By Aaron Allen, The Seattle Medium
There are some folks that just know at an early age who they are and what they want to become. Christina Jones is one of those people.
A freshman at Holy Names Academy, Jones knows exactly the journey she is on, and basketball is the path that she is taking to get what she wants. Yet, Jones realizes that she is at the beginning of her process to build a well-rounded high school experience, career and resume.
“I devote my life to basketball,” says Jones. “I can perform well, I can be a first-year student on varsity, but at the same time I can do forty hours of community service, I can start a leadership program for girls, I can do biomedicine. But what I really want to communicate is that my team and I are more than just athletes.”
Coach Emily McKenzie, who began her career as Head Coach of Holy Names in the 2016-17 season, has taken notice of Jones’ talent and her potential to be successful in Seattle’s Metro League.
“Christina is a freshman, she is laser focused and very mature and wise way beyond her years,” says McKenzie. “She has not just the basketball skills to make her a varsity athlete in the Metro League, but she possesses the overall work ethic to put her there. She is also a brilliant student and has the same maturity toward her academics.”
It is that work ethic that provides Jones with a high ceiling for her potential both on and off the court.
“Christina is also showing a lot of leadership qualities and she has just gotten here,” says McKenzie. “She wants to understand what is going on and puts in the time to do so. She watches film, she listens and always asks questions.”
“I know she puts in the time and effort outside the season as well and basketball is first for her in terms of athletics,” she adds.
For Jones, she is enjoying the experience and doing what she can to add to the team’s success.
“I think my team is absolutely amazing,” says Jones. “We have an amazing coaching staff at Holy Names. From a player’s perspective, I believe we have really great chemistry and that started from day one. As a team we practice what is called “visualization” and I think it helps us both on and off the court with our success.”
“Identifying what we want to do as individuals and making plans to get there,” adds Jones, as she talks about the process. “So, we do our visualizations before a game and capitalize on a positive and winning mentality.”
A versatile 5’10” player, Jones plays shooting guard, small forward and the power forward positions, respectively, and has made her presences known. She plans to continue her growth and improvement as a player in hopes of one day playing for a D1 school.
“My goal is to play D1 basketball,” says Jones. “My favorite program is Stanford, but there is also the University of Washington, you know living in Washington. I have been fortunate enough to be able to go on tours to multiple colleges over this past summer and playing collegiate sports has been on my vision board of goals.”
McKenzie makes it a priority to use basketball as a conduit to teach life’s lessons and to help shape her young athletes into well-rounded young women, and Jones is no exception.
“Our team is really focused on this culture of being inclusive and supportive of one another,” says McKenzie. “The girls are held to a high standard of sportsmanship and behavior, academic performance and the way they treat each other.”
Navigating the highly competitive Metro League can be hard on most programs, and when you add COVID into the mix along with a Holy Names program that has had four coaches in five years it can be difficult to maintain a positive culture. But McKenzie has made it a point to use basketball to center her team during these trying time.
“I came into a program that was in a little bit of disarray,” says McKenzie. “The fourth coach in five years and that stress had trickled down to the girls and they didn’t have a since of identity of what the program was. So, we built and built and put in a lot of work and they expected first and foremost to show up for one another and that has led to some winning and winning is just an added benefit of being of strong program.”
As it relates to the team, Holy Names is a tall, tough-minded team full of athletes the pride themselves on their collective work ethic.
“We have lacrosse athletes, soccer and track and field and so we have a team of very athletic women,” says McKenzie. “We have a relatively big team. Most of my athletes are 5’10”, I call them “my army of 5’10”.
“We don’t really have one player that dominates the score book and it can vary a lot by night,” she continued. “We have a lot of different players that could be that top player, we share the ball well, very team focused, it’s a very well-rounded group of girls.”
McKenzie, who admits that her team has some work to do on the offensive side of the ball, utilizes here team’s athleticism to create defensive pressure that allows them to overcome a lack of offensive firepower they may have when facing some of the league’s more prolific offenses.
“Our team strength, from my perspective, is our first line defense,” says Jones. “We have a complex half-court defense, which is a mix between man and zone. I think our team manages defense really well. The other strength we practice on is communication and we are getting better at that particularly on our defensive sets.”
While the team has had some success, Jones knows that there is still room for improvement.
“The things that would make our team better is us working on our mental game and the small things,” says Jones. “Working on the small things, turn overs, hustling after loose balls, if we take care of the small things this will make an even bigger impact on our performance.”
What is most important to Jones is value of character, visualizing your goals and setting the standard that you can do it all, character, academics and hoop. “I want to communicate that I can be the complete student athlete,” says Jones. “I can be successful in school, I can do well in my service to my community, and I can also excel in a sport like basketball. I want to achieve in biomedicine and bioengineering and with this experience and the support of family, coaches and Holy Names we will show that we’re more than just athletes.”
