Mya Jones (23) and Juneau Jones (42) play basketball for Rapid City Central High School in Rapid City, South Dakota. Photos courtesy Callie Carlson

Cobblers are keeping up with the Joneses
Mya and Juneau Jones epitomize Central’s Lakota tradition
By James Giago Davies
Native Sun News Correspondent

North Rapid was once just windblown buffalo grass and weathered out buildings. Desperation drove most to live there; maybe they had lost the family homestead to the Great Depression, maybe they saw it as an escape from an isolated reservation life of poverty, but whether Wasicu or Lakota, they brought their poverty to the one part of Rapid City that would make room for them.

They also brought their hopes, their dreams, their industry, and a community sprang up, held together by neighborhood schools and family grocery stores, and it grew big, stretching from Omaha Street in the south, to Interstate 90 in the north. At some point the Jones family arrived from the Rosebud Indian Reservation, the home of the Sicangu Lakota. Tony Jones became a fixture in the North Rapid community, mainly through sports, as a referee, coach and mentor.

Mostly he worked with breed iyeska like himself, but it was inevitable he would eventually mentor an entire generation of Wasicu youth as well. It was also inevitable the distinct ethnic and economic sections of North Rapid would not remain distinct, but would meld together in the upcoming generations.

There was only one high school in Rapid City, and they were the Cobblers. Lakota ballplayers played for that high school, and when the schools split in 1970, and Stevens High School became the high school west of the Gap, Rapid City Central became the school iyeska from North Rapid called their own.

Mya and Juneau Jones, daughters of Chuck Jones, are the latest examples of that proud and impressive tradition. Both are students at Rapid City Central, Mya a junior, and Juneau a freshman, and they are presently the heart and soul of a pretty good Cobbler basketball team. Like so many Lakota, their grandfather Tony had basketball in his blood, and would have been extremely proud of their accomplishments. Back in his heyday there was no girls high school basketball. But 40 years ago Title IX forced the state to provide girls with equal access to the sport.

Those first teams were pretty rudimentary, a rough and tumble game with a lot of loose balls and missed shots and broken plays, and Deb Barber was the first hardnosed iyeska ballplayer the Cobblers produced. She was known for her physical strength and tough defense. Competition tightened up skill-wise in less than a decade, and today Mya and Juneau have a knowledge of the game, a training regimen of gym work outs, summer leagues and basketball camps that would have been the envy of their male counterparts a half century ago.

Mya Jones, left, and Juneau Jones. Photo courtesy Callie Carlson

Reservation ball is characterized by a high degree of individuality. This is a product of a free spirit culture which honors and respects the individual above all else. At Central, tough defensive discipline was introduced back in the Fifties by Coach Bill Mitchell, institutionalized by all-time coaching great Dave Strain into the 1980’s, and iyeska Cobbler ballplayers learned to blend their highly creative style of individual play with gritty team defense, a tradition still carried on by Cobbler Girl’s Head Coach Kraig Blomme.

When asked what their standard Cobbler defense was, Juneau did not hesitate in responding, “Full court press.”

Mya: “We wear the other team down, pretty much.”

“You don’t often see full court press whole games,” their stepfather Nick Carlson added. “Blomme will call full court press the entire game.”

Which is great for the Jones girls, because both sisters excel at defense. Juneau’s mother, Callie Carlson, said: “One of the things the coaches said about Juneau is, ‘I can put her on the tallest player, I can put her on the shortest player, I can put her on the best player, and she will shut ‘em down.’”

Read the rest of the story on the all new Native Sun News website: Cobblers are keeping up with the Joneses

(Contact James Davies Giago at skindiesel@msn.com)

Copyright permission Native Sun News