Balancing basketball and a baby
April Fool’s joke. She drove up to Covington and learned the horrific details firsthand.
Jaleah’s grandmother, Linda Dunavent, set her own house on fire to get back at a boyfriend after a night of alcohol and drugs. Dunavent told authorities that Jaleah’s mother, who had several other children taken away from her over neglect, was down the street that night, according to reports.
Jaleah and her 6-month-old younger sister died in the blaze. Dunavent eventually was convicted of first-degree murder.
Grief was new to Jones. She had never had someone close to her die. More was coming, though. Jones met Steve Cross in 2013 when the two were in high school in Covington. Wesley Jones, Ashia’s father, said Cross was her first real boyfriend. Cross even helped care for Jaleah.
But on Sept. 13, 2016, five months after Jaleah’s death, Cross died of a drug overdose.
Mcferrin “was worried about my sanity,” Jones said, and there were sleepless nights filled with tearful prayer.
She kept asking God a question that didn’t have an answer yet: “Can you just give me some kind of strength to get through this?”
“You never really get over it,” Jones said. “You learn to grow past it.”
‘What about basketball? Are you done?’
When death got in the way of Jones’ basketball career, she felt more anguish than anger.
When she tore her ACLS in consecutive preseasons and her basketball career was put on hold, she felt more discouraged than disappointed.
But when an unplanned pregnancy threatened her basketball career, she felt an uneasiness seep into every interaction.
When she told her mother, Angel Jones thought, “I wanted to be a cheerleader, not a grandma.”
When she told her father, Wesley Jones thought about everything his daughter had already gone through and asked, “What about basketball? Are you done?” Telling Mcferrin was harder. Jones shook with nerves waiting to meet with the Memphis coach last June.
“My first concern was for AJ’S health and for the health of the baby, but I’m not going to lie,” Mcferrin said. “There was a big part of me that was really disappointed because we’ve been waiting for AJ to come back for a long time.”
Mcferrin also had a warning, one she learned from one of her former players who attempted to return from a pregnancy: “Coming back from having a child is different than coming back from a knee surgery.”
There were body changes and hormones that Jones would have to deal with, not to mention the inevitable weight gain. And that’s if all went perfectly with the pregnancy.
But what never changed was the will of a basketball player who wasn’t ready to give up the game yet. Who heard her doctor say she might be able to begin training again six weeks after giving
The balancing act of being the mother of an infant, a student pursuing a second degree in engineering technology and a Division I college basketball player typically begins on most days at 7:30 a.m. when Jones wakes Timmy up and changes his diaper.
She then gets her son ready for a babysitter, and Timmy’s father, T.J., heads to work. Jones is usually on campus by 10 a.m. for a five-hour slate of classes. She heads over to Elma Roane Fieldhouse for weight lifting and practice with the Tigers after that.
She gets back home by 5 p.m., “and then I’m a full-time mom” until Timmy’s bed time at 9:30 p.m.
“He’s actually the best thing that could’ve possibly happened to me,” Jones said.
But after four years of waiting, Jones had to wait some more to play her first games as a Memphis Tiger. Her confidence and competitiveness never left, but other attributes did.
She’s not the player who averaged 23.4 points per game at UT Martin. She can’t jump as high or move as quick laterally because of her knees. She had to be patient even as time was running out.
“There were some times in the last month where it was really, really hard, and I think at times she doubted is this what I should really be doing,” Mcferrin said. “But now, here we are in March; I think she’s in a good place.”
Let the record show that Jones made her official Memphis debut against East Carolina on Jan. 19, more than 1,400 days after she last appeared in a Division I game for UT Martin.
On March 2 at SMU, she hit her first career 3-pointer and set season highs in minutes (29), points (6) and rebounds (6).
And then, on March 4 in her eighth game, Jones played in front of a home crowd for the final time. Timmy was there at mid-court when she hugged Mcferrin and sat behind the bench watching his mother play the game she won’t give up.
You can reach Commercial Appeal columnist Mark Giannotto via email at mgiannotto@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @mgiannotto.