STARKVILLE — Brian Jones can attest that the job as baseball coach at Starkville High School always has had cachet.
Growing up in Neshoba County and playing baseball at Neshoba Central High, Jones was close enough to Starkville to know the Yellow Jackets won state titles in 1986, ’87, and ’91 and that they remained a championship program for many years.
Now as a wizened baseball coach whose teams have earned the reputation for playing “small ball,” Jones will have a chance to coach at a place he called a “Mecca.”
That opportunity became official Wednesday night when the Starkville School Board approved the hiring of Jones as Starkville High’s new baseball coach.
On Thursday, Jones said the timing was right to make a “family move” and to succeed veteran coach Danny Carlisle in Starkville.
“It is a great opportunity,” Jones said. “Starkville High School baseball is one of the premier programs in the state of Mississippi. Somebody asked me how do you fill those shoes? There is no way to. It is impossible. How do you fill somebody’s shoes whose name goes on the field? It doesn’t happen. All I can do is be Brian Jones.”
Jones, whose Neshoba Central team lost to Saltillo in the first round of the Class 5A North State playoffs, will have to wait to assume full control of his new program. Starkville played Center Hill on Thursday in game one of a best-of-three Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 5A North State playoff series.
While Jones met sophomore catcher Harper Day on Thursday at his introductory news conference in the school library, Jones said he would wait until the Yellow Jackets finished their season before he gathered his new players and began his efforts as the Yellow Jackets’ coach.
When Jones takes the reins, he will step on to a field that was named Thursday for Carlisle, the longtime coach who is in his final year as head coach.
Starkville High Athletic Director Dr. Stan Miller said he received 28 applicants for the position. He said that group was narrowed to seven, and that all of those applicants were head coaches. He feels Jones is a “natural fit” to build on what Carlisle’s legacy in Starkville.
Carlisle was in attendance Thursday and joked Jones’ style and his — “I like to hit it a long way,” Carlisle said — are different, but he is sure Jones will be very successful.
“He is committed,” Carlisle said. “Nowadays, you get a lot of coaches who stay somewhere four or five years and they say, ‘Let me go over here where they have more athletes.’ If you do that, you don’t build lifetime relationships. I have guys I coached when I first started in 1984 that still call me. That is what coaching is about, building lifetime relationships and making sure they’re good citizens. He has done that at Neshoba Central.”
Carlisle said he is fortunate to have started his career in Starkville and to get a chance to end it in the same place. He hopes Jones will have the same opportunity and is confident someone who spent the past 12 seasons as head baseball coach at Neshoba Central will be able to build on the tradition he leaves.
“Our program athlete wise is in really good shape,” said Carlisle, whose 2012 team has six seniors, two sophomores, and a junior in the starting lineup. “He will be young next year, but that is just one of the things. If you are committed, you go through those things.”
Starkville’s junior high program won its half of the conference and went on to win the overall championship.
Jones hopes to see numerous junior high classes do the same. He said his family hopes to sell its home and relocate to Starkville, and that his wife, Missy, a first-grade teacher, also hopes to find a job in the local school system. The Jones have three children, Tanner, a 10th-grader, Tucker, a sixth-grader, and Emma, a third-grader.
Jones said he told his Neshoba Central players Monday he was leaving the school to take the job at Starkville High. He said it was emotional being at a program for so long and helping “raise” young men. He said he has received numerous messages, texts, emails, or Facebook posts offering him support and congratulations for taking the job. While it is tough leaving those relationships, Jones is excited about the opportunity.
“The kids have always worked their tails off,” Jones said. “They bought into it, and they believed in me and I believed in them. The more you do that and show you care about them — and sometimes caring about them means you get on their tail a little bit. As long as you do that and you show them respect and you show you love them, they’re going to do whatever they need to do for you.”
Jones was a pitcher/shortstop at Neshoba Central High and graduated from the school in 1989. He went on to play baseball at East Central Community College and Belhaven College, which is now known as Belhaven University. He spent one season as an assistant coach at South Leake High before working as an assistant coach for Wes Johnson, the current East Webster High baseball coach, for four seasons at Neshoba Central prior to becoming the head coach.
Jones also has a master’s degree in educational leadership from Mississippi State University. He will be a driver’s education teacher at Starkville High.
New Hope High baseball coach Lee Boyd, who worked with Jones as an assistant baseball coach at Neshoba Central, said Jones is the right fit for Starkville High.
“It is a great hire,” Boyd said. “I learned a lot working with coach Jones. They always put competitive teams on the field. He works extremely hard. He is going to get every ounce of talent out of those kids. I am extremely pleased for him. I know it will be a tough day at Neshoba Central because he has put them on the map and done so many great things.”
Boyd said his Trojans and Jones’ Yellow Jackets could run into each other in the future considering both programs are in Class 5A.
If that happens, that will be another challenge Jones is ready to accept. He said he is ready to take on the responsibility of being the man who succeeds Carlisle and that he feels the job will “rejuvenate” him in that he has to teach things that became ingrained at Neshoba Central all over again. But he will follow the same plan he had at Neshoba Central and do his best to make sure all of his players reach their potential.
“We’re going to do things right, we’re going to work hard,” Jones said.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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