Southridge’s Alyssa Jones is Miami-Dade County Girls’ Track and Field Athlete of the Year

Alyssa Jones will go down as one of the great track and field athletes in the history of South Florida, but she has never been defined just by her sport and the eight state championships she won in four years at Southridge.

The senior is the Miami Herald’s Miami-Dade County Girls’ Track and Field Athlete of the Year, but she’s also going to compete for the Stanford Cardinal for a reason. Jones is one of Miami’s consummate student-athletes.

“It’s just something I have to do and like to do,” Jones said. “It’s something I love.”

Jones balanced a rigorous schedule filled with advanced placement classes against her sport and still finished high school with the second-most state titles by a girls’ track and field athlete in the history of Dade County.

She won one championship as a freshman, three as a junior and finished her career by winning four — the most possible — at the Class 3A championship last month. Her eight titles are second to only Robin Reynolds, who set a Florida High School Athletic Association record with 14 for Jackson from 2009-2012, and she did it without getting a chance to add any as a sophomore after the state meets were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jones also joins Reynolds as the only South Florida girls to win four championships at a single state meet.

Jones has been one of the great high jumpers in Florida since she got to high school. She won the Class 4A high jump as a freshman back in 2019, then again in 3A in 2021, adding additional 3A titles in the long jump and 100-meter dash. In 2022, she won all three again and also won her first championship in the 200 dash.

It all happened after she battled an injury in the middle of the season, too.

“My biggest achievement this year would probably be coming back,” Jones said, “and do well at state.”

ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE

At Stanford, Jones plans to study environmental engineering and she’s as excited about the educational components of college as she is about her athletics.

“It’s a very learning-centered environment,” she said. “I’m really excited because, even though it sounds corny, I really do like learning.”

It has been instilled in her since she was young.

When Jones was in sixth grade and at a new school, she was struggling with her grades, she said, and her parents threatened her with taking away track and field.

It was all the motivation she needed. Academics and athletics have always in intertwined for the decorated athlete, and it makes the Cardinal a perfect fit.

Said Jones: “My parents put education above everything.”