Jones, Bentonville West Look to Protect Crown in 2023

TIANNA JONES BENTONVILLE WEST

A player who makes a championship-winning play typically doesn’t shy away from taking all the glory.

However, that was not the case for Bentonville West’s Tianna Jones in the 2022 Class 6A soccer state championship. After netting a goal in the 71st minute to give the Lady Wolverines a 2-1 win over Fayetteville — the first state title in school history — Jones flipped the focus on her team during a postgame interview. It’s a moment West girls soccer Coach Kerry Castillo said told him everything he needed to know about his star player.

“They asked her about the goal she scored, and her attitude then is her attitude now,” Castillo said. “It’s so refreshing to hear one of your captains and such a gifted player say something like this. She said, ‘It doesn’t matter to me that I scored. I was just glad that we scored.’

“And I know she has individual things that she aspires to do, but that’s priority number one. She wants to win.”

It was a revenge game for the Lady Wolverines who were blanked by the Lady Purple’Dogs 3-0 in the 2021 state championship match. Now embarking on her junior campaign, what are Jones’ eyes set on? Earning another ring.

“Winning a championship was really, really special to me,” Jones said. “It was something that I came into high school wanting to accomplish. But it’s also something I wanted to do more than once.

That’s definitely our goal this year… all of us work really hard to reach it, and I think when everyone works on making themselves better, it just makes the whole team better.”

Jones has been doing her part to continue improving, helped by a sacrifice from her dad.

“I played on a [club] team in Tulsa, then I played in a team in Kansas City, and now I’m playing with a team in Oklahoma City,” Jones said. “So it’s about a 3 1/2 hour drive to practice, two or three nights a week. My dad takes me, I do my homework in the back of the car, get it all done, and then sleep on the way home. It’s a big sacrifice, but it’s definitely worth it.”

Castillo said more than anything, Jones and his upperclassmen have brought a competitive spirit to his team, sometimes to a fault.

“It’s fun going to practice every day and having her and other players like her raise the bar,” Castillo said. “Some of the practices we have are more competitive than some of the games we played. We had an intrasquad scrimmage Friday night and had to ask the girls to calm because they were just going after each other… it’s great, but at the same time, we’re a week away from our first game. It’s so much better than the alternative where you would be asking more from your players.”

More important to Castillo than the wins on the field is making a difference off it. It’s something Jones said has impacted her and the team, which boasted a 4.03 GPA in 2022.

“He pushes us,” Jones said. “He wants us to be the best and he’s a very competitive person. But at the same time he cares about leadership and culture. We have a thing called leadership council to make sure like we’re not only becoming better soccer players, but better people.”