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Rose Bud standout resumes baseball career after hiatus
BY NATE OLSON | CONTRIBUTING WRITER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STACI VANDAGRIFF | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
After dominating youth baseball, Dugan Jones traded in his bat for a shotgun. If it hadn’t been for Rose Bud baseball coach Taylor Cooper, Jones may have never picked up a bat again.
“I didn’t really enjoy [travel ball]. Well, I did, but there were some experiences that weren’t very good,” Jones said.
After playing three years of travel baseball, Jones gave it up to join the trap-shooting team at Rose Bud. When Cooper came to Rose Bud to coach in Jones’ seventh-grade year, he eventually began playing again and didn’t miss a beat.
Jones’ renewed love of the game spelled bad news for Rose Bud opponents. The senior third baseman/pitcher led the state with 8 home runs last year, while hitting .463 with 36 RBIs. He also finished 7-1 on the mound and struck out 104 batters with a 2.46 ERA.
He earned Arkansas All-Prep first-team hon- ors and is the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Three Rivers Edition 2020 Player to Watch.
“It’s definitely a lot harder for a kid from a smaller school to get seen, compared to a player at a bigger school like Cabot,” said Jones, a 6-3, 220-pounder. “It was a huge honor. I put in a lot of hard work with teammates and made sacrifices. I think that shows I could play at a bigger school.”
Jones seemed on his way to baseball stardom growing up. He began playing baseball at age 5 at Rose Bud. He starred for a 6U team, then moved up to the 8U team and played for three years. In his final year, he said, he hit “four or five home runs” over the fence.
Word traveled about his diamond prowess, and Jones began playing travel baseball for the Rawlings Arkansas Prospects 9U team in
Sherwood. However, three years in that program soured Jones on baseball, and he gave it up for trap shooting.
Cooper, a Concord native,
came to Rose Bud when Jones was
a seventh-grader. Cooper began a
baseball conversation with Jones
then and convinced the former star to
play for a 14-year-old team the coach
organized during Jones’ eighth-grade
year. Jones picked up where he left off
and was a freshman starter on Cooper’s varsity squad a year later. Several of those players from the 14-year-old team are now seniors on a team that hopes to make its first state-tournament appearance in 20 years.
“We’ve all played for [Cooper] since eighth grade, and that has really helped,” Jones said.
Everything came together for Jones last season as he compiled one of the great individual perfor- mances in school history.
“I didn’t really know how truly good I was until last year,” Jones said. “Going into last year, I didn’t have any college scouts looking at me. I didn’t have any offers yet. My mindset was, ‘I have two years left of high school ball. I’m just going to enjoy it.’ I just wanted to go out there and have fun and play the game the right way. My dream was still to go play college ball, but I didn’t think I’d hit eight home runs. In my eyes, that was an accident.
“My mindset going to the plate was, ‘Hit it hard every time, and run the bases.’ Most of the [home runs] were line drives. I didn’t kill it; I just hit it. I didn’t go up there saying, ‘I am going to hit this one out.’ It just happened.”
JONES continued on 18SS