Aiko Jones helps Louisville achieve goals, wants more
Published:Friday | December 24, 2021 | 12:07 AMHubert Lawrence/Gleaner Writer
WHEN UNIVERSITY of Louisville’s Jamaican volleyball star Aiko Jones looked ahead in late September, she said, “Our goal is to win the conference again and to make it as far as we made it last year, we made it to the Sweet Sixteen, or further.”
With Jones making a sterling contribution, Louisville went undefeated in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and bettered the stated goal at the NCAA Volleyball Championships.
However, the Louisville team lost in the NCAA semi-final to the University of Wisconsin.
Playing at home, Louisville extended its 29-0 winning streak with straight set wins over the University of Illinois Chicago, Ball State University and the University of Florida to better last season’s Sweet Sixteen finish. Then Jones and her teammates advanced to the semi-finals, beating Georgia Tech three sets to one.
With five final-year student athletes in the team, Louisville quietly hoped for more.
A STEP CLOSER TO THE GOAL
“We take every challenge as it comes and we treat them as one step closer to getting to that goal. So we’ve talked about making it to a national championship,” said Jones in September.
However, it wasn’t to be as Wisconsin beat Louisville 25-23, 15-25, 25-21, 23-25, 15-9 in a December 16 encounter played in Columbus, Ohio, where Louisville outmatched the winners on aces and digs and tied them on blocks.
Jones, a right-sided attacker, who played for Jamaica in the 2017 Caribbean Championships, scored with 9 kills in that losing effort. On a seasonlong basis, the 6-2 Jamaican led all her teammates with 39 service aces and chipped in with 245 kills and 127 blocks. The last two statistics ranked among the top five on her team.
Buoyed by this win over the top-seeded Louisville Cardinals, Wisconsin won the final 3-2 over the University of Nebraska days later.
Louisville did retain its ACC crown, 24-26, 25-13, 25-23, 25-13 on November 26. Tori Dilfer, one of Louisville’s outgoing seniors, was named ACC setter of the year.