Perris Jones paused before delivering a line that, in many ways, distills everything about his life into a single phrase.
“Courage isn't the absence of fear,” Perris said. “It’s going forward, in the presence of it.”
Some readers may be familiar with Jones’ name. In his fifth season on the Virginia football team in 2022-23 — his penultimate season and first as a starter — he was a team captain and the second-leading rusher behind then-quarterback Brennan Armstrong.
The University community may also remember his involvement in a severe head-to-head collision in the third quarter of the Cavaliers’ Nov. 9 game against Louisville in 2023.
The collision left Jones motionless on the field of L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium with a potentially life-threatening spinal cord injury. He was rushed to the UofL Hospital, and his football career was brought to a sudden and terrifying close.
Jones said his injury, and the subsequent three weeks spent in the UofL Health ICU and Frazier Rehabilitation Institute, profoundly changed what he wanted to do with his life — but more importantly, how he wanted to go about it.
“I felt [a lot of] imposter syndrome while I was in the ICU,” Jones said. “Because the people that were around me were dealing with so many different things … Some of them were inside of machines that had to breathe for them. And I was like, ‘Man, what can I do for them?’”
His experience in the ICU and rehab further expanded his perspective on “servant” leadership — what you can do for someone else.
“I tried to do anything I could,” Jones said. “Whether that was giving them some flowers that they could look at, or writing a letter that they could read, or making sure that I walked by and smiled and waved, just small things … And that's kind of how I try to live my life now as a result of that.”
That life-changing incident was just one of many hardships that forged Jones into who he is today — he said his trials really began in his hometown of Arcadia, Fla. Jones noted that he grew up in a neighborhood where opportunity was scarce, and trouble was not.
“Growing up in Florida was rough,” Jones said. “My mom was a single mom … She had my brother at 15, me at 17. She was really young and had a lot of responsibilities at a young age. And sports was kind of introduced as a way to keep us out of trouble.”
A different set of trials soon came, as Jones entered college as a walk-on player at the University in 2018 — Jones spent four years doing everything asked of him and more, and received almost nothing in return. After four years of knocking on a door that refused to open, he began to wonder whether he was knocking on the wrong one.
“It's a lot of thankless jobs being a walk-on,” Jones said. “You do a lot and get so little reward, and that was hard, being someone that was expecting to play and have a significant role, or even base level just be significant at all.”
His breakthrough came during fall camp in 2022, under then-new Coach Tony Elliott. Jones said that time period was when he felt something click, and he was right to feel that way. He finally earned a starting spot as a fifth-year, right before the first game of the 2022-23 season. But after five years on the outside looking in, standing in the center of Scott Stadium felt wrong.
“I felt more of an imposter when I got the starting role than I did [as a walk-on],” Jones said. “I worked so hard for years for this one thing … And when I finally got it, I was like, ‘Is this actually what I wanted? Am I supposed to be here?’”
These lingering questions were silenced by the tragedy of Nov. 13, 2022, when three Cavalier football players — Devin Chandler, Lavel Davis Jr. and D'Sean Perry — were killed in a shooting on Grounds. The program and the surrounding community were shattered. The tragedy also left two others wounded — Marlee Morgan and Mike Hollins. Hollins, a fellow running back, was Jones’ roommate.
“He’s an inspiration,” Jones said of Hollins. “After dealing with so much it’s hard to feel sorry for yourself. If he can do it, I can do it, so we kind of motivate each other and build off one another.”
Jones' resilience would be tested again nearly a year to the day after the shooting. During that fateful football game between Virginia and Louisville, the trajectory of Jones’ life underwent a sudden and brutal redirection — and, against all odds, that redirection led somewhere remarkable.
Almost poetically, Jones is now pursuing a doctorate at the University of Louisville — the same university where his football career abruptly ended in 2023. Contrary to public opinion, Jones said, he did not plan it that way. Louisville just so happened to have the program of study he wanted to pursue — a doctorate in Educational Leadership and Organizational Development — as well as the funding needed. But Jones said the symbolism is not lost on him.
“The way that it organically fit together was amazing … You’ve got to turn your trauma into triumph,” Jones said. “It's using the thing that was meant to break you, as a thing to take the next step in your life and grow … When I look at that field I'm reminded of why I'm here, why I need to keep doing what I'm doing … Hopefully it helps other people look at their hardships differently. You don't have to run from your hardships, you can grow through them, actually.”
Jones has now channeled all of his trials into a personal memoir titled “Ashes to Endzone: The Fight for Identity, Faith, and a Future Bigger Than the Game.” The title, he explained, traces his life from its volatile beginnings to the football field that closed one chapter in his life, but opened another.
Although it is Jones’ story, the book might have never existed without Jonathan Cotten, The Good Feet franchise owner and CEO of Easy Step Enterprises. After hearing his story at a team meeting, Cotten told Jones he needed to share his story with the world — even offering to fund the project. This literary project, Jones says, is a continuation of the servant leadership he aspires to each day.
“I try to live my life in a way that hopefully other people can look at and be inspired to do amazing things of their own,” Jones said. “The driving factor behind [writing] it is that … those kids can look and say, ‘Damn, he came from the same project homes that I did, and he did that. I can do the same thing too.’”
For former athletes in particular, Jones hopes the book delivers something deeper than the familiar platitude of being “more than your sport.”
“I feel like a lot of athletes feel like their only value to the world is what they can physically do, but there's so much more within them that they're capable of,” Jones said. “So just to spend time with themselves, away from their sport, and figure out what they surely enjoy doing, what brings them peace, what lights their fire outside of their athletic space and diving into that.”
Jones is candid in admitting his transition from football is far from over, and that a part of him still has not gotten over the fact he was not able to retire on his own terms.
“Every time I watch a football game or I see some of my other teammates that I played with … I'm always left with that question, right?” Jones said. “Of, ‘Okay, could I have done that?’ I'll never be able to answer that. And that bothers me at times, and it's something that I'm still working through.”
Today, when people ask Jones about his past, he simply tells them that he graduated from the University — a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies and English, as well as a master’s degree in Educational Psychology. If they ask whether he played a sport, he says no.
“I don’t even tell them,” Jones said.
The Cavalier Daily went on to ask Jones how he would have introduced himself as a first-year, if football was off the table. He laughed.
“I'm not gonna lie, my first year at U.Va., I had horrible grades, so I definitely wouldn't have said I was … a scholar,” Jones said. “I [would] probably say Renaissance man, just because I did write a lot of poetry during that time period. [I] played my guitar better, or played my guitar more, and [played] a little bit of piano during that time too.”
Now, when he is not studying, Jones spends his time attending events and conferences across the country as a motivational speaker. He also plans on starting his own nonprofit organization, prospectively named “No Stars,” to help unranked young athletes, like Jones once was, reach their full potential by guiding them through college recruitment.
When asked what advice he would give to the wide-eyed walk-on who arrived at Virginia all those years ago, Jones’ answer was simple — and characteristically rooted in the faith that has guided him through every closed door that eventually opened into something greater.
“I would probably tell him, for one, just to keep the faith,” Jones said. “Yeah, keep the faith.”
Courage, Perris Jones will tell you, is not the absence of fear. It is going forward in the presence of it. He would know — he has been going forward his entire life.
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