Twinning: Profile on Janeisha and Jameisha Jones

On Sept. 26, 1997, a baby girl was born… and then another.  Janeisha and Jameisha Jones are Henderson students who have lived their entire lives with a body double.

They both play for the Reddies’ women’s basketball team. They are both juniors and play the guard position.

As children, they loved to dress the same but in different colors. The girls started off in purple and red, but as they got older, Janeisha decided she liked blue better and, Jameisha began wearing pink.

“When we went to school people called us Meisha and Neisha,” said Janeisha, “but then they started saying, ‘hey pink, hey blue’.”

The sisters prefer to be called their real names but have decided, at this point their names are stuck.

Both twins are very close to their mom. When the three are seen together, people call them “The Triplets.” They have many inside jokes with their mom, and she is the reason they began to play basketball.

Their mom played basketball with them most days, but before they began playing basketball, they were a part of other organizations. The sisters were in both gymnastics and the girl scouts. They stopped both of those because basketball began taking over their free time.

The first team they joined was for a boy’s and girl’s club in their home town, Fayetteville, Ark.  They then went on to play for their school and joined the track team in high school.

The sisters attended Fayetteville High School where they won the state championship for basketball. Jameisha was also an all-state senior, the team’s leading rebounder as a junior and state champion in the 400m twice.

Jameisha was also named all-state, in track, three times. The sisters were both four-year letter winners in track and three-year letter winners in basketball.

Jameisha and Janeisha came to Henderson because of a friend, Hailey Estes, who they played summer ball with.  Adjusting to a smaller town and being away from home was hard at first for them.

When Jill Thomas, head women’s basketball coach, first met them, they were hard for her to tell apart. She hated seeing them one at a time because she often didn’t know which one she was talking to. Now she can tell them apart easily.

One of Thomas’s favorite memories is taking care of the sisters when they had food poisoning from a restaurant. She also enjoyed watching them struggle to play med ball tennis.

During their freshman year at Henderson, Jameisha was named GAC Freshman of the Year and an Honorable Mention in the All-GAC selection. She was also named GAC Player of the Week in December of that year.

Janeisha played in 26 games and started in 13 their freshman year. She also recorded a career-high 13 points in a game against Harding.

During their sophomore year, Jameisha was First Team All-GAC. She finished in fourth place in the GAC for scoring and field goal percentage.

Janeisha played in 28 games and started in 16 their sophomore year. She also recorded a career-high 17 points in a game against Ouachita Baptist University.

“They are very strong-willed independent people who really count on one another,” said Thomas, “they have already achieved so much in their three years here. Just watching them grow and mature has been awesome.”
This season the sisters have helped the Reddies win 17 games and currently sit at second place in the GAC.