We don't always get what we want. Ask the Rolling Stones. Or ask Brigham Young University junior outside hitter Veronica Jones-Perry.

Jones-Perry, who goes by Roni, wanted to be a gymnast. Later, she wanted a volleyball scholarship offer from the University of Utah. At BYU, she wanted to spend her sophomore season as a starting outside hitter. And she wanted her team to reach the 2016 Final Four.

She didn't get what she wanted. Instead, she got what she needed.


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Before she grew to be a strong six-footer, young Roni Jones spent 11 years in a sport dominated by shorter athletes: gymnastics. The tumbles and twists were fine, but she also enjoyed putting on a mitt and playing catch with her dad and two sisters. When gymnastics expenses began to strain the family budget, she tried softball.

"They just threw me out in the outfield," she remembered. "Just grab the ball and throw it as far as you can." No one her age chucked it further.

At the time, her mom worked at Salt Lake City-based Sport Court, maker of modular volleyball court surfaces, among other things. A co-worker noticed the mechanics and confidence that 14-year-old Roni had gained from all those hours tossing a ball in the backyard. He suggested that her strong arm might be perfectly suited to volleyball. As it turned out, he was right. She had wanted to be a gymnast, but she soon realized that volleyball better suited her needs.

"I just loved hitting the ball hard," she said. "And I loved the team aspect of it. Because doing gymnastics my whole life, I never really had a solid team-sport feel. In volleyball, everybody on your team has to do something. That was really inspiring to me."



By her junior year in high school, Jones-Perry had caught college recruiters' attention. A lifelong Salt Lake City resident, she was a huge fan of the Pac-12 team just up the road.

"I really wanted to go to Utah," she said.

But the Utes weren't interested. Surprisingly, an even more successful program was: Brigham Young. And why is that surprising? Well, BYU's student body is overwhelming Mormon, and Jones-Perry is not.

"We really have to work hard to get a kid like Roni, who's probably under-recruited, and who had a great arm, to come on campus," BYU head coach Heather Olmstead said. "Until we get kids on our campus to see how special it is, they just don't know."

Jones-Perry did know that her family and friends were skeptical.

"Religion wasn't really something that had been a big part of my life, ever," she said. "I knew that it could be a little difficult being on a team where everybody is strongly LDS [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints]. I knew that if I went to BYU, in some way or another, religion was going to be a pretty big factor in everything that I did. Even my best friend poked fun at me."

But Olmstead persisted. Jones-Perry was a serious student who wanted to stay close to home. BYU was undeniably a national power. In 2014, the Cougars fell one win short of the national championship, losing to Texas in the final. By 2016, BYU would advance to the round of 16 five straight seasons.

"Once we got her on campus," Olmstead said, "she's, like, 'Yeah, I care about my degree, I care about volleyball, I want to be great. I care about my family. I have priorities. All those things sound great.'"


USA Today Sports

And so Jones-Perry signed with BYU. On her very first day, the first order of business was a shocker: head coach Shawn Olmstead was leaving the women's team to coach BYU's men's team.

"We're just freshmen," Jones-Perry said. "Scared. Not really sure what to think. And then they delivered that."

The new coach was going to be Shawn's assistant -- his sister, Heather. And it was Heather Olmstead who had recruited Roni.

"So, it was actually easier for me, because I'd had more conversations with her than with Shawn, and I was a little bit more comfortable talking to her."

In 2015, Jones-Perry's freshman year, there were plenty of adjustments. Religion classes were mandatory. There was plenty of prayer. BYU's strict dress code banned, among other things, sleeveless tops, short skirts or shorts, form-fitting clothes, and piercings other than one in each ear. There was also a stringent honor code that would make party-school students blanche.

"The dress code was a little bit different for me," Jones-Perry said. "But as far as the honor code goes, I was already living my life pretty much to those standards, so that wasn't a big change for me." Unsurprisingly, several of those standards focus on acceptable behavior between men and women. That, too, was not a barrier, especially once Roni Jones married her high school sweetheart Todd Perry after her freshman year. Two of her BYU teammates are also married.

"It's a lot more common at BYU than at most schools," she said.

Devout Mormons famously spend a year as missionaries somewhere around the globe, offering to teach others about their faith. Although being a rare non-religious student on an overwhelmingly Mormon campus peaks the curiosity of her classmates, Jones-Young said she's never been proselytized. "My teammates have been really great about that," she said. "Even people on campus and in classes, when I say I'm not LDS, they just say, 'Oh, that's cool.' And they'll ask me a couple questions. But there's never a, 'Well, you should convert.'"

She didn't get recruited by the school she wanted. But she ended up at the school she needed.

"I love where I'm at right now," she said.


USA Today Sports

Last season, Jones-Perry was a starting outside hitter as BYU ran its record to 11-1 and a No. 11 national ranking. Just days before the start of conference play, Jones-Perry was late on a block attempt during a 6-on-6 drill. Teammate Amy Boswell, a First Team All-American middle, blistered a cross-court shot on a slide, clipping the pinky on Jones-Perry's left (non-hitting) hand. The collision broke her finger. The estimated recovery was six weeks.

Sitting around was agony. Doctors insisted she shouldn't even jog, for fear vibrations would slow healing. She slumped in front of the TV in Provo as she watched BYU get swept on the road by conference foe San Diego.

"It was pretty hard," she said. "I remember wanting to tell them, hey, calm down, we can beat this team."

But she stayed in shape, and the finger recovered in a mere 25 days. In the meantime, the Cougars lost another road match, a 3-2 upset by the University of Portland. BYU's starting right-side hitter had suffered a season-ending injury; another had been moved to the left side in Jones-Perry's place. Coach Olmstead asked Jones-Perry to become the team's opposite hitter the rest of the season.

By now you know: the broken finger may have not been what she wanted. But it turned out to be what she needed.

"When you're on the left side you get a lot more balls that are just kind of thrown up, out-of-system stuff," she said. "Those are sometimes hard to keep in the court and get good swings on. You don't see that quite as much on the right side. On the outside, I might have gotten a little less mindful than I needed to be. On the right side, I was forced to keep that mindfulness all the time.

"I truly believe that [the broken pinky] made me a better player, and I'm grateful for it now. It taught me a lot about sacrificing for the team. And about staying humble. And about working hard on the small things."


USA Today Sports

In the second round of the 2016 NCAA tournament, Jones-Perry was nearly unstoppable in a 3-0 sweep of UNLV. In the third round, facing No. 4 Texas on its home court, Jones-Perry had 12 kills on 36 attempts in an epic five-set match. Leading the Longhorns 14-12 in the final frame, BYU gave up four straight points and an oh-so-close opportunity to advance to another Final Four.

When first asked if she had gotten over that crushing tournament loss, Jones-Perry sighed: not really. But then she thought about it. And she admitted that the tough loss might make this year's team stronger.

"It's something we can look back on and be proud of the way we fought. Proud of the way we came together. We can use it to build confidence. It can add fuel to the fire."

Just what Jones-Perry and the Cougars need.

Watch More NCAA Action This Weekend

The SEC vs. ACC Challenge in Puerto Rico will feature Florida, UNC, NC State, and Auburn on September 2-3. Watch live here.



The Wolverine Invitational hosted by Utah Valley will feature Kansas, Long Beach State, and Montana on August 31- September 2. Watch live here. 

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