When Personal Best Does Not Net Team Success
Jones turned inward to find reconciliation
Mike Brohard
There were plenty of questions running through her mind as she exited the court. Euphoria had just been introduced to torment.
When the day started, Malaya Jones and her Colorado State volleyball teammates stood three set victories away from the NCAA Tournament. During the course of the match, those three sets were whittled all the way down to just one point. Three times, actually.
When the match was completed with Fresno State, Jones had set a record for kills in a Mountain West Championship, 34 total. They came during a five-set thriller as she was set 57 times, hitting an astounding .439 to reach the record. She had dug up 18 balls, three fewer than the team’s libero, Kate Yoshimoto.
She was outstanding. She was also conflicted. Because as she exited the floor, she was thrilled with her performance, yet devastated by the reverse-sweep outcome as the Bulldogs advanced with a 20-25, 23-25, 26-24, 28-26, 15-12 victory.
Jones sought answers in the moment, yet a solution avoided her due to emotional circumstances. The address for reconciliation is not at the intersection of agony and ecstasy.
“I think it’s hard, but for me personally,” Jones said. “I was very satisfied with how I played, but I thought I could have done more for my team and helped them succeed, talked to them more, communicate what I see more and given more of myself to them. Win or lose, that would have been a bigger help. It didn’t end up going the way we wanted, and that part was hard for me.”
The agony wasn’t new to Jones or her teammates. In 2023, Emily Kohan’s first as the head coach, the Rams played in 13 five-set matches. The Rams lost eight of them, three being reverse sweeps. But on that one particular night, the stage was bigger, the outcome carried more weight.
How does one go about coming to grips with an outstanding individual performance in a team loss?
“None of us were good with it. She handled it well,” said setter Emery Herman, who dished out 55 assists and dropped five aces herself. “It wasn’t, ‘I stink, I’m defeated.’ She still comes in everyday and thinks she can do better and do more. She’s confident in herself, and we’re confident in her. She bounced back well from that, knowing we have a chip on our shoulder now. It’s not a defeating thing, it’s a motivating one.
“I think we all kind of internalized it. Now it’s a motivator for the season.”
Jones was the best player on the floor during the match, which no one questions. What she kept coming back to was she could have been better, and the solution she found wasn’t anything physical.
Kohan had her team do personality assessments, herself included. In this particular measure, the result is five types of voices: Pioneers, nurturers, guardians, connectives and creatives.
Herman herself is a nurturer. Most of the team graded out as creatives or guardians. There were only two pioneers.
Kohan and Jones.
“We can both be very demonstrative, or we can both drive people really hard in our competitiveness. The biggest thing about pioneers is win above all else,” Kohan said. “Sometimes you can light a grenade in the path. How can you keep that drive to win but also keep everybody on the same path with you?”
As the team prepares for the upcoming season – a schedule which opens with the annual home White Out vs. No. 11 Florida and has the Rams playing a second top-10 team a week later in Oregon – the coaches have a whiteboard on the court with the day’s practice plan. It’s drills they will do, team sessions in practice, even a few key buzzwords.
What’s on the back of the board is another part of the team’s training. The mental side.
“As a team we’ve focused on this. The other side of our whiteboard it has everybody’s name, everybody’s communication style, everybody’s favorite thing,” Kohan said. “Malaya has really embraced learning what Delaney McIntosh wants when Delaney gets a big dig. We’ve taken time in practice, when Delaney gets a big dig, we all go ‘favorite,’ and we go celebrate it. Malaya is putting in a lot of time to know what everybody wants and know what the love language is she needs to learn.”
I self-reflected. There’s more I could have done.Malaya Jones
When Jones talks about being better for her team, this is what she found to be true.
What people forget is the all-conference redshirt senior is relatively new to the game. She didn’t start until high school. Her first season of college volleyball at another school was a washout. Learning the game, she was also taught to focus on herself, improving her skills, hitting harder, jumping higher, defending with more gusto.
Once on campus at Colorado State, she figured out something was missing in all those lessons. Being a better player was a great goal and all, but how would she become a real teammate?
Thus, the questions in her head walking off the court.
“I immediately walked off the court, the game is over, and it doesn’t matter anymore. We have to move forward, think about what happened right now and what can we do to be better,” Jones said. “It was, ‘OK, how can I help my team better. How can I be a better teammate, a better contributor all around.’
“I self-reflected. There’s more I could have done.”
In the offseason, she watched the match at least 20 times. Naturally, she looked at things she physically could have altered, approach an attack differently, change up shots, avoid blocks. She looked at her defense, at the net and in the backcourt, but she spent more time looking at her surroundings.
When something went wrong for a teammate, did she see something she could have shared? When there was a good play, was she helping them celebrate enough?
“It was feedback of what I was seeing. Energy. I think confidence,” she said. “I think I was very much, ‘Malaya, you need to do great because we need to win.’ That’s great for me, but I look back at the film and there were so many little moments where I could see it and I didn’t say anything because I went back into myself. I could have given so much more feedback. I think hyping up people more than I did. I think I brought a lot of energy, but taking those tiny moments when people really killed it and making it a complete celebration, that energy would have carried us, and we would have been excited.”
When fall camp opened for the team, the whiteboard was filled out. Kohan and Herman have both seen Jones study the backside as much as the front. Kohan’s pretty sure if you quizzed her, she’d know those love languages and favorites.
They also see a different Jones on the court, reveling in those moments when the time comes and sharing information across the board when something goes awry in practice. Some growth takes time, some comes in a flash. Jones has proven she can be a quick study, opening 2023 as a front-line attacker then about 10 matches in, becoming a six-rotation force who could blast balls from the backrow.
Adapting is not an issue for the Santa Ana, Calif., native.
“An immature pioneers thinks you have no benefit to me, so I don’t care. Malaya has turned into the mature pioneer who brings people with her and is super inspiring for everyone else,” Herman said. “Malaya will admit this. That was her mentality last season, her play, her awards. She wants to win, but she was more focused on her. Now it’s how can I benefit someone else, say something, because there’s a way to talk to each voice, and she’s trying to talk to each voice how they like to be talked to.”
Herman understands the outside world may imply Jones’ approach as selfish, which she states is just not true. Deep down, every athlete has been directed in a similar manner, led to believe the better they play, the better the team performs. There isn’t an athlete who works on their game without the explicit target of being better.
Jones is still trying to be a better player, all-around. She has the confidence that in the big moments, she is the Ram who can be terminal. This year, she’s on the lookout for the big moments for her teammates, when they need a lift, a pat on the back or an atta-girl.
“I can have the best performance of my life, but my team doesn’t win, so what does that mean? Over the summer, I felt I needed to be able to contribute in every aspect of the team outside of myself and give more,” Jones said. “Last year, I put a lot on myself, myself, myself. In certain situations, that’s good. I think going into the summer, I was seeking to be all-around the best I can be. Now that I have reached a level, how do I get to the next level and bring my team with me?”
A pioneering spirit the Rams hope leads them to the desired destination. A journey worth celebrating. Together.
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