While not giving up on her WNBL dream, Caitie Jones is excited to be about to head to Germany and before that is firmly focused on helping the Lakeside Lightning firstly try to overcome her former Warwick Senators team.
Jones might only be 23 years of age, but the dynamic guard has already crammed a whole lot into her basketball career starting in the SBL at the Warwick Senators as a 16-year-old while a regular in West Australian state teams.
She was then part of a Senators team that made the Grand Final in 2019 and then embarked on her time in college at the University of Idaho and since then, has been splitting her time between playing back home in the NBL1 West and overseas.
Jones came back for a season at the Senators in 2021 but is now in her third season at Lakeside while having started playing professionally as well with a year in Egypt, a season in Luxembourg and now preparing to play in Germany for the first time.
As soon as her current season with Lakeside is done, Jones will be on the plane to prepare for the DBBL season with BC Pharmaserv Marburg, but all her focus right now is on Thursday's semi-final for Lakeside against the Senators at Warwick Stadium.
Semi-final battle on Thursday
With Lakeside having beaten the Perth Redbacks last Friday night and the Senators losing to open the finals to the Cockburn Cougars, the seasons of both now go on the line this Thursday night.
The winner will advance to a preliminary final on Saturday against the Rockingham Flames while the season is over for the loser, and Jones can't wait.
"I'm excited and I think it's going to be a great game. Obviously we played them two weeks ago and we didn’t play at the highest level we can so I don't think that's a fair indication of where both teams are at," Jones said.
"That was a pretty rough game for us so I'm excited to try and get a bit of redemption for that and that's going to be good to try and do that."
Returning to old home floor
Having played all her junior basketball at Warwick and then her first five seasons at senior level with the Senators, Jones will always have fond memories any time she walks back into Warwick Stadium.
There will be plenty of familiar faces she sees there again on Thursday night on and off the court, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to beat her old team perhaps more than any other opponents.
"It does feel a little bit weird going back to Warwick and really both clubs feel like home to me after spending all my years growing up at Warwick, and now feeling like I've fitted in so well at Lakeside the last three years," Jones said.
"I still have a lot of love for the club from a management standpoint and my former teammates there who did so much for me growing up. I still have a lot of love for Warwick, but not so much when the game starts and I do have a feel of really wanting to get them.
"I want to show that I've left there and ticked them off sort of thing, but also the other half of me feels nice going back to where you grew up playing with so many people there who I know and have such a history with."
Familiar faces in the back court
What the semi-final match up means specifically for Jones is back court match ups with former teammates including 478-game veteran Nicole Jorre de St Jorre, two-time MVP Stacey Barr and All First Team member Chloe Forster.
Jones is looking forward to that challenge and to continue to embrace whatever is thrown in front of her on the back of 33 points last Friday night against the Redbacks, and having averaged 21.7 points, 5.2 rebounds and 2.9 assists in the regular season.
"I loved playing with Stacey and Nic who I did get to spend several seasons with, and Chloe as well but I didn’t get as much time with her because she was a little bit younger when I was still at Warwick before college," Jones said.
"You don't really want to play against Stacey Barr the night she's having 50 but it is good fun going up against players like that. We kinda know each other's tricks pretty well by now so it takes it to that higher level of trying to get out of your comfort zone, and doing something different to get one over them.
"I might know the spots on the court Stacey likes to shoot from and that sort of thing, but it's a different thing trying to actually stop her. It will be a tough battle, but it will be done in good spirit too and it will be a lot of fun."
Getting back to form after tough couple of weeks
While Lakeside had lost five of the last six games in the regular season, up to that point they had won nine of 14 to set up a finals berth and then they fired last week in the 99-56 road elimination final win over the Redbacks.
Jones was always confident that the team would come together despite the challenging end to the regular season especially with a team featuring MVP Teige Morrell, All Second Team member Marnelle Garraud and important pieces Jade Gowland, Tia Ucich, Emma Burke and Molly Wilson.
"I think we definitely can do some damage. In those last couple of games of the season, I think we honestly just didn’t have the right flow together wise," Jones said.
"It wasn’t from a standpoint of selfishness, it was just because we're all so eager and wanted to win so badly that we were trying to take the right avenues to get there.
"But now we have regrouped and come together, and are all on the same page. That showed in the Redbacks game and defensively we had to make some adjustments, and we know how good we can be in the open court.
"So if we can get stops and get out in transition, that's when we are at our best and it's just about making those adjustments to do that. We're now definitely ready to go as far as we can and try to make it all the way."
Taking confidence from start to finals
That win over the Redbacks was just the confidence booster that Jones feels the Lightning needed not just from the team perspective on the court, but to see just how much support the Lakeside community was providing them even on the road.
"That win honestly brought us back to life I would even say. Not even from a standpoint of just the team, but even our whole Lakeside community and fans," Jones said.
"We filled out about 75 per cent of Belmont on Friday night and they were part of the reason that we could get ourselves not just over the line, but ahead by so much with that energy that they provided.
"It was unreal and that flowed into our own game so from a confidence piece, if we can execute like how we did on Friday at the level of playing against Warwick, then I think we have a pretty red hot shot at taking them down."
Goals for future
In the bigger picture of her blossoming career, being able to play full-time all-year round since returning from college with a season in Egypt and then Luxembourg in between playing at Lakeside is clearly working for Jones.
She has always been an exciting playmaker who could play with pace and push the tempo as a guard capable of scoring and creating for her teammates.
She can still do all that, but is now playing with greater poise than ever as well having more control in her game, and while she is looking forward to her first season coming up in Germany, ultimately following her mother's, Julie Parker, footsteps of playing in the WNBL is her end goal.
"Honestly, I don’t think this is what I would keep doing if I had the choice and my No. 1 goal is to play WNBL," Jones said.
"For now, I'm taking these opportunities I can get it in Europe and it's great to develop my game, but I'm ultimately doing it with the hope that I end up getting to play in the WNBL.
"I would prefer to be able to make a name for myself in Australia in the WNBL, but that's not saying I am not happy to keep playing in Europe if the WNBL never eventuates.
"But I would love it if a chance in the WNBL opened up for next year and that's my No. 1 goal especially if I was able to do it here in Perth and follow on from what my mum did who also got to play WNBL here."
Playing all-year round
After her time in college at the University of Idaho, Jones has been able to live out her dream of playing basketball virtually year-round by getting to play in the NBL1 West while having had a season in Egypt, one in Luxembourg and now getting ready to go to Germany.
While some players like to work on improving their game with an off-season, Jones feels the best way for her to keep improving is by not stopping playing.
"I love it and I'm not quite at the point age-wise where it's affecting my body yet which might happen in a couple of years," she said.
"But for the most part at the moment I'm enjoying being constantly in-season. I'm constantly in an environment where I have to get challenged and get better.
"People talk about improving on things in their off-season, but I think the best way to get better is from playing in the game so having the ability to do that 12 months of the year at the same time as getting new experiences by playing in tougher leagues overseas, and I'm really enjoying it."
Egypt experience
Jones' first experience playing overseas was back in the 2022/23 season with El Tayaran in Egypt. It was quite the eye-opening experience both on a culture and basketball front, but it's something she is proud of herself for pushing through.
"Egypt and Luxembourg couldn’t be two more opposite experiences in a lot of ways, but Egypt gave me a lot of perspective on life just from a culture standpoint," Jones said.
"It's like nothing I've ever experienced before and there was a lot to love there, but a lot different too that I had to adjust to. I was lucky enough to have a great support system around me with the team.
"My head coach and assistant coach, and the managers there made sure we were in the team realm most of the time even though I did live by myself and had to make those adjustments."
That doesn't mean it wasn’t without some tough moments and not knowing when you were getting paid, and going without being able to have a hot shower meant she had to quickly learn to fend for herself in a foreign country.
"It wasn’t as bad as a lot of people might think or how it gets portrayed by the rest of the world, but I did have to rough it a little bit," she said.
"I didn’t have hot water for the first six weeks and the pay checks didn’t come as on time as you would like. But at that point, I knew what I had got myself into and wanted to show that I deserved to get picked up in Europe the following year so I made the best of it that I could.
"The girls there don’t know anything but playing hard as well and the games were like rugby, it was a different level of physicality that I had to get used to and then when I came back here, I fouled out straight away because I had been so used to pushing people around."
Recent season in Luxembourg
There certainly wasn’t any of those challenges for her most recent season in Luxembourg playing with the Musel Pikes where Jones went on to play over 37 minutes a game and averaged 22.6 points, 5.4 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 1.6 steals.
She was able to show that her game well and truly translated to the European style of basketball and loved everything about the experience on and off the court.
"Luxembourg was then the opposite of Egypt in so many ways. The quality of living is so high and it's one of the richest countries at least in Europe and it's slightly different there again," Jones said.
"It's probably a lot more similar to the NBL1 where you have about half the girls in the team who also have a job and aren’t fully professional, and you have the other half pretty much who are pros.
"In Luxembourg I was on more of a mid to lower level team, but I got to play against two Euro Cup teams which was a good test of the level that I want to get myself. From that standpoint, I enjoyed playing against those tougher teams and figuring out what I need to do to get myself to that level."
Upcoming season in Germany
Now as soon as Lakeside's season is over, Jones will be heading to Germany to join BC Pharmaserv Marburg to play in the DBBL for the first time.
It's going to be a significant step up for Jones but she's looking forward to the challenge knowing that if she can perform well at that level, it will only continue to open up more doors for her moving forward.
"I imagine living in Germany will be very similar to Luxembourg, but basketball wise I think it's going to be quite a big step up," Jones said.
"We have six or seven import players on the team I will be joining and the full 12 are all contracted professionally to play so it's probably more similar to a WNBL level team to an NBL1 one.
"I think we have four other Americans on the team and I don’t know any of them yet, but a couple have played in NBL1 South.
"I'm looking forward to it and the professionalism is going to jump up just because it is DBBL and they have team lifts, strength and conditioning, they do two a day's practices by going in the morning and night, and that's what I'm looking for.
"I'm looking for that professional environment so when the opportunity came up I was pretty keen to take it on."
