How having an Air Force sergeant for a dad shaped ECS basketball star Kameron Jones

Before Kameron Jones led Evangelical Christian School to its first basketball state tournament appearance since 2014, his introduction to the game came on an Air Force base in Colorado.

His dad played on an intramural team while he was on active duty and his mom would bring him to the games as a 1-year-old. 

"There would be other kids there around the same age," Kevin Jones said. "They're squirming, crying, wanting bottles, wanting food. Kameron would literally sit there and turn his head back and forth and watch the whole game all the way through. It was crazy."

Now the ECS senior is a 6-foot-3 point guard with offers from Florida, Marquette and South Alabama among others. He was looking forward to playing in front of even more college coaches on the Nike EYBL circuit with Team Thad this summer but the circuit was cancelled due to COVID-19. 

He said he began to love the game when he was little, playing with his dad at the YMCA. They enjoy talking about sports, playing video games and playing each other in HORSE. 

"He shaped me into the man I am," Kameron said. "He's a great role model, someone I really look up to and I know he's always going to be there for me. I know he loves me and cares about me."

He said he has an easygoing relationship with his dad, who is an Air Force master sergeant, and that he's glad his dad makes an effort not to be super strict around the house. 

"I tried to purposely not do that, but some of the elements still leak over," Kevin said. "I'll say I adhere to a standard and I don't bend and break. Below the standard is not going to cut it. As far as folding your T-shirts in six-inch circles and putting your dish a certain way, nah it's not like that."

The first Air Force squadron Kevin was assigned to was created in response to operation Desert Storm. The U.S. already had satellites in place for long-range missile detection. But they needed to add the ability to warn soldiers about short-range missiles as well. 

"What they learned in Desert Storm is that we need short-range detection to give guys in theater warnings something is coming," Kevin said. "So they created that squadron and the focus of that squadron was short early warning detection.You’re talking missiles that may burn from anywhere from 45 seconds to five minutes and we had to get warning out within seconds of launch." 

So, at 19, the South Memphis native moved to Colorado Springs and embarked on a career of analyzing mission data, monitoring the health of the satellites, and putting them into orbit. 

"It was almost kind of surreal being 19-20 years old at the console of multibillion dollar stuff," Kevin said. "You go in and everybody has consoles in front of them. There’s big huge 100-inch projection screens and things around you that you’re monitoring. It’s pretty high tech."

He completed six years of active duty before moving back to Memphis and joining the Air Force National Guard so he could be closer to his family. When he first came back, he was an aircraft mechanic but he later worked in the maintenance hub and eventually took on his current role as a data analyst. 

Kameron said the main lessons he's learned from his dad are that every action has a consequence and to never give up. He said that's helped him as he goes through his basketball recruiting process. He's unranked in the 247Sports Composite but his recruitment is picking up steam as the Florida and Marquette offers came last month. 

"I just feel like with all that’s been going on now, I never thought that this wouldn’t happen," Kameron said. "I was always confident in myself and knew that I worked hard. It was frustrating, not having people see what they see in me now. I felt like I always worked hard and it was always in me."