Haley Jones always thought basketball would take her places. Now, that’s proving to be true, though Belarus may not have been the first place the phenom from Santa Cruz imagined she’d go in the sport.
Jones on Wednesday was named to the USA Basketball team for the FIBA U17 World Cup, scheduled for July 21-29 in Minsk, Belarus.
Jones spent the last week at an elite, invitation-only training camp at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She survived Monday’s first cut, from 158 players to 18, and was named among the final 12 Wednesday evening.
The squad includes eight players who helped the USA qualify for the World Cup and four newcomers, including Jones, who is one of only two players from California. The other is Charisma Osborne of Moreno Valley in Southern California.
The team will be coached by Carla Berube, the Tufts University coach.
“I think all 18 worked extremely hard the last couple of days here,” Berube said in a statement, “but I think the 12 players the committee selected are just a great combination of players that have a lot of talent and great work ethic. And we’ll get them together to jell on the court and off it, too.”
The 6-foot-2 Jones, who just wrapped up her junior year at San Jose’s Archbishop Mitty High, will return home this week for a brief stay. She will reunite with the World Cup team on July 4 for training camp before flying to Latvia for some friendlies. The team is scheduled to arrive in Belarus, located between Poland and Russia, on July 17.
It no doubt will feel like another world for a girl who has never been out of the country.
The USA will open against Italy at 5:15 a.m. on July 21. It will also face Mali (July 22, 5:30 a.m.) and China (July 24, TBD) and hopes to advance to the Round of 16 on July 25. The gold medal game will be contested July 29. The USA has won the biennial tournament, which started in 2010, every year except 2016, when it finished third.
Making the team is another plume in the Jones’ hat. This year alone she was named the only junior among the five USA Today first-team All-Americans. She also is the 2018 Gatorade California Player of the Year the No. 1 recruit at the wing position in the ESPN HoopGurlz Super 60 list.