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Basketball in our back yard By Randy Capps SMITHFIELD — March usually brings with it the onset of spring, and it always brings college basketball in abundance. In this part of the world, “March Madness” starts with the ACC Tournament and doesn’t stop until someone cuts a net down during the NCAA national championship game. There are plenty of Tar Heels, Blue Devils and members of the Wolfpack hoping for success for their teams in postseason play. But there’s another brand of college basketball far closer to home — and you don’t have to brave I-40 to see the action in person. Johnston Community College fielded a women’s basketball team for the first time in school history this past season, and the men’s program was also restarted after a three-year hiatus. Starting a pair of basketball programs from the ground up has been a challenge, but it’s one that excites director of athletics Derrick Arnold. “We’ve learned a lot,” he said. “We’re moving right along and we feel comfortable about our foundation. It’s just a matter now of continuing to move forward and improving upon what we’ve learned from this past semester.” An unexpected hurdle came when the initial choice to lead the women’s team resigned on the day of the season opener. That’s when Josefvon Jones, an academic counselor at the college, decided to take the reins of the program. “I love the game of basketball,” he said. “I still work as the academic coordinator of the athletic program. … I had to step up.” While he enjoys the game, it’s clear that academics mean even more to him. “One thing is you have to be able to balance and manage your time,” Jones said. “We consider athletics an extracurricular activity. Those students who participate in athletics have to go the extra mile. Practice, managing the academics and staying eligible. Because the minute they go below 12 credit hours, they are no longer eligible to participate. “So we hammer that home. It’s important to us, because not only do we want to win on the court, we want to win in the classroom.” Men’s coach Jason Johnson had a little more time to build his first team at JCC, but not much. He was hired on March 1 of last year, which gave him a little more than three months to recruit his first group of Jaguars. Still, the appeal of running his own program was strong. “As an assistant coach, we all want to run our own program,” he said. “To not only The Jaguars stretch before taking on North Carolina’s junior varsity team at the Dean E. Smith Center in Chapel Hill. Photos by Dustin Gurley