Running Home: Sophomore Jack Jones furthers his baseball career as he verbally commits to the University of Tennessee

A crowd packed with baseball scouts watches as sophomore Jack Jones steps up to the plate, ready to play his last game of the summer. Jack feels the ball ricochet off his wooden bat, and let’s it fly out of his hands toward the dugout, jogging around each base. He didn’t need to see the ball hit the grass to know he just hit a home run. Glancing up at the scoreboard after he made it back to homebase, he sees that his exit velocity — the speed of the baseball coming off the bat — was 105 mph, exceeding the average Major League Baseball exit velocity of 89 mph. 

“It feels really cool — smoking the ball — because it’s like hitting a buzzer beater in basketball or a last minute touchdown,” Jack said. “Even if it’s not a big situation, knowing you just perfectly hit a ball is a really good feeling.”

Jack was introduced to baseball at age five by his dad, who formerly played for Illinois Wesleyan College. Starting on a travel team at age eight in his hometown of Bloomington, Ill., Jack was always playing with the older kids due to his larger physique and natural athletic abilities. 

When Jack was nine, his father passed away and he, his mom and younger sister moved to Kansas City, Kan. to be closer to their grandparents and cousins a few years later. They made the move a week before the first day of seventh grade, forcing him to leave his friends and hometown behind. Jack knew he wouldn’t miss anything about the actual state of Illinois, but it was the people he was leaving behind who made the transition tough.

“Adjusting to the move was really difficult,” Jack’s mom Lyndsey Jones said. “Over time, he made great friends and teammates and found an amazing team he loves.” 

Once he got settled in KC, Jack began training and playing with a baseball academy called Building Champions. The BC team provided Jack with knowledgeable coaches and better instruction to bring his athletic career even further than in his old Illinois teams — which were run by a couple small town baseball dads.

In his new team, Jack gained a personal hitting coach, Jeremy Jones, who’s the owner of BC and a scout for the Royals. Jeremy says he was instantly impressed, not only with Jack’s ability to focus on executing his movements, but also his ability to analyze himself in between reps and ask for help when he was struggling.

“Obviously the physicality was there in Jack, but you always want to make sure the athlete is an elite thinker,” Jeremy said. “He was really thinking at a high level as far as how his body was moving and being able to make adjustments needed, fast.”

Jack thinks training with BC has helped him become mentally tougher and control his emotions on and off the field by teaching him that you’re going to fail more times than you succeed, so it’s all about how you recover and adjust when you have setbacks. 

“Having these coaches that he looks up to and respects that also teach the idea that it’s not just about the games, it’s about the person and the kid as an athlete, I think that is one of the best things that’s happened to Jack in a long time,” Lyndsey said. 

Jeremy, along with East baseball coach and pitching coach for BC Will Gordon, teaches athletes how important a positive mindset is on their team.

“During practice, Jermey will sit people down and talk to us about our mindset,” Jack said. “He wants everyone to play hard and be really respectful. He’s implemented to hold yourself and to not throw your bat if you’re frustrated.”

After training all throughout elementary and middle school, Jack’s freshman year was the real test: it was time for him to begin the recruitment process. Playing baseball in college was an easy decision for Jack because he wanted to get an education as well as follow his baseball dreams of one day playing in the Major Leagues. College coaches aren’t allowed to contact him until Sept. 1 of his junior year. So, Jack worked with Jeremy and Will to make sure he was ready, contacting coaches himself and training to improve his hitting skills.

“If college coaches are recruiting a player prior to their junior year, they’ll call me and ask Jack to call them,” Jeremy said. “So Jack can call the coaches, but not vice versa.”

This past summer, scouts started to fill the stadiums of Jack’s tournaments, turning Jack’s five-year-old fantasy into a reality.

 “I was nervous to know that I was playing in front of scouts because I felt like if I didn’t perform, they wouldn’t be interested,” Jack said. “Towards the end of the summer, I forgot about it and just focused on playing baseball, because you can’t think about other things while you’re playing, otherwise you won’t play well.” 

Jack was selected to play in Prep Baseball Report Future Games in Atlanta — the last tournament of the summer season. During this tournament, the best players from each state are put in a tournament of six or seven games. 

He was given two free days while in Atlanta, so him, his mom and his sister drove two hours to explore the University of Tennessee, since he had been in contact with the coach Tony Vitello for two months. While he had visited and talked with other colleges, he felt his conversations with the Tennessee coach were much more natural and he loved the campus and baseball stadium, as well as the compact college town feel of Knoxville, Tenn.

“As soon as I stepped on the campus it felt right,” Jack said. “I visited a few other schools too and they didn’t feel the same. Walking on the Tennessee campus and seeing everything there, there was nothing I didn’t like.”

After being blown away by his personal visit to the University in the summer, Jack made the call to Tony informing him that he will be officially verbally committing to the University of Tennessee — eager to continue his academic and baseball career. 

The relationships he’s made with Jeremy and Will have coached him in baseball, and through life, helping him grow to be the person he is today. Lyndsey says that these men have been unbelievable influences in Jack’s life that have helped to guide and show him that they have faith in him. 

“They both help me grow as a guy,” Jack said. “They have stepped into that father figure role and helped me learn how to be a man.”

Ranked number two in Kansas for his age by Prep Baseball Report, Jack is proud of the hard work he’s put into the sport, and can’t wait to now play at the college level. He constantly analyzes videos his mom takes of him at games to make sure his swing looks right and notice if his feet are falling out of the box or hands are dropping — then goes to work on different drills to improve skills and maintain consistency.

“Jack, he gets the sport,” Lyndsey said. “There’s something about it that he just understands. If he’s not doing something correctly, he goes to his coaches and he’s really good at self-correction.”