Behind the Glow: Ashlon Jackson
WNBA Connecticut Sun

Behind the Glow: Ashlon Jackson

Published on September 17, 2026 under Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)
Connecticut Sun News Release


Ashlon Jackson smiles often. She talks easily. She carries the kind of energy that makes it seem as though happiness comes naturally to her.

And, in many ways, it does.

"I try to make everybody around me better, or everybody around me happy, especially if I care and love for them. I try to let my energy affect other people in a good way, because I feel like the world needs a lot of that."

That is Ashlon with or without basketball.

Outgoing. Down to earth. Happy. Someone who loves deeply and wants the people around her to feel a little lighter because she is there.

As a kid, Jackson remembers herself as energetic, funny and maybe - depending on whether you ask her or her parents - a little bad.

Not because she was getting into serious trouble. She simply always had something to say.

"I was a straight-A student, so they couldn't get mad," Jackson joked. "I was just talking to my friends. I was outgoing."

Years later, that same outgoing kid is still there. So is the smile people have come to associate with her. But Jackson knows a smile can sometimes make people believe there is nothing underneath it.

"Most people just think like, 'Oh, she's so bubbly, so happy,' which I am, but I'm still human. I still have my good days. I still have my bad days."

There is space for both and also space for the parts of Jackson that have little to do with the game people know her for.

There is Ashlon the self-proclaimed "matcha girly," Ashlon who loves shopping and putting together a good outfit, and Ashlon who considers her self-care appointments a non-negotiable.

"That's one of my bills that I have to pay," she joked.

For Jackson, those rituals are more than appearance. They are part of feeling like herself amid the demands of being a professional athlete.

"If I didn't have my self-care, I would not be myself."

Then there are the interests fans might never guess from watching her on the court.

She loves bowling, a pastime shared by her family and her boyfriend's family. She is getting into golf. And when basketball eventually stops being the center of her schedule, she already has another world she wants to explore: real estate.

Jackson is considering getting her real estate license during the offseason, another glimpse into a person whose identity was never meant to begin and end with a basketball.

That mindset comes from the people who taught her who she was before the game could.

Ask Jackson who she resembles most in her family and the answer is not just one person.

From her dad, she sees the ability to stay in her own lane, handle her business and still naturally draw people toward her. From her mom, she gets the ability to light up a room once people get to know her.

And from both of them, she received the foundation that made everything else possible.

"Without them, I wouldn't have made it," Jackson said.

Her parents introduced her to basketball, but their impact stretches far beyond it. Jackson calls herself a daddy's girl and her mother her best friend - the backbone who has kept both Jackson and their family grounded.

So, when she is asked what she would tell them now, her answer reaches beyond what they have done for her career.

"Take away basketball, I still have them regardless. Whether it's for basketball, whether it's supporting any little thing that I do, they always show up for that."

And when Jackson thinks about having a family of her own someday, there is already a standard she hopes to meet.

"I just pray that I'm at least half as good to them as they were to me."

That is where so much of Ashlon comes from.

Basketball may be what introduced Jackson to Connecticut, but it did not create the person Sun fans have gotten to know.

And in a place she never initially expected to land, Jackson found people willing to embrace that person, too.

"Thank you so much for accepting me," Jackson said. "Connecticut took a chance on me. They believed in me, and as soon as I came here, it felt like home. I felt welcome."

What she'll carry forward isn't measured in points or accolades, but in the people, the memories, and the place that believed in her from the very beginning.

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