By Tim Peeler
Ronald Jones never spoke a word when he watched his son, Cullen, race in swim meets.
“My dad would always be the one videotaping the race, and he didn’t want them to be filled with his yelling,” Cullen said. “I don’t think he would be yelling now, even if he could.”
But he can’t. Ronald Jones died of lung cancer when his only son was 16, and he never saw the transformation Cullen made from a skinny, inexperienced high school swimmer to a potential NCAA champion at NC State. That doesn’t mean, however, that the two don’t communicate.
“I am always talking to him,” said Cullen, who has his father’s college basketball jersey number, 41, tattooed on his back.
Jones believes his father, who played at Bronx Community College in New York and always wanted his son to follow in his hoops-playing steps, would be proud of his accomplishments in the pool, even though the elder Jones was initially a reluctant supporter of his son’s chosen sport.
“I always told Cullen’s dad that the closest Cullen would ever come to playing basketball was when he was playing water polo,” said Debra Jones, Cullen’s mother. “He just enjoyed being in the pool too much.”
And that’s what makes Jones, only the second African-American swimmer in NC State history, so unique: his absolute love of his chosen sport. It was first sparked when he went to see a friend in a middle school meet, and he has been hooked ever since.
The odds were against him ever becoming a champion swimmer. First of all, only about one percent of all competitive swimmers are black. Throughout his four-year career with the Wolfpack, Jones has been one of about a half-dozen black swimmers in the ACC.
Secondly, Jones was a late bloomer. He came to NC State a 6-4, 170-pound rail that had never qualified for any of the major junior championships.
Now the native New Yorker who grew up in Irvington, N.J., may be on his way to becoming the Tiger Woods of his sport -- someone so gifted at what he does he could inspire many, quite literally, to follow in his wake. With weight training and a nutrition program, Jones has added nearly 20 pounds of muscle during his career at NC State and is just now starting to tap into the vast potential that could make him a world-class swimmer.
In the process, he has nearly overtaken former NCAA champion and Olympic gold medalist David Fox, the most accomplished swimmer in Wolfpack history.
After winning the ACC Championships in the 50-yard freestyle and the 100-yard freestyle and swimming on two championship relay teams in late February, Jones now has a total of five ACC individual and two relay titles on his résumé. He was named the 2006 ACC Most Outstanding Swimmer at the conference meet and has recorded the three fastest times in the country this year in the 50 freestyle.
His winning time of 19.07 seconds in the ACC finals shattered Fox’s school and conference records, and was only two hundredths of a second off the American mark.
Few people ever predicted that Jones would become such an accomplished swimmer. Heading into the NCAA Championships at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center in Atlanta, March 23-25, Jones is favored to become the first Wolfpack swimmer since Fox in 1993 to win an NCAA title.
And, if he continues to improve at the same rate over the next two years, he could become the first Wolfpack product to win gold at the Olympics since Fox was a member of a winning relay team at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.
“A medal at the 2008 Olympics [in Beijing, China] is certainly something that is reasonable for him to dream about,” Wolfpack swimming coach Brooks Teal said. “Not just based on the numbers and the times he has posted, but more based on the progress he has made in the last two years with his athletic ability and technique.
“He has really put himself into the position where the sky is the limit.”
It’s been a remarkable career for Jones, who arrived at NC State without much acclaim and very little experience in big-time national meets. There were times, in fact, when Teal and his staff thought Jones might be a little too green to compete in the ACC. That’s hardly been the case.
He has excelled throughout his career, winning his first ACC title in his sophomore season and adding to his trophy case every step of the way. Last summer, he signaled to the swimming community that he was ready to become a superstar when he set the World University Games record in the 50-meter freestyle with a remarkable 22.17-second performance in Turkey.
His peak, so far, came during the anchor leg of the Wolfpack’s ACC-record breaking 200 medley relay, when he recorded a blazing — but unofficial — split of 18.42 seconds, the fastest time in NCAA history for 50 yards. However, that is not an officially recognized record since it occurred during a relay.
That effort has given Jones a standard to strive for, and he has been working over the last three weeks on improving his somewhat flat start. He’ll be shaved and tapered, and ready to peak for the end of his Wolfpack career.
“I think I can hit that number around 18.4 seconds,” Jones said.
Fox, who won his gold medal as a member of the 1996 United States 400-meter relay team at the same pool where this year’s NCAA meet will be conducted, plans on attending Jones’ races in the 50 free and the 100 free.
Fox, an investment banker for Goldman Sachs who recently moved from Philadelphia to Atlanta, has been tutoring Jones for years now and is impressed with the Pack star.
“I see in him a quiet confidence, a humility you need to continue to work hard and improve,” Fox said. “We are just starting to see glimpses of what he is going to do in the future. He is doing outstanding swimming right now, and I think he is only going to get better.”
Fox believes that Jones’ background as a somewhat green swimmer before he arrived in Raleigh will be a huge benefit to him while he spends the next two years training for the Olympics.
“It is hard emotionally to maintain the focus,” Fox said. “I think it is hard on your body as well. I think as fast as he is, that it is a huge advantage for him. I think his body will be more durable. He has been able to develop physically without the trauma that your body goes through if you train too hard when you are very young.
“He probably still has some of the excitement that a very young person would have when they see such dramatic improvement year to year. He is certainly mentally able to handle everything that comes his way.”
Jones, an English major at NC State, also has the motivation needed to become a champion swimmer. He doesn’t discuss it much, but those pre-race conversations he has with his dad provide the fire he needs to reach the finish line.
“He has a remarkable drive,” said Kendall Smith, a member of NC State’s women’s swimming team. “There is something burning inside him. He’s not vocal about it — he keeps it inside him.
“He has never brought up what that drive is — you just know it is there. I think he is phenomenal. Yet he is a very humble person. I hope to see him in the Olympics. I know he can do it.”
Tim Peeler is a features writer for www.GoPack.com and a frequent contributor to The Wolfpacker. You may contact him at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
NC State’s Previous NCAA Champions
Year Swimmer Event Time
1955 Bob Mattson 200 Breaststroke 2:26.0
1956 Dick Fadgen 200 Breaststroke 2:23.1
1956 Dick Fadgen 200 Butterfly 2:16.3
1962 Ed Spencer 100 Butterfly 0:52.5
1976 Steve Gregg 200 Butterfly 1:47.00
1993 David Fox 50 Freestyle 0:19.14
NC State's Other NCAA Qualifiers
Three Wolfpack swimmers will join senior Cullen Jones at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship in Atlanta, March 23-25: seniors Dan Velez and Kevin Velleca and junior Steve Cowling.
The four will compete together in the 200 medley relay, in which they set a school and conference record of 1:26.88 last month at the ACC Championships in College Park, Md.
Because both Velez and Velleca made B-cut times in their individual events, they are eligible to compete in those events at the NCAA Championships.
Velez, a native of Germantown, Md., who transferred from Penn State two years ago, will swim in both the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke. He owns the school record in the 200 at 1:59.72. He has the second-fastest time in school history in the 100 at 55.07 seconds.
Velleca, a native of O’Fallon, Miss., who transferred two years ago from Iowa, will swim in the 100-yard backstroke. He set a personal record in the event of 48.57 seconds, in winning the event in last month’s ACC Championships.
Cowling, a native of Meare, Somerset, England, won the ACC Championship in the 100-yard backstroke last year.
"Reprinted with permission from "The Wolfpacker" and Coman Publishing Company."
