Toast of the Coast: Two state titles down, one to go for Waccamaw’s Jones
After back-to-back state titles won in dominating fashion, it would be easy to take the foot off the gas, but Waccamaw’s Amelia Jones said she knows that can’t, and won’t, be the case.
The now-junior won the 2013 Class AA state championship in Columbia by 20 seconds with a time of 19:15, and this year dropped her time to a personal best 18:53 to win by over 18 seconds and become the Warriors’ first two-time winner. The Sun News Toast of the Coast Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year was certainly pushed this year, though, and said she knows she’ll have to keep getting better or be overtaken in her quest for a third title.
“Everyone is going to improve and my biggest competition is also my age, so knowing she’s at the same spot as me and knowing neither of us have peaked yet, it’s definitely challenging,” Jones said. “But having people also improving pushes you even more. … Having someone on my tail and my shoulder really helped me in that second mile, which was the key in running that time.”
The drive to keep improving extends well beyond simply running for Jones, and Waccamaw girls coach Brian White said he doesn’t hesitate to send his top runner out on workouts with the boys team throughout the season. She’s hardly the first from the Jones family to run with the Waccamaw boys squad – her older brother Robert was last year’s state runner-up and the selection for runner of the year, and her eighth-grade brother Perrin is a new addition this year – but she certainly adds an interesting dynamic, White said.
“I think that really helps her a lot because she can go out there and run with the guys and the guys can really push her,” he said. “She’s competitive, she doesn’t want to get beat by the guys and the guys don’t want to get beat by her …
“She wants to get to the next level and the only way to do that is to run with those guys because they’re running the times she wants to run.”
With that elevated training comes elevated goals, and Jones said she feels like she broke a barrier by running her first time under 19 minutes. She also broke the school record that was held by now-Clemson runner Grace Barnett, and said she sees no reason why she can’t improve upon that mark.
“I hope not to just win [again] with a similar time,” Jones said “I hope everyone goes faster and the competition makes it tougher to do it again.”
Lower times and another individual state title will not be a first for Jones or Waccamaw, but a team title would be, and White referred to Jones as “the ultimate team player.” The Warriors have taken second place two of the past three years, losing in a tiebreaker to Landrum in 2012 and finishing behind Academic Magnet this year by 28 points. For a squad featuring several talented young runners and Class AA’s best, White said he thinks the title is well within his team’s reach.
“I’ve got a really strong group coming back and with [Jones] in position going after this state title we can do some amazing things,” White said. “We can go on a little run over the next few years. … I think if we did win a state championship it would really mean a lot to her.”
With well over a year left in her high school career, Jones said she hasn’t made any concrete decisions on the subject, but that running in college isn’t something she’s on the fence about.
“It’s definitely something that I want to do,” she said. “We’ll have to see. There’s a lot of big schools that I’m looking at and their times are so much faster.”
This story was originally published December 25, 2014 at 6:15 PM with the headline "Toast of the Coast: Two state titles down, one to go for Waccamaw’s Jones ."