2024 Season Of Jamestown Jackals In Question
Jamestown’s Calvin Cheek passes around Lebanon’s Alex Brown (9) during a 2023 game at Jamestown Community College’s Physical Education Complex. The team may have to postpone the start of its 2024 season, or cancel the season, if housing for the team can’t be found. Photo by Shelly Phillips
Integrity First of Jamestown, Jamestown Jackals head coach Ronald Singleton, local churches and barbers from Cut-N-Edge barber shop teamed up to provide a day of basketballs, Bibles and free haircut giveaways at Jefferson Middle School last winter. P-J file photo
Jamestown’s Calvin Cheek passes around Lebanon’s Alex Brown (9) during a 2023 game at Jamestown Community College’s Physical Education Complex. The team may have to postpone the start of its 2024 season, or cancel the season, if housing for the team can’t be found. Photo by Shelly Phillips
Integrity First of Jamestown, Jamestown Jackals head coach Ronald Singleton, local churches and barbers from Cut-N-Edge barber shop teamed up to provide a day of basketballs, Bibles and free haircut giveaways at Jefferson Middle School last winter. P-J file photo
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The March 3 home opener for the Jamestown Jackals is in question.
And so is the rest of the 2024 playing season because the team has been unable to find suitable housing.
"We provide housing because we're much more than a professional basketball team," said Kayla Crosby, Jackals owner and founder. "We have a youth mentorship program; we partner with the public school to provide positive mentorships, basketball programing; and we participate in many community events, so it's not as simple as paying the team to just play ball."
Crosby has tried to find housing and additional funding to keep the team on schedule to no avail.
"We've been without a team house since August 2023," she said. "I've reached out to the city and county governmental officials to see if they had any room for funding, and I've hit a brick wall. If we can't find housing -- any reasonable housing at this point for the guys -- we may have to cancel the 2024 season or postpone it.
We are scheduled to start having the players arrive in Jamestown on Feb. 18, and then we roll right into practices and our community commitments and engagements."
Crosby said the Jackals organization is thankful for the team's past housing arrangement.
"We're grateful for the generosity of the team house owner, who had to sell his property recently," Crosby said. "We've been able to have great groups of players in town from all over the country and even the world because of his past support."
The Jackals, as a team, was created by Crosby in 2015 and the team played its first game in 2016.
"When we first started playing, we'd average maybe 100 or 200 fans," Crosby said. "However, I think when people realized we're here to stay is when the fan attendance skyrocketed. We now average between 600 and 800 people attending our home games, and at some away games we have more fans in the audience than the home/host team."
While the focal point of the Jackals is basketball, Crosby believes the team is much more than that.
"We're part of this community, we support the schools and nonprofits, we live and play here for our fans," she said.
For those wishing to help with housing or to support the Jamestown Jackals, team owner, Crosby, can be reached at kayla@jamestownjackals.com or on the team's official Facebook page or on Instagram.