The Commodore Conductor

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The stars came out to score in this summer’s FIFA World Cup. From France’s Kylian Mbappé to Norway’s Erling Haaland, England’s Harry Kane and Argentina’s Lionel Messi, global icons who have scored goals by the hundreds and amassed fans by the hundreds of millions put the ball in the back of the net at record-breaking pace.

And yet, after more than a month of soccer, it was Spanish midfielder Rodri holding both the World Cup trophy and the Golden Ball, awarded to the tournament’s best player. He didn’t score a goal or record an assist. That wasn’t a surprise. He didn’t have many of either when he won the 2024 Ballon d’Or as the best men’s player in the world.

He just made those around him better—the best, in fact.

Among billions watching this summer, Vanderbilt senior midfielder Courtney Jones knows better than most that a performance for the ages doesn’t require goals. Whether playing as the anchor of the midfield as Rodri often does, a No. 6 in the game’s lexicon, or a midfielder like Jones who roams from penalty box to penalty box, a No. 8, the greats often aren’t the “who” in a game. They make themselves the “why.”   

“People might think he doesn’t do much, but he does everything,” Jones said of Rodri. “In that role, you control the tempo of how the game goes. You control the speed of play. You conduct not only everything in front of you, but the people behind you, too. I feel like sometimes that goes unnoticed. You're attacking and defending, you're not just doing one.”

Jones earned her own version of the Golden Ball when she was named 2025 SEC Tournament MVP after helping Vanderbilt to the title as part of a historic season that included a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament and the program’s first trip to the Elite Eight. The Commodores had stars aplenty, from the SEC Forward of the Year who led the league in goals to the SEC Goalkeeper of the Year and a Hermann Trophy finalist center back anchoring the defense.

They also had a midfielder to knit it all together, someone who learned, sometimes the hard way, that challenging herself and supporting those around her are two sides of the same coin. There is a reason Jones was in the middle of the greatest season in Vanderbilt history. And why she takes the field this season anything but satisfied with living on last year.

“We've always been a team that tried to play and possess the ball, and going back in time, we were good at it,” head coach Darren Ambrose said. “But she's immersed herself in the team and embedded herself in midfield. We've become much, much better at it because she makes such good decisions on the ball. Everything kind of ticks through her. You've got to have people in that role who you absolutely trust with the ball in all conditions. You've got to have someone who, when that ball goes to that player, you know that something good will come of it.”  

Goals don't define her, but she's clutch when needed: Jones' 89th-minute penalty kick secured No. 5 Vanderbilt's 4-3 opening win against SMU (Vanderbilt Athletics).

A Soccer Soul

Jones is a do-everything midfielder in the most Vanderbilt way imaginable. An All-SEC selection on the field a season ago, she was also a member of the SEC Academic Honor Roll each of the past two seasons. And last year, she was honored as a United Soccer Coaches Scholar All-American—one of an NCAA-leading four Commodores so honored.

Yet it wasn’t her study habits or fretting about an impending exam that had teammates teasing her last spring. It was her evident anxiety as she carved out time each week to watch Tottenham Hotspur, her favorite Premier League team, flirt with the previously unthinkable prospect of finishing low enough in the standings so as to lose their place in the best league in the world. Not until halftime of the season’s final week, with Spurs leading and controlling a game they only needed to tie, could she finally relax.

“Being a Tottenham fan is an emotional rollercoaster for sure,” said Jones, a lament familiar to the London team’s fans around the world.

For Jones, school, social life and most other things are background noise. Soccer is life.

“I’m always thinking about soccer,” Jones admitted. “Whether I'm on the field, off the field, on vacation, whatever, soccer is constantly on my mind. And I've been that way since I was little, definitely since middle school and high school. Soccer has and probably always will be the biggest thing in my life. I watch it all the time. I even got my parents to watch it—that's all they watch now because that's all I used to watch.”

As those viewing habits suggest, she came to the sport on her own growing up in Orlando, Florida, where the other sort of football still dominates the discourse. Her mom and dad encouraged her to try any and all sports. Still, as time demands meant she had to narrow her focus, it wasn’t even a choice. Soccer was always going to be the winner. In her earliest encounters, soccer appealed because it offered someone with boundless energy an opportunity to run around with a purpose. As she grew older and joined the well-regarded Florida Kraze Krush, a club whose former players include Vanderbilt soccer alumna Madi Allen, soccer outpaced any competitors because it became synonymous with community.

“The environment that I was around every day, the friends that I made, the coaches and all the people who helped support us,” Jones said, “all of that honestly made my experience at the end of the day.”

She played other positions at various times growing up—she even played in goal on a not-infrequent basis through middle school. Still, just as there had only ever been one sport for her, there was only ever one position where she felt she belonged. Others idolized Alex Morgan or Cristiano Ronaldo. She loved watching Julie Ertz and Kevin De Bruyne. Those midfield stars weren’t strangers to scoring goals, but they were just as likely to change games by making the essential pass or the tackle that gets cut out when the broadcast replays the goal and the goal scorer wheeling away to celebrate.  

With the Kraze Krush, she played for Hue Menzies, the club’s executive director and former interim head coach of the NWSL’s Gotham FC and 2018 CONCACAF Coach of the Year as head coach of the Jamaican national team that he led to the 2019 Women’s World Cup. Even all these years later, on the eve of an international coaching trip, he’s happy to drop everything to talk about Jones, someone whom he both holds in the fondest regard and remembers, perhaps equally fondly, as a real pain in the you-know-what.  

She was stubborn, single-minded and competitive almost to a fault. And when the pace at practice slows too much for his liking these days, he wishes he had a midfielder like her around to kick someone and spark a little chaos.

“Let me tell you something,” Menzies recalled telling Ambrose during recruiting, “If you don’t have the soccer for her, don't even bother. Because she's going to be in your office 24-7, wanting to watch film, all of it. That’s just her. You’ve got to have the football to feed her.’

“And she went there and loved it. She loved him. She likes that type of fiery, direct coach.”

A Perfectionist Streak

From the outside, Jones’ time at Vanderbilt looks like mostly peaks with very few valleys.

She started 18 games in her debut season. TopDrawer Soccer ranked her among the nation’s top 50 freshmen midway through that campaign. She played even more minutes as a sophomore on a team that reached the Sweet 16 for the first time in program history. She even added her first NCAA Tournament goal and assist and converted her kick from the penalty spot in the second round shootout that dispatched top-seeded Florida State—a school she well remembered didn’t make much of an effort to recruit her. But rather than feeling stronger than ever after putting herself through intense training regimen ahead of her second year, she felt drained almost as soon as the season began.

“I felt like I wasn’t playing as well as I could—and not as well as my teammates were,” Jones said. “I felt like I was letting them down in not doing my part. We had a good season. We beat Florida State in the NCAA Tournament, so no complaints there at all. But just knowing my role on the team, I felt like people probably expected more of me.” 

She battled injuries and struggled to stay on the field in the early going. Her body language sometimes told a story of frustration, disappointment and negative energy. Rather than knit a team together, she risked standing apart.

“If you want to be the main character, you want to be all things, fine, but we're not going to be a great team,” Ambrose said of the sorts of conversations they had. “So you need to figure out how to use your talents and bring everybody up to your level in soccer IQ rather than complaining and flailing your arms if somebody doesn't do exactly as you want them to do. You've got to learn how to encourage them, lift them up and have conversations with them.” 

For the coach, much of any player’s growth comes down to an oft-cited proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to far, go together.

“At the end of the day, to me, Vanderbilt’s superpower is the whole idea of team dynamic, team chemistry, the culture of the organization,” Ambrose said.

There are statistics beyond goals and assists that tell other stories of how games are won and lost. Last year, in her breakthrough junior season, Jones attempted roughly 400 more passes than anyone else in the conference. But even there, the numbers will never tell the full story of a midfielder’s impact. In Jones’ case, they are at least as much the effect of her growth into one of the nation’s best as the cause of that rise. 

“It’s realizing that it's not about you,” Jones said of what an elite No. 8 needs. “And that you are at your best when you make the people around you better and they're playing their best. You need to know what their key qualities are and how you can bring out the best in them.”

A Mission to Complete

Jones didn’t turn to a week on a beach or a European vacation for rejuvenation at the end of a long school year. Of course she didn’t. She went looking for more soccer.

A couple of physical issues, including a surgical procedure on her foot, kept her off the ball through the depths of winter. She returned in time to participate in some of Vanderbilt’s spring season but wanted more—not to overdo things like after her first college season but to keep her rhythm and grow in ways that are only possible through competition.

Enter Bumpy Pitch FC. Organized by the eponymous soccer apparel company, Bumpy Pitch is a mainstay in The Soccer Tournament, an annual seven-on-seven soccer festival noteworthy for some of the star power involved—former USWNT stars Hope Solo and Heather O’Reilly among them—and $1 million prizes for the winners of men’s, women’s and mixed brackets. Vanderbilt’s Sydney Watts, the reigning SEC Forward of the Year and a Hermann Trophy semifinalist, was already on board to play for Bumpy Pitch’s mixed entry. When they needed another player, Jones happily made her way to California for a one-week training camp ahead of the event in Cary, North Carolina.

Jones, Watts and Bumpy Pitch finished second in their group and made it all the way to the semifinals before falling by a single goal. With a total attendance of more than 50,000 fans across multiple days and national television distribution, the tournament is intense, festive and a general celebration of the sport. In other words, for Jones, about as good as life gets.  

“I loved every second of it; there were so many people there, fans going crazy,” Jones said. “We didn't want to disappoint the guys because they won the whole thing last year. At the same time, we didn't want to keep that in our heads, either, so we had to remind ourselves that it’s just another game and we’ll be fine if play the way we know how to play.”

She brings that experience back to Vanderbilt, both the lessons learned stretching herself technically in more of a wide role in a seven-on-seven configuration, and the mentality that, collectively or individually, nothing good comes from trying to be something you aren’t. 

At Vanderbilt, soccer was among the stars of a banner year across the university’s athletic programs. Jones and her teammates want to build on that success, but they can’t define themselves by or against past accomplishments. They want the same sort of chemistry and collaborative energy that propelled them from preseason training a season ago, but they have to find it anew by welcoming new faces and allowing familiar faces the grace to grow into new roles. They know what’s possible, but as Jones might put it, they have to play the way they know how to play. As the conductor, she can help them.

At the end of the day, that’s why she loves the sport, Tottenham-induced angst and all. It’s what she’s learned from all those hours on the field, and what she’ll take with her from Vanderbilt into the NWSL or whatever opportunities come her way.

“I’ve learned the importance of just being yourself,” Jones said. “At the end of the day, being a good person is what matters. People make the place no matter what you’re doing. So be that person who allows someone to have a good experience—or just a good day in general.”

Find yourself a good conductor. It’s good advice for a team with aspirations.

It’s not bad in life, either.

About Anchored for Her 
Through Anchored for Her, a comprehensive fundraising campaign, Vanderbilt is positioning soccer and its broader women’s athletics programs as national leaders in advancing women’s sports. Anchored for Her’s initial $50 million goal will fuel investment in sustainable success for a new era of collegiate athletics through facility enhancements, endowed scholarships, coaching and staff positions, capital support and naming opportunities, team-specific Excellence Funds, the Women’s Athletics General Fund and the Competitive Excellence Fund.