Lake, Jones-Perry eager for first home match with LOVB Salt Lake
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- Former BYU women’s volleyball All-American Mary Lake (18) celebrates with her LOVB Salt Lake teammates during a preseason match in 2025.
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- Former BYU All-American Roni Jones-Perry prepares for a serve while playing for LOVB Salt Lake in 2025.
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- Former BYU All-American volleyball player Mary Lake (left) poses for a photo with members of her family, including her 18-month-old son, Tommy, after a LOVB Salt Lake preseason match in 2025.
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- Former BYU All-American volleyball player Roni Jones-Perry signs an autograph after a LOVB Salt Lake volleyball match in 2025.
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- Former BYU women’s volleyball All-American Mary Lake passes the ball during a preseason match for LOVB Salt Lake in 2025.
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- Former BYU All-American volleyball player Roni Jones-Perry (12) rises up to take a swing in a LOVB Salt Lake preseason match in 2025.
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- Former BYU women’s volleyball All-Americans Roni Jones-Perry (third from left, top row) and Mary Lake (second from left, bottom row) pose for a team photo for LOVB Salt Lake in 2025.
Mary Lake and Roni Jones-Perry were teammates on one of BYU best women’s volleyball teams ever, a group that was ranked No. 1 in the country for the majority of the 2018 season and advanced to the NCAA Final Four.
Their post-BYU paths diverged. Lake pretty much gave up volleyball after graduation to work as a CPA and become a wife and mother, while Jones-Perry traveled the world playing overseas.
Chance and the sport they love have brought them back together.
Lake and Jones-Perry are now members of League One Volleyball (LOVB) Salt Lake, a new professional volleyball league in the United States.
Both former Cougars say they don’t think they’ve ever had this much fun playing volleyball.
Back to the game
Lake was an All-American libero at BYU, an energetic four-year starter who finished as the all-time school leader in digs (1,898). The summer before her senior year (2019), Lake was selected to play for the USA FIVB Volleyball Nations League team that won a gold medal. She had opportunities to play overseas but opted to step away and start her life away from volleyball. She got married (to Jeff Bennett) and began working as a CPA.
“I just saw the writing on the wall a little bit for us liberos, just how hard it was to get contracts and how little you get paid,” Lake said. “I decided I could use my accounting degree.”
She also had her first child, a son named Tommy, now just over 18 months old. Volleyball was an afterthought, though she did coach a little and worked out for a while with a men’s semi-pro team in Salt Lake called the Stingers.
“They actually wanted me to be on their team but the commissioner of the team said ‘no,'” Lake said. “When you’re done playing in college, you either play all the time or you never touch the ball again. I felt like I had given so much to my sport and was such a perfectionist that the thought of not being perfect at it anymore was really hard.”
When she heard LOVB was coming to Salt Lake, she reached out and the positive feedback from the club got her excited to start playing again. Lake began working out regularly and played with Athletes Unlimited for a few months. Lake and her family live just a few minutes from Club V in North Salt Lake, where LOVB Salt Lake practices.
The opportunity to play for LOVB Salt Lake — and with one of the world’s best liberos in Japanese teammate Manami Kojima — is something that came to Lake totally unexpected.
“I thought I was done because I didn’t think there was going to be any place to play,” she said. “The hard thing was, how would I be able to play somewhere and with my family? My husband has a job, he’s a provider and I didn’t want to take my son away from all the family we have here. Then when this opportunity came up, it felt perfect. I felt like ‘You have to do this.’ I was really scared, because I’m not as good as I used to be, and I’m still not, but I feel like I can bring a lot to the team, which is fun.”
Lake said some skills came back quickly, while other skills have taken time to develop.
“Competing and being loud for my team, that was easy,” she said. “I worked a lot on my passing because that’s the one I was most nervous for. What’s come back slower has been defense. I have to really work on defense, because when I was just getting reps last winter, it was harder to get digging reps. My quick twitch, I feel like is finally coming back.”
Lake said “volleyball” was one of her son’s first words.
“He always says, ‘Go, Mama!’ so my family is having a good time with it,” Lake said.
A dream opportunity
Jones-Perry was lightly recruited out of Copper Hills High School in West Jordan but improved every year in the gym under BYU coach Heather Olmstead. Jones-Perry was an All-American in 2017 and 2018, leading the Cougars in hitting as a senior and was named the West Coast Conference Player of the Year.
After graduating from BYU, Jones-Perry played professionally in Italy, Poland and Brazil, earning the Most Valuable Player award in the Polish Super League competing for Budowlani Lodz. She’s spent time with Team USA as well, competing in the Pan-Am Cup and the NORCECA Champions Cup.
Jones-Perry and her husband, Todd, bought a house last summer in West Jordan, just two miles from where she grew up.
“I started hearing chatter about this league a couple years ago, but it wasn’t super interesting to me until I found out there was going to be a team in Salt Lake City,” Jones-Perry said. “Living overseas, I’ve been lucky to have my husband with me almost all the time, but there have been moments where it feels really hard. I seriously can’t tell you how many times I said these exact words to him: “If we could do this and live at home, I would do it forever.” Then this team pops up, and I could live in my house and be around my family and continue to play volleyball. So it just felt surreal, like a dream.”
Jones-Perry said so far, the competition has been challenging.
“The matches we’ve played have been pretty high level, and then watching the other teams in the league play, there were some very close, back-and-forth matches. Something that’s really unique here is every single team has world-class athletes on their rosters. They all have players that can take over a match, and we’re seeing that with some of the runs that teams are going on in games. I think top to bottom, this league is going to be very high level.”
Pack the house
LOVB was founded in 2020 and boasts investors such as tennis great Billie Jean King, NBA stars Kevin Durant and Jayson Tatum, world-class skier Lindsey Vonn and WNBA legend Candace Parker who have helped raise more than $50 million for the league. LOVB consists of six franchises in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Madison, Omaha and Salt Lake. Its website proclaims LOVB is “a first-of-its-kind community re-imagining the future of volleyball. LOVB champions every stage of an athlete’s journey: Nurturing youthful passion into action, celebrating fierce an unbridled professional talent and developing coaches to lead future generations.”
LOVB Salt Lake’s roster includes Lake, Jones-Perry and former Utah All-American Dani Drews, as well as Olympic silver medalist Jordyn Poulter at setter and Olympic gold medalist Haleigh Washington at middle blocker.
The team officially opened their season by splitting two road matches., winning in five sets at Madison, Wisc., on Jan. 17 and losing to Houston the next day. The team plays its first home match on Wednesday against Houston at Salt Lake Community College’s Bruin Arena. where a large crowd is expected.
“I was going to the grocery store one day and I’m wearing a volleyball shirt,” Jones-Perry said. “This guy is like, ‘Oh, my gosh, do you watch volleyball?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I actually play a little bit. Have you heard about this league?’ And he’s like, ‘Yes, I’m so excited.’
“For me, the fact that I can be in a random grocery store, not even in Salt Lake City, and people are asking about volleyball, that was cool. I had hoped that there would be a pretty good fan base here, but my life is volleyball, so everybody that I know knows about it. To be in a random place and someone come up to me and ask about it, that was really exciting.”
