Upon receiving a scholarship offer Thursday from UConn coach Randy Edsall, Kevon Jones didn’t have much of a decision to make.
“I already knew what I was going to tell them, so it was a lot of weight off my shoulders,” said Jones, a linebacker from East Hartford High. “As soon as he offered me a scholarship, I knew this was the place for me to be. I’ve been waiting since I was a kid to go here. This is where I want to be and this is where my family wants me to be.” Jones spent his middle school years in UConn’s Goal Line Project, a mentoring initiative that partnered UConn football players with adolescents in East Hartford. He also attends several games a year at Rentschler Field.
“I grew up on UConn football so it’s really a pleasure to be a UConn Husky now,” said Jones, who is also the starting quarterback at East Hartford. “That was really a great experience. It really helped us to see what we needed to do to get to college football. It kept us in check. And now, seeing that I’m going to UConn, I hope that one day that could be me, going back to my middle school so they can see that I actually took something from Goal Line.”
Jones, who accepted Edsall’s scholarship offer upon returning to campus Saturday, also credits the Supreme Athlete mentoring program in Bloomfield with helping him reach a point where he was deserving of an FBS-level scholarship. Supreme Athlete is run by Stanley Williams, a Weaver High and UConn graduate who was a walk-on player for the Huskies in 2004-05.
Asaph Schwapp, another Weaver graduate and the Connecticut player of the year in 2004 before playing at Notre Dame, is the program’s honorary director.
According to its website, Supreme Athlete’s mission “is to serve communities by reaching and teaching our youth through academics and athletics. Our work focuses on the academic, social, and athletic development of our youth.”
Jones, who said he wasn’t always on track academically or socially to receive a college scholarship offer, remains involved with Supreme Athlete, saying the program, “changed my life.”
According to the East Hartford statistics compiled by maxpreps.com, Jones, who spent time last season at quarterback and running back, had 333 yards on 30 carries (an average of 11.1) and a team-high 101 tackles.
Jones is the youngest of six children. His mother, Avril Brown, and father, Trevor Jones, are originally from Jamaica.
Jones, the first high school junior to commit to UConn in this recruiting cycle, said UConn was the first program to offer him a scholarship. He said UMass and Syracuse were the other FBS programs that had begun recruiting him.
BY: Mike Anthony
