Kianna Jones was just trying to get a decent resume booster.

The Canadian-born redshirt sophomore softball player at North Carolina was peeking around for upcoming summer internships in the sports world this past winter when she stumbled upon a game day operations role for the Coastal Plain League’s Macon Bacon. Jones applied and got an interview, hoping that the team would offer her the position. 

But after she went on and on in the interview about her baseball knowledge and passions for player development and analytics, the Bacon offered her something else—a spot in the dugout as a bench coach.

“The next call I had with [team president Brandon Raphael] was a couple of days later, and he had Coach Kevin [Soine] on the phone,” Jones said. 

“And I had the opportunity to talk to both of them and kind of talk about my ideas [and] talk about what I’m passionate in. And they were super awesome and invited me to be a bench coach.”

Once Jones was officially brought on, she made history by being the first woman ever on a CPL coaching staff, joining a growing group of female coaches in the sport. She cites Rachel Balkovec—the manager of the New York Yankees’ Class-A affiliate—as an influence.

However, it didn’t take long for Jones’ acumen to be put to the test—in historic fashion, too. 

Before a Bacon game Monday against the Forest City Owls, Soine had to step away from the team temporarily due to a medical issue. But before he left the team bus, he had an announcement to make: Jones would be leading the team in an interim role for that night’s game.

Jones wasn’t just a coach anymore—she was the coach. In fact, once she was named the manager ahead of the Bacon’s 8-5 Memorial Day win over the Owls, she became not just the first female head coach in CPL history but in summer collegiate baseball history, as well.

How’s that for a resume builder?

“The nerves were all around, for sure,” Jones said on being the dugout leader. 

“But I think as the game went on and the thing that I just kept repeating to myself—even before the game started—was, ‘I have all the confidence in the world.’ And these guys … they were super supportive, saying, ‘We got you, we got your back,’ that kind of thing. So that gave me a lot of confidence in and of itself.”

Jones followed up the debut win by stepping in an interim role again in an 8-3 victory the following night over the Lexington County Blowfish, directly contributing to Macon’s 5-2 start to the CPL season as of Thursday—and making her mark as officially the league’s most successful female coach in the process. 

Make that 2-0 to start the head Coaching career of @KiannaJ2001 pic.twitter.com/e94lECkmLu

— Macon Bacon 🥓 (@GoMaconBacon) June 1, 2022

As Balkovec helped make the dream seem possible for Jones, she hopes that the continued presence of women in the game will make young girls think they can do it, too.

Sometimes all it takes is just one conversation.

“[I want] women and young girls in this industry to kind of see the trailblazers and all that stuff that we’re kind of doing to help them get into that next role,” Jones said. 

“Rachel was someone that was that for me, so I hope that I can also be that for someone one day, and having young women see that they can have this opportunity is super important to me.”