She hit a quadruple-double. This Bearcat guard has Rock Hill greatness in her DNA.
Kenny Orr wasn’t leaving it to chance.
The Rock Hill girls’ basketball coach and his assistants were in and out of his office in the days after a January 75-49 win over Spring Valley, Orr said, checking and double-checking that game’s film.
They wanted to see if Jada Jones had done something no Bearcat had ever done before.
Jones is the engine on Rock Hill, a team poised for a run in the South Carolina playoffs that begin on Monday. The 5-6 junior point guard’s speed dominates at times, and she’s one of the “most competitive” players Orr has ever coached in his 11-year head coaching career, he said.
Jones is from a family of Rock Hill greats, too. Her parents, Tim and Jackie, are among the school’s most elite athletes ever.
But could Jada really have done this? In that game against Spring Valley, could she really have earned a quadruple-double?
“So she’s got the ball, and you already know that an assist has to be directly involved with a basket,” Orr told The Herald last month, recalling the details of the game. Orr and his assistants thought Jada was one assist shy of her 10th in the game, so they put Jada back in to earn what they thought would be a ”once-in-a-lifetime” triple-double.
“She comes down and passes it to the girl right next (to her)! I was like, ‘Jada, what are you doing?!’”
Orr then told the rest of the story: Rock Hill got an offensive rebound that possession. They then found Jada, who skipped a pass to an open Gracie Wilson on the 3-point line.
Bucket.
10 assists.
Triple-double.
Or so they thought.
After rewatching film and noting every play Jones was involved in, another significant part of the game emerged: her steals.
11 points. 13 rebounds. 10 assists. 10 steals.
A quadruple-double.
“It feels good, you know, being able to play with my teammates,” Jones told The Herald last month. “During the game, I was just going with the flow, so I didn’t really think much of it. But it was definitely fun to learn about it after the game.”
A family of Rock Hill greats
Jones appears to be unfazed by that performance, or any individual performance, for that matter. A lot of that has to do with the fact that athletic achievement is a tradition in her family.
Jones’ mother, Jackie, is an accomplished former Bearcat runner who also ran cross country at USC. Jackie, the principal at Mt. Holly Elementary School, once had her name on the wall outside the Rock Hill gym. She held records in the 800 and 4x400 for over a decade — until Jada broke both of them in 2019 when she was a freshman.
“It became a little joke,” Jackie said, “and then finally when it came down to the fact that she was about to break my record, I remember saying to her before that, ‘Well, I’m going to give you all my pointers so you can do it.’”
Jada’s dad, Tim, was also a standout Bearcat. The 1989 Shrine Bowler became a two-time All-ACC selection who led the Clemson Tigers in tackles in three straight seasons. After years of working as a banker in Charlotte, he’s now back at his alma mater as an in-school suspension teacher and assistant football coach.
“To be honest with you, my kids didn’t know I was an All-ACC football player until about a year or two ago,” Tim said. And that was only after Jada and (daughter) Layla would hear stories from Tim’s friends who’d stop him in the grocery store and reminisce about his playing days — about the times they saw Tim make a great hit, or when he helped lead a tough, stingy team to the Region 2-4A title and the Upper State championship game as a senior.
“They knew Mom ran track in college and stuff like that, but it wasn’t anything we talked about,” Tim said. “We just wanted them to make their own paths.”
‘She’s going to start’
Jada’s path, for the longest time, didn’t include basketball.
She has loved and played soccer since she was 5 or 6 years old. She also liked running “outside and stuff” as far back as she could remember. But basketball wasn’t as fun, she said.
She was one of the tallest kids in her class in elementary school, and she’d often be told to play on the block and get lost in the scrum that often defines youth basketball.
Orr, who often used to referee games at the Gray-Y, saw her play when she was 9.
“You could tell she could play,” he said.
Orr, Tim and Jackie go way back. Orr and Tim met playing Pop Warner/Gray-Y football when they were 11 years old. Their fathers were part of the final class (1970) at Emmett Scott High School and played football together.
As they grew up, they weren’t best friends but kept in touch, they said, because they kept crossing paths. After graduating from Clemson, Tim took a job as a banker, and the family stayed in south Charlotte, a central point between Jackie’s job in the RHSD and Tim’s at First Union off WT Harris Boulevard.
Orr, meanwhile, after graduating from Northwestern High and the University of Georgia, got a job coaching at Rock Hill High in 2012.
The Joneses moved back to Rock Hill in 2015, and Orr, Tim and Jackie, who Orr now calls his “sis,” grew closer.
A few years later, Jada became known as quite the athlete around Rock Hill High. She played varsity soccer and ran track as an eighth-grader for the Bearcats. After a four year break from basketball, Jada tried out for the Rock Hill team as a freshman.
“She comes in and tries out,” Orr said. “I say (to Tim), ‘Hey man, your daughter is going to make the varsity. And she’s going to start.’”
Jada’s parents didn’t believe Orr, really, until they watched their daughter’s first scrimmage.
“My wife saw Jada’s first scrimmage,” Tim said. “So Jada makes a jump shot, and my wife goes, ‘Wait, did Jada do that?’”
Jada is the family’s ‘eternal optimist’
Jackie calls Jada her “eternal optimist.” And at first glance, there’s no reason why she wouldn’t be like that.
In basketball, the junior guard has achieved everything she’s tried. She was an All-Region selection and Newcomer of the Year as a freshman. Through her sophomore year, the team captain and All-Herald first-teamer had recorded 561 points and 177 assists — and now, she’s on pace to more than double those figures.
But she’s been tested. Her high school basketball prowess didn’t come overnight. It came over the course of many early mornings with assistant coach A’llyse Boone: Ball handling drills. Hand-eye coordination work. Shooting. Anything that would catch Jada’s skill level up to her athleticism.
“If they have a desire to get better at anything, I’m just willing to do it,” Boone said. “I know that it takes time, and I don’t mind giving my time. I’m a PE teacher. It’s something I do, you know?”
Her sister, Layla, a freshman at Rock Hill High who plays for the JV team, told The Herald Jada is pushing her to “get further in life” and that she “works harder than anyone else I know.”
Off the court, she’s been an important light, too.
Jada’s mother, Jackie, has been diagnosed with cancer three separate times: stomach cancer in November 2014 and breast cancer in December 2016 and again in December 2019. Jackie said Jada watched her mom undergo surgeries to have her stomach removed in 2014 (a gastrectomy) and a bilateral mastectomy, which removed both breasts, in 2016. Jada also saw her mother go through months of chemotherapy, starting in Feb. 2020, Jackie said.
One moment sticks out in Tim’s mind. After Jackie had surgery in 2015 to fix a bowel blockage — a rare side effect of a gastrectomy — doctors saw some “suspicious areas.” In other words, cancer could have returned.
“I remember the time, a lot of us were just upset,” Tim said. “We just had this surgery to prevent the whole situation. And I’ll never forget, man, Jada just put her arm around my neck and said, ‘Well Dad, you know what? We’ll just pray about it, and pray she’ll be OK.’”
Jackie also remembers what Jada and Layla did this past June, at the end of her treatment for her most recent breast cancer diagnosis.
“They had a ‘Straight Outta Chemo’ party and a surprise parade,” Jackie said. “So all of my teachers came over to my neighborhood … (My daughters) put this sash on me and put a crown on my head that said ‘fighter’ and all those things. It was just those types of things. They’ve been through it all.”
What’s next for Jada Jones?
Jones has a lot to be optimistic about this year.
Right now, she’s in the throws of a pretty special hoops season. The Bearcats finished the regular season with an 18-2 record and the outright share of the Region 4-5A title. Jada will soon head into her third playoffs once the regular season draws to a close this Friday.
She’ll also rejoin the track and soccer teams in the spring, after her sophomore season was disrupted because of COVID. She has a few more records she wants to break, too, including in the 400 — a record which is currently held by Rock Hill running legend and state champion, Kendra Mackey.
College decisions are also coming within the next year. Jada, who has a GPA of 4.89 and is 14th in her class of 468, her coach said, has a full basketball scholarship offer from Claflin University in Orangeburg.
Until that decision is made, though, she’ll be on the court, field and track. And when she’s not there, you can find her studying, playing Minecraft, or taking the family’s 70-pound golden retriever, Apollo, for a walk with her sister.
When asked about her unrelenting optimism, Jada said, “I think it’s just inside of me.”
Maybe it is.
And perhaps that explains everything.
This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 9:15 AM.
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