Time for reflection has latterly been thin on the ground, Eleanor Jones concedes. Perspective and pondering can come later still. Barely two weeks ago, the towering teenager from Ayr was turning out for her school basketball team while focusing attention on her forthcoming exams.
Out of the blue came an invitation to the senior Great Britain training camp and then, the pleasant surprise, of confirmation from new head coach Jose Maria Buceta that she would be included in his line-up at the outset of the EuroBasket qualifying campaign. “I don’t try to process the fact that I’ve gone from my school side to GB,” said Jones, who turns 18 today. “It’s just all come all at once. But it’s good. It keeps me busy.”
After earning a first senior cap while remaining on the bench in last Saturday’s defeat to Montenegro, Jones will hope for an active cameo in Manchester tonight against Italy. Yet even the role of spectator was instructive. “You see just how intense it is, how quick it is, how much more the players have at this level.”
She is, by any scale, a fast learner. It less than four years since Jones put ball through a hoop for the first time, cajoled reluctantly by her mother to explore if it might be where her talents lay. “She found Ayr Storm by looking on their website. I came home one day and she went: ‘you’re going to training on Monday night’. I was a bit reluctant but I went along and loved it.”
Her younger sister Megan has followed suit by appearing for Scotland’s Under-16 team. And she may emulate her sibling by moving south in search of the sterner competition Jones has found at Charnwood College in Loughborough where a dedicated basketball programme has afforded the specialist tuition required to excel. “I was only 15 when I went,” she says. “But I learnt a lot from taking that chance. It helped me mature really quickly.”
It has also opened the door to playing for Leicester Riders in the domestic WBBL. That may just be a pit stop. Pitches from American universities have begun, phone calls, emails and Facebook messages all avenues to sell the attractions of taking one more giant leap of faith come next summer.
“I’m still deciding on my options,” Jones admits. “But there’s also the life experience aspect. I’d love to travel to see new places.”
FIXTURE
Wednesday
EuroBasket qualifier (Manchester). Great Britain v Italy (7pm)
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