remainder of the semester and remaining locked and loaded. His future goals include securing a good job after graduation. 

“I hope to continue dominating the rest of this season, staying healthy, strong and keeping a main focus on what our goal is,” Thompson said.