By Allie Conwell
Skylar Jones hit the ground running her first year playing basketball for the University of Arizona.
Between starting the final 15 games of the season, scoring a career-best 24 points against Syracuse in the NCAA Tournament’s First Round and receiving an honorable mention on the Pac-12 All-Freshman Team, it’s safe to say the 6-foot guard – and former Chicago Public League athlete – is a powerhouse in the making.
Before earning her stripes as a Wildcat, Jones began her career as a Whitney Young High School Dolphin. Skylar was the 96th-ranked ESPN HoopGurlz recruit in the class of 2023, averaged 16.9 points and 4.9 rebounds her junior year, and achieved 4A IBCA First Team All-State and AP All-State Second Team honors.
Even with major accolades under her belt, Skylar felt that the transition from high school to college athletics was still “a whole different type of battle” – but one she felt well-prepared for.
“When you first go into a power five (conference), you’re used to being the best player on your team… But when you get to college, everybody’s just like that,” she said.
Learning to “embrace the hardships” and “trust the process,” combined with her experience at Whitney Young, helped Jones to excel during this transition.
“Whitney Young plays a similar style to Arizona, we like to run and defend…our coaches were very hard on us” she said, crediting both her high school and college coaches for their intensive conditioning and “tough love.”
Thanks to her rigorous academic involvement in AP and honors classes at Whitney Young, Jones didn’t experience much anxiety about school during her freshman year, explaining that the new college workload “wasn’t that big of a shift.”
For Skylar, being thrown into the starting five as a freshman was much more daunting than a little homework – but seeing her efforts pay off quickly on the court helped her to flourish.
“When I first started starting, I was really nervous,” she said. “But as the season went on, I started getting comfortable and started seeing my hard work really pay off.”
It helped to have a close-knit group of several freshmen starting games together.
“Being a freshman is hard,” she expressed. “Going through adversity is what made us come close and made our chemistry, and that’s what showed on the court.”
To aspiring collegiate athletes, the Chicago native emphasizes the importance of hard work and understanding that improvement is a process.
“It’s really just work…It’s going to be hard. It’s going to be completely different from high school. And I didn’t believe it ‘til I got here. But it’s all worth it in the end.”
After finishing out her freshman year, Jones touched down in Chicago for a few weeks this summer, but is spending most of her time back back on campus, conditioning with her team. She’s focused on taking her momentum into her sophomore year with her sights set on victory at the Big 12 championship.
With her drive, skill, and relentless commitment to growth, Skylar Jones has already proved herself a force to be reckoned with – and she’s only warming up.
