A Locker Room of Her Own by David C. Ogden

Author:David C. Ogden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2013-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

DOMINANT ATHLETE

While still in grade school, Jones had already garnered a reputation as a fierce if not formidable competitor. She excelled in several sports including basketball, gymnastics, and a range of track and field events. Indeed, her prowess as an up-and-coming factor in women’s track and field was initially heralded by her selection at age sixteen as an alternate on the United States’ 4 x 100–meter relay team in anticipation of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Though she would ultimately turn down the offer, choosing instead to remain on the sidelines for the next four years, she was clearly becoming a bold force in American sport, despite the fact that she was still in high school.

In hindsight, her decision to turn down the USOC offer in 1992 may have been more significant than had appeared at first glance. The early speculation was that this decision likely resulted from her mother’s refusal to allow her to participate due to poor grades, but Jones had later reported that this was a calculated and conscious decision borne of her competitive desire to be an active participant rather than an inert stand-in who could conceivably win her first Olympic medal without actually participating.11 As she speculates in her 2000 biography, no coach would rely on an untested sixteen-year-old schoolgirl with a gold medal on the line. Moreover, because alternates—even those who ultimately do not participate—were in line to receive medals if the team were to have won, that was not how she wished to make her initial mark. She writes:

Ever since I could remember, I wanted my first gold medal to be something that I sweated for. I didn’t want anybody giving me one … I want to be an Olympic champion. I want gold medals. But when I’m eighty years old and I’m sitting in my rocking chair on the veranda drinking lemonade with my husband, and my grandkids run up to me, I want to be able to show them my gold medals and say, “See this, honey? This is something that I ran for, that I sweated for, that I earned. Nobody handed me this.”12

Indeed, her depiction of the circumstances surrounding her withdrawal from the team demonstrated a growing self-confidence and an independent spirit that in some ways belied the uncertainty and lingering fears of those early years. It also left little doubt that she was clearly in charge of her surroundings and well aware of the ramifications of her choices.

With the decision to bypass Barcelona behind her, in the days leading up to her high school graduation, Jones, who some continue to regard as the greatest school-aged athlete of any demographic background to ever come from California, received scholarship offers from hundreds of universities and colleges, mostly to run track. To the shock of many, however, she opted instead to play basketball at the University of North Carolina, where as a freshman point guard, the woman they called “Flash” helped lead the Lady Tar Heels to the NCAA Division I women’s championship in 1994.

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