Ninth in a series profiling the 11 members of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame class of 2016. The induction ceremony will be Friday.
Unlike most members of sports halls of fame, tennis standout Paula Juels Jones still looks for ways to improve her game, which surprises no one who knows her.
Juels Jones, 43, a member of the Arkansas Tennis Hall of Fame since 2007, is on her way to the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
She, along with 10 others, will be honored at the 58th annual induction banquet at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little Rock on Friday.
“I’m proud of her,” said Mike Patrick, Juels Jones’ coach at the University of Tennessee from 1990-1994.“She’s done very well. I know that every time I see her, she always wants to work on her game. It hasn’t stopped. She wants to get better all the time.”
Juels Jones was introduced to tennis by her father Woody Juels as an 8-year-old in 1980 and was a highly-ranked player in Arkansas by the time she turned 10.
“I was hooked from the start, and I got really serious about it really quick,” Juels Jones said.
By 1986, at 14, Juels Jones had begun to compete in the United States Tennis Association 18s. She won state championships in singles from 1986-1988, and was the Southern section 18s champion in 1990.
But Juels Jones’ most noteworthy accomplishment was her streak of Arkansas high school singles victories. It began with her first match as a freshman, representing North Little Rock Northeast in 1987, and ended with her fourth overall state singles title as a senior in 1990. She went 61-0 in high school singles matches, which remains a U.S. record according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
“Really I think what got me in this position to make the Hall of Fame was the high school run,” Juels Jones said. “I think that was significant.”
She was named a high school All-American four times by Prince Sports and the overall girls athlete of the year by the Arkansas Democrat and Arkansas Gazette in 1990.
Jim McMurry, the Northeast tennis coach throughout Juels Jones’ high school career, said it was clear to him she came prepared to perform her best.
“Paula was willing and determined to do whatever it took to be as good as she could be,” McMurry said. “And she did it without sacrificing her social life or anything else. She was very popular in school and a very good student, admired by all of her classmates. She was just a good kid, just a good young lady, and she was always so determined.”
Juels Jones said she will never forget a conversation she had with McMurry in the spring of 1990. Shortly after the schedules for the state high tennis overall championships were released, she said McMurry realized the Northeast senior prom was scheduled for the night before the girls singles final.
“It was my senior year, with all of the festivities that go along with that,” Juels Jones said. “I had to miss a lot of things. So I was really looking forward to the state overall, my last one to win and all of that. So he comes up to me one day, and I thought he was going to cry.”
Juels Jones said she was immediately disappointed but knew she would simply have to adjust; there was no way she would miss either her prom or the tennis match.
“I just went home a little earlier that night,” Juels Jones said.
McMurry’s assessment is as evident in Juels Jones’ career path as it was and is on tennis courts. Juels Jones earned a master’s degree in business administration from UALR after she graduated from Tennessee, and shortly thereafter, at her father’s suggestion, enrolled in UALR’s school of law.
Juels Jones has been an assistant city attorney for North Little Rock since 2007. Before that, she served as a deputy prosecutor for Pulaski and Perry counties for six years and for Lonoke County for four.
In May of last year she announced her candidacy for North Little Rock district judge. Juels Jones learned in November that she would run unopposed and will consequently begin her term in May.
“Dad thought law was something I could be good at, and he encouraged me, and that’s what I ended up doing,” Juels Jones said. “And I’ve liked it. I like the trial work. It’s kind of like being in a tennis match. It’s pretty much one on one. I like the competition of the court room.
“After a while, my goal became to be a judge.”
McMurry said he wonders what will come next on Juels Jones’ list of accomplishments. No matter her objective, he said he was fully confident she would reach it.
“To put it in one word, she’s determined,” McMurry said. “She’s a determined individual. Anything that she takes up, she’s going to go at it full-steam ahead.”
Juels Jones’ tennis has progressed along with her legal career. She won the United States Tennis Association’s national singles championship for women’s 30s in 2006 and completed that season ranked No. 1 in the Southern section and No. 2 in the U.S. In 2012 she advanced to the 40s quarterfinals of the International Tennis Federation world championships in San Diego, where she lost to the eventual winner in a threeset, 3½-hour match.
Juels Jones said her Russian opponent won the final two rounds in routs and approached after the final to offer a memorable consolation. “She said, ‘Our match was the finals. Whoever won our match was going to win the whole thing,’ ’’ Juels Jones said. “It was fun. I loved it, but god, I wish I could’ve won that match.”
Honors abound for Juels Jones, perhaps topped she said by the one on the way this weekend in the form of plaque in the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame.
“It’s for me the highest honor I could get and probably ever will get,” she said.
“I’m glad that everyone recognizes just how good she was,” McMurry said.