Meet Hurricane Laura : Esperanza’s Jones Has Found Time to Excel at Basketball, as Well as Volleyball and Soccer

Pity the parents of Laura Jones, Esperanza High School basketball star. Trying to keep the reins on their daughter was once a monumental task.

Consider these vignettes when Jones was 7 years old:

Scene One: Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco. Laura has disappeared again. Oh, there she is. About 50 feet up in the crow’s nest of that clipper ship.

Scene Two: Rim of the Grand Canyon: Where’s Laura? Oh, over there by the cliff, dangling upside down on the guard rail.

Scene Three: Colorado’s Rocky Mountains. Laura calls down to her parents to take her picture. Her dad looks through his lens and finds her--up on top of the ski lift tower.

“Yes, she was an active child,” Laura’s mother, Judy, said. “When she was 3, she would swing from the chandelier and jump off the balcony in our home. I finally told my husband, ‘No way. I can’t take this anymore.’ We had to find a way to channel all that energy.”

After enrolling her in dance, gymnastics, swimming, piano, singing and saxophone lessons, and getting her involved in soccer, track, basketball, volleyball and softball, the Jones have concluded that nothing--at least nothing they have tried--will settle her down.

“Her teachers asked me whether I thought she was ‘abnormal,’ ” Judy Jones said. “And they ask if we push her into these things. I say, ‘No way.’ She does it all on her own.”

And, like most 17-year olds, Laura knows best.

“I just like to keep active,” Jones said. “When I don’t do anything, I get bored really fast.”

Jones, a senior, has limited her main activities to three: basketball, volleyball and soccer, the latter being with a Los Angeles-based club team called the Nightmares.

This summer, Jones was selected to play soccer in the National Olympic Festival at Houston. Though Jones was five years younger than any other player on the West team, she started at fullback, and helped the West win a national championship.

“Soccer was my first love,” Jones said. “I probably like it the best of all the others . . . but I like to play the other sports, too.”

Though Jones could easily be a star on the Aztec soccer team, she says she plays club soccer for the better competition. Also, it allows her to play basketball, which is scheduled at the same time as high school soccer.

Mark Hill, Esperanza girls’ basketball coach, said Jones’ multisport schedule has positive and negative affects on his team.

“Laura’s in unbelievable condition,” Hill said. “She gets that from soccer. She can go 100% through the whole game. And volleyball gives her great upper body strength.”

But because of that, (playing other sports) she doesn’t spend a lot of time in the gym before basketball starts. For that reason, she hasn’t reached her full potential.”

Even so, Jones’ skills have given Esperanza reason to hope for a league championship this season.

“Laura has tremendous passing skills,” Hill said. “And she’s our best outside shooter. But it’s (shooting) a little against her nature. She’s sort of like a Magic Johnson-type. She’s great at setting up points--especially on the fast break.”

Still, Jones, an off-guard, is averaging 14 points a game this season and has made 42% of her shots. Also, she’s 20 steals short of breaking the Aztecs’ career record of 221.

“I don’t really pay attention to those (records and statistics) much,” Jones said. “I just like to play the game.”

Whichever game that might be.

This fall, Jones, an outside hitter, helped the Aztecs to an Empire League championship in volleyball.

This basketball season, she said, will probably be her last--at least until she finishes college. Jones has been offered athletic scholarships to play soccer at UC Santa Barbara, California and Colorado College at Colorado Springs.

“Wherever I go, it will be to play soccer,” Jones said. “It’s my main thing.”

What? And settle down to just one sport?

“Well, I’ll be in college,” Jones said. “I’m going to have a lot of other things to do.”