North Jersey Male Athlete of the Week is 'in the zone' and leading his team
Ayden Jones was so intensely focused that he missed seeing his jersey change colors.
His Hackensack teammates began pointing it out to him in the fourth quarter of last Friday’s Super Football Conference game against Eastside.
“My man JoJo Farrington, he was talking to me in the huddle, saying, ‘Dude, you have a lot of blood on your jersey right now’,” Jones recalled. “I kind of just looked at him, I was like, ‘Nah, it’s fine. It’s probably somebody else’s blood.’ I knew it was bad when even Eastside was pointing out how I look crazy with all the blood on me.
“It just comes to a certain point where I’m just so in the zone, especially getting all these carries, that all the adrenaline’s with me. I didn’t even realize that I’m hurt.”
Hackensack’s playoff chances were hurting until Jones helped them move back over .500 with a 14-3 win. In rushing the ball 38 times, the senior running back/safety finished one shy of the school record for carries in a game, set by Mike Toal in 1996.
“Last year, I think the most I had was maybe just below 30,” Jones said.
The 5-foot-10, 185-pounder was equally quick to shift the focus to teammates in discussing the game – “all love to my linemen, they’re the reason why I’ve been so successful this season,” he said – including one who set up his biggest moment in the spotlight.
Eastside’s Jamar Jeter-Reynolds returned the second-half kickoff to the Comets’ 1, and that extra yard would have given the Ghosts a 9-7 lead.
“It was a great hustle play by one of our underclassmen,” Jones said. “Faheim Mitchell wound up stopping him and giving our defense a chance to hunker down.”
Jones and fellow senior Shawn Sowah finished off the goal-line stand with a fourth-down tackle at the 3 to preserve a 7-3 lead.
“It felt like too good to be true, because we both went unblocked, and then we wound up making a great play,” he said.
The Comets then staged an 8-play, 97-yard drive – all rushes by Jones – and a 45-yard touchdown run padded the margin to 11.
“He is a special, special player,” Hackensack coach Brett Ressler said.
Jones admitted that his preference is to play running back. Growing up playing for the city’s Junior Comets, he was actually a two-way lineman until eighth grade, at which point “I had a nice little growth spurt and slimmed out,” he said.
“Sophomore year, we had Curtis Whiting – another great running back to come out of Hackensack – so I didn’t have to go both ways,” Jones added.
He is now North Jersey’s leading rusher with 1,433 yards (204.7 per game) and received a college offer from Delaware State in June. Currently, all he has decided definitively about his future is that he wants to major in business.
Jones has been doing his research when it comes to college football, mainly as it relates to his favorite New York Giant.
“I’d say the majority of the college tape that I watched was Saquon Barkley, his highlights at Penn State,” Jones said. “Since he was in college, I’ve just kept on watching his film, and I kind of try to model my style of play after him.”
Ayden Jones
Sport: Football
School: Hackensack
Class: Senior. Age: 17
Accomplishment: Jones rushed for 275 yards and two touchdowns on 38 carries (1 off of the school record) and made a key fourth-and-goal tackle to help the Comets top Eastside.
Also nominated: Jayden Ferrer of Elmwood Park, Cole Hughes of Park Ridge, Zach Schnorrbusch of Ramapo, Frank Billings of Hasbrouck Heights, Kevin Regula of Pascack Valley, and Bobby Kuenzler of Ridgewood for football; and Alex Jacob of Demarest for soccer.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bergen Record Male Athlete of the Week: Ayden Jones, Hackensack
