Cane Bay High School senior student-athlete Hailey Jones is the winner of the seventh annual Best of Prep Sports female scholar-athlete award.
Jones is a rocket scientist in terms of grade-point average. Her 5.275 GPA puts her among the school’s top five graduates set to walk across the stage inside the North Charleston Coliseum this month.
Jones has lettered four years in both cross country and track and field, making steady progress to become a next-level athlete. She will further a distance-running career in cross country and track and field at Converse College.
“It’s kind of unbelievable what she’s able to do,” Cane Bay track and field coach Greg Hall said. “She balances so much between running cross country, running track, being in the band and making sure she’s doing the best she can with school work. We just got fourth-quarter progress reports and she has one class that she doesn’t have 100 in, and that’s because it’s one of the toughest classes we have at Cane Bay. I would have a 0.5 GPA doing all that that. She puts in the time and effort in track. Even when she has to miss, she does the work on her own. She doesn’t use one to make an excuse for another.”
Some highlights for Jones this fall were a Top-7 spot in the Cobra Invitational, Top-15 finish in the Stags Stampede and a 16th-place finish in the Region 6-5A championship meet. This spring, Jones has placed as high as third in a 3,200-meter race for the Cobras. She has also competed in the 1,600-meter run.
“She’s an overall great kid and deserving of an award like this,” Hall said. “Being smart only takes you so far. You have to make sure you’re studying and doing your part to make sure you have the type of grades she has.”
