Mar. 10—HIGH POINT — Ashley Jones may run without a limb, but she also runs without limitations.
The High Point University freshman cross country runner, who took up distance running after losing her right arm in a grisly ATV accident five years ago, proved it at Friday’s Big South Cross Country Championships at Winthrop University, where her ninth-place finish was strong enough to earn All-Conference honors and the Freshman of the Year award. Her stellar performance also helped the Panthers win their fourth consecutive conference championship and their seventh overall.
“It was a great day and a great race — the girls did awesome,” says Jones, 19, of Castle Pines, Colorado. “It was a great way to end the season after all the bumps that we’ve had.”
But then, Jones knows all about overcoming bumps — that’s been her story for the past five years.
In 2016, Jones had it all — a happy childhood, terrific friends, and a close-knit, loving family who supported her athletic endeavors. At the time, soccer was her favorite sport, and she excelled at it.
Jones enjoyed that blissful, carefree existence until March 3, when her 46-year-old father, Damian, unexpectedly died of a heart attack. Jones was crushed — she’d been especially close to her dad, who was probably her loudest, most enthusiastic cheerleader.
Three months later, just as she was beginning to find her emotional footing again, Jones mangled her right arm when an ATV she was a passenger on crashed while taking a curve too fast. As the crash happened, she instinctively stuck out her right arm to brace herself, but that worsened the damage when her arm was pinned in the wreckage. When the dust settled, her broken arm was still attached at the shoulder — barely — and she was bleeding profusely.
Doctors had no choice but to amputate, and Jones was forced to grapple with a new reality. In a span of only three months, the 14-year-old had lost her father and her right arm.
“It was just so hard to grasp what was going on in my life,” Jones recalls. “Because of all the pain I was going through physically and emotionally and mentally, that was the hardest part for me: Why do I have to struggle like this? Why do I have to feel this much pain?”
Ultimately, her family, her friends and her God were there for her.
“My support group was just amazing,” Jones says. “And there were so many days where I felt the Lord’s strength was getting me through that day. I couldn’t have gone through what I went through without my faith in the Lord.”
Physically, Jones’ most intense pain was phantom pain, a throbbing pain common among amputees in which the brain continues to send pain signals related to the site of the lost limb. She took oxycodone daily for a year before finally weaning herself off of it.
“Phantom pain is still something I experience 24-7,” she says. “It’s quite painful, and it hasn’t subsided since the accident. I deal with it every day.”
Jones also had to relearn once-simple tasks — brushing her hair, cutting up her food, riding a bike — that seemed impossible to perform with only one hand. She learned many of those tasks at Beautifully Flawed, a retreat for young women amputees. The retreat was founded by Bethany Hamilton, a professional surfer who lost her left arm in a shark attack and established the retreat to help other young women.
Eventually, Jones dreamed of returning to organized sports. She wanted to play high-school soccer, but her body’s unstable weight distribution — caused by the amputation of her arm — gave her less body control than she needed on the field. She turned to distance running instead, joining the school’s track and cross country teams, and quickly began to thrive.
Her success — and her potential — caught the eye of Remy Tamer, women’s cross country coach at HPU. He liked what he saw and signed Jones to come here this past fall. She’s running on the track team, as well.
Jones didn’t let her coach down. Despite being in quarantine for 15 days a few weeks ago — because of possible COVID-19 exposure and contact tracing requirements — she continued working hard and set her sights on trying to make All-Conference at last Friday’s conference championships. Her ninth-place finish not only earned her All-Conference honors (the top 12 runners receive that distinction), she was also the top freshman finisher, earning her the Freshman of the Year award.
“Ashley Jones is a person that I guarantee you no one in our conference was looking at when they saw that we signed her, and now she will be a name that they will never forget at every championship beyond this point,” Tamer said Friday.
“Not only is she a talented athlete, but she has a steel fortitude and will, and today was a great testament to that.”
It’s also a great testament to just how far the young woman has come in the past five years. Jones may be missing an arm, but clearly there’s nothing wrong with her heart.
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