Ringgold High School senior Caleb Jones is photographed in the school’s indoor batting facility. He has overcome clinical depression to earn a college baseball scholarship.RINGGOLD, Ga. — Caleb Jones has a smile that can light up a room.
It’s an easy smile that puts people at ease around the six-foot, 235-pound Ringgold High School senior. It’s won him a lot of friends, not to mention a few dates. But for the last three years that smile masked a dark secret that at one time threatened his life.
Jones signed a baseball scholarship with Snead State Community College on Wednesday, the latest turn in a journey that began shortly after injuring his knee as a freshman at Kell High School in Marietta, Ga.
“He was playing football and doing really well,” his mother, Debbie Jones, said. “He was going to start against one of the school’s biggest rivals and in the last practice he hurt his knee and had to have surgery. It wasn’t long after that I started noticing changes in him.”
The usually docile teenager began lashing out at friends and family, often for no apparent reason. He recovered physically in time to play baseball, but as summer neared an end, he became withdrawn and started to lose weight. He would sleep in class and was in constant physical pain. Instead of hanging out with friends, Jones would spend most of his nights alone in his bedroom.