Three-time Olympian and Mount Olive native Sam Jones resides in the house where she grew up on Elmore Street. Jones played team handball in the Olympics, but spent her childhood, teen and college years playing other sports, including basketball, which earned her a college scholarship. ‘I dribbled up and down this street right here, against the ‘Invisible Woman’ when I was growing up, because I wanted to be that good,’ says Jones. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
In addition to playing at the most elite level in her sport, participating in the Olympics gave handball player Sam Jones the opportunity to meet other world-class athletes. She met members of the U.S. men’s basketball ‘Dream Team,’ including Michael Jordan, at the ‘92 Games. (Sam Jones|Courtesy photo)
Prior to making the U.S. women’s handball team for the ‘84 Olympics, Mount Olive native and East Carolina University basketball standout Sam Jones tried out for the women’s Olympic basketball team in 1980. Here, she holds her Certificate of Participation for those tryouts. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Growing up in Mount Olive, Sam Jones was ‘a little tomboy’ who played outside every day. She went to college on a basketball scholarship, played handball in three Summer Olympics, and had a 20-year career with UPS. Upon retiring in 2016, she moved back to her childhood home on Elmore Street. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
One of the many joys of retirement for Sam Jones is having plenty of time to do what she enjoys, including dog-sitting Noah, her niece’s French bulldog. (Kathy Grant Westbrook|mountolivetribune.com)
Mount Olive’s Sam Jones, right, has met many elite athletes over the years. One of her favorites is former basketball Olympian Dawn Staley, who is now the head women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina. (Sam Jones|Courtesy photo)
A modest house on Elmore Street bookends Sam Jones’ life. It’s where she grew up and where she lives in retirement. But, in between, there’s quite a story to tell. (Spoiler alert: she competed in three Summer Olympic Games!)
Jones, 63, was one of six children born to Ruthie and Ernest “Red” Jones. Her given name is Leora, but her dad nicknamed her “Sam” and it stuck.
“I grew up a little tomboy,” she remembers. “Back then, we didn’t have all this technology, so we played outside every day. Played something, every day, in the yard.” She went on to play tennis, softball and basketball at Southern Wayne.
“Not only did I want to be on the team, I wanted to stand out,” she says. “I wanted to be a star. So I practiced, I went to basketball camps in the summer.”
Jones will give a first-hand account of all her experiences Thursday, Feb. 29, at the Steele Memorial Library in Mount Olive. The event, which begins at 6 p.m., is free and open to the public.
Nodding toward the quiet street running in front of her home, she reflects on her younger self, “I dribbled up and down this street right here, against the ‘Invisible Woman’ when I was growing up, because I wanted to be good. And then I played with the boys a lot…[because] at that time, the girls weren’t as good as the guys.
“That’s one of the reasons I went to college on a basketball scholarship, because of my drive to be good,” she adds.
She played basketball at two-year Louisburg College, then at East Carolina University, and was eventually inducted into both schools’ Halls of Fame.
While she was a star basketball player at ECU, she also enjoyed playing racquetball with friends, and it was while doing so that she noticed flyers advertising tryouts for the National Sports Festival for a sport called “team handball.”
Seeing the word “handball,” she envisioned the game as it’s known in America — a couple of players competing by slamming a hard rubber ball against a wall — and it immediately appealed to her fierce, competitive nature. Team (or European) handball, as it turns out, is nothing like the American sport; still, Jones tried out for the team and made it.
Jones’ brief, simplified explanation of team handball is that it’s played on a basketball-like court, with a soccer-type goal on each end. Over the course of two 30-minute halves, both seven-member teams are trying to score against each other using a ball that’s about the size of a Number 2 soccer ball (smaller than what is used in professional soccer). At the end of the court where the action is taking place, Jones says, six of one team’s defenders line up around the equivalent of the three-point line in basketball, as six offensive players from the other team “jump and try to throw over the defense past the goalie or try to throw through the defense past the goalie,” she says. No one other than the goalie is allowed inside the “three-point line” she explains.
Jones took to the sport immediately. “I loved it,” she recalls. “I never played basketball again.
“It came pretty natural to me,” she continues. “I just had to learn the techniques, when to shoot, when not to shoot. And mostly defense, in basketball, you’re not allowed to make a lot of contact. In handball, you’re allowed to make contact…So fouling is good in handball, but it wasn’t in basketball, so I had to adjust to making contact and it be ok.”
Jones made the U.S. Women’s National Team and went on to play in three Summer Olympic Games: ‘84 in Los Angeles; ‘88 in Seoul, South Korea; and ‘92 in Barcelona, Spain.
Jones and her U.S. teammates, all newbies to the sport, found themselves going toe to toe with women who’d started playing the game at a much younger age. “In the ’84 Olympics, I was just getting started, and I had been playing two years, and we’re playing against people that have been playing 15, 20 years or more,” she says. “So we were never supposed to win a gold, a silver, or a bronze.”
The closest Jones came to an Olympic medal was in ’84, when the U.S. team tied for fourth, just a whisper away from the bronze. Not surprisingly, that was her favorite Olympics, partially because of how well the team performed, but also because her emotions were running high, both from being in her first Olympics and from playing on home turf, so to speak.
Jones struggles to find the words when reflecting on this experience. “It’s a feeling I can’t really describe. The only thing I can tell you is it’s a feeling I knew was earned, and yes, I cried, but it was one of the happiest times of my life to see that many people watching you walk out representing your country,” and she pauses, before adding, “I’m very patriotic.”
In addition to participating at the highest level in a sport she loved, representing the United States in team handball also afforded Jones the opportunity to travel extensively and to meet other elite athletes. “This is a foreign sport, so we would train in America for two or three months, and then we’d go to Europe for like a month. Or Asia…or Scandinavia…or Latin America for a month.”
Among the many renowned athletes she met over the years were the members of the famed ’92 United States men’s basketball “Dream Team.” She also has particularly fond memories of meeting Dawn Staley, who played women’s basketball in the ’96, ’00, and ’04 Olympics and is now head coach at the University of South Carolina.
Other favorites, she says, “were handball players from different countries, mostly Russia, Germany and Yugoslavia; they had some of the top players.”
Following the ’92 Olympics, Jones stayed on with the U.S. National Team, serving as assistant coach until ’95. Then, with her parents getting older, she returned to North Carolina and began a 20-year career with UPS. By 2016, her father had passed away, she’d had three back surgeries, and her mom was showing signs of dementia, so she retired from UPS and moved back to the family home in Mount Olive. Her mother died last May.
When asked if she still stays active, the former Olympic athlete jokes, “I’m trying to play pickleball,” explaining that she plays with seniors through the Parks and Recreation Department. Laughing, she continues, “I’ve never been so humiliated in my life until I started playing pickleball…I thought I was going to go out here and play pickleball with these older people. Wrong answer. They wore me out. They still wear me out.” But she clearly enjoys it, describing it as “pure fun.”
Of retirement, she says, “I actually love it, doing nothing, watching movies and different shows on TV…. I like having free time. I like doing what I want to do when I want to do it.” She enjoys spending time fishing (pier and deep-sea), visiting with family, and dog-sitting her niece’s French bulldog, Noah.
She continues to follow sports, attending Southern Wayne’s home basketball games, and admitting, “In the future, I want to be more involved. Deep down in my heart, I’m not interested in coaching. I would love to give some clinics and teach kids the fundamentals of basketball…Hopefully, if not this year, then next year.”
And, of course, she keeps up with team handball. She notes with disappointment that the U.S. women didn’t qualify for the upcoming 2024 Games in Paris. That won’t keep her from watching though. From the comfort of the home she grew up in, traveled far from, and returned to, she plans to tune in to the sport that took her around the world.
