![]() ![]() So what I did was I imagined myself doing something great … So I would use my imagination. I mean, every class I went in, it was like, I was being bullied, picked on, chased home, pulled my hair, different things like that. ![]() In elementary and middle school, I was bullied really, really bad. “It’s important to have a dream regardless of what you’re going through. “I would talk to them about realizing their dreams,” Jones-McKenney told The Next. At the end of each event, Jones-McKenney, a future motivational speaker, addressed the youth. The Traveling All-Stars visited several schools in the region, where they ran assemblies focused on teaching drills and running scrimmages. While still in middle school herself, she teamed up with some of the older girls she knew who also played basketball, convinced local businesses to donate shoes and uniforms and created what she called the Traveling All-Stars. So I decided to work with the young people in the city.”Īnd she started the work immediately. And a number of other things that I was dreaming about. ![]() I had that dream at the age of eight years old. In her words, “my dream has always been to work with young people, play professional basketball. In most stories, this is the part where the narrative jumps ahead to decades down the line where Linnell Jones-McKenney, as an adult, works to make sure basketball is accessible for everyone and while Jones-McKenney has devoted much of her adult life to developing young women into basketball players, she didn’t wait around for adulthood to get started.Īfter earning a spot for herself on an organized team, Jones-McKenney wanted to create opportunities for other girls in and around Flint, Michigan. While some view the hard times they endure as rites of passage, Jones-McKenney worked to make sure others wouldn’t have it so tough. One young girl playing on one boys’ team in Michigan didn’t satisfy Linnell. Subscribers to The IX now receive 50% off their subscription to The Equalizer for 24/7 coverage of women’s soccer.Įven the child version of Linnell Jones-McKenney was not content just making dreams come true for herself. The IX is partnering with The Equalizer to bring more women’s sports stories to your inbox. I made the boys’ team in elementary school, and I started,” converting her first dream to a reality. Later on, Jones-McKenney says, “When they came to the house, they specifically said they wanted me to come out and play because I had proven that I was capable of playing with them. She called their bluff and the tension dissipated. They followed her home with the intention of starting a fight. Initially, the boys on the team expressed skepticism in the way young boys frequently do. She grew up in Michigan, a big state without a single organized team for young girls, forcing her at age eight to become the first girl in the state to join a boys’ team. Moreover, as a young girl in the late 1960s, she (then Linnell Jones) dreamed of playing competitive basketball at all. As far back as elementary school Linnell Jones-McKenney spent time during many of her classes dreaming about the future. ![]()
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