Just two weeks ago, Mckenzie signed a scholarship offer to play basketball for the University of Tulsa next season.
No coach in the area appreciates the meaning of this holiday more than the 46-year-old Jones. He has lots of reasons to be thankful, especially because so often in his early life he was told, in so many words: “No thanks.”
“I didn’t know my mom until I was like 26 years old,” Jones said in a few moments of quiet, but quite candid reflection the other day as he sat in the Middies’ fieldhouse next to the Barnitz field.
As a toddler, he said he was living in Los Angeles, where his dad, Lloyd Jones, an accomplished bass player out of Roth High, had relocated with his all black, disco-styled rock and roll influenced band, Platypus.
Although the group – which started in Dayton in the early 1970s as the Four Corners – would tour the world, release two albums on Casablanca and be embraced by the likes of Billy Preston and Roberta Flack, Lloyd saw a need to take Kali from his mom and bring him back to the Miami Valley to live with his mother, Verlene Jones, on Elmhurst Road in Residence Park.
“In the seventh grade I was kicked out of the house by my stepmom,” he said. “I know what it’s like spending the night sleeping on the steps at Chaminade Julienne.”
Eventually he ended up going to CJ and was a promising freshman football player in the successful program run by the legendary coach Jim Place of whom Jones said without hesitation: “I really respect and love.”
The feelings of embrace are mutual by Place, who said he has texted or called Jones with a message of support nearly every week for years.
And yet their coach-player bond ended almost before it began.
“Freshman year I was asked to leave CJ, that or I would have been expelled,” Jones admitted. “We had a situation, let’s just leave it like that, with a different group of people. I wasn’t really at fault in the situation, but it is what it is.”
Credit: Nick Graham
Credit: Nick Graham
And, he admitted, that began a pattern of self-inflicted damage that derailed so much of his early life.
“Sports was big with me, but trouble always was attached – a lot,” he said.
“I went to Colonel White for the remainder of my freshman year, but got in trouble again,” he said. “I left there and ended up going to Vancouver, Canada, for a year. My dad had married a lady who lived in Vancouver – she was from the Fiji Islands – and they welcomed me in like blood family.”
“I excelled in football and basketball up there, but I got in trouble and got deported.”
Although he won’t go into specifics, he said, “I’m from Dayton, Ohio, the inner city, we know how to make money. Life was fast.”
Later though he admitted, “I wasn’t a bad kid. I just was out there on the street.”
Place has known him since he was 14: “He was a great kid. He just needed some redirection.”
Jones touched on that in his office: “As Coach Place would put it, I was a product of my environment.”
With his mom a nonentity and his dad often on the road with his music, Jones often was left on his own and he submarined his own sports career.
His grades were poor and his personal history was filled with hiccups so it’s no wonder he received no athletic scholarship offers from colleges.
And that’s when he finally managed to juke step trouble and head off in an unexpected, but impactful direction that forever changed his life.
He joined the U.S. Marine Corps and after a couple of rough weeks of boot camp, he said he loved it.
“The Marines were one of the best decisions I ever made in my life,” he said. “Those four years helped me with my self-reliance, my self-determination. They gave me the confidence and purpose and direction I needed.
“The Marines made a man of me.”
Ahead of schedule
After his military service, Jones returned to Dayton and got a political science degree at Wright State.
Following graduation, he joined his best friend at the Chappie James Leadership Academy, a now defunct charter school in Dayton, and served as an assistant basketball coach and then became head coach for two seasons.
In 2010 he started coaching at Wayne High under Jay Minton, who Jones calls one of his mentors. After 4 ½ years in the Warriors program, he joined the Dayton Christian staff of Ken Moyer, another of his big influences, he said.
Eventually that led to his first head coaching job, at Cincinnati’s Woodward High, where he inherited a 2-8 team and went 6-14 over two seasons.
That’s when he took over the job at Cincinnati Withrow, which had gone 1-29 in the three years before he got there.
By then he had put together a plan on how a program should be run – how the concepts that form the foundation for better resourced suburban schools could work in inner city programs as well.
Over five years his teams went 33-21 and in 2023 the Tigers were 12-2 and made the Division II regional final for the first time in school history. Twice he was named Coach of the Year in the Cincinnati Metro Athletic Conference.
He was one of 76 candidates for the Middletown job after Don Simpson stepped down following the 2023 season.
In six seasons under Simpson, the Middies had gone 11-47.
Jones was hired and his team went 5-6 last year.
Although there had been improvement, the Middies also got overwhelmed at times; never more so than when Lakota West came into Barnitz and buried them, 51-7.
That fueled an intense commitment in the weight room, on the practice field and in the minds of the young men who wanted to call themselves Middies.
Existing talent was developed, some top transfers were added and Jones compiled a staff of impressive assistants.
His associate head coach is Jalin Marshall, one of the greatest Middie stars ever – he rushed for 4,759 yards and 54 touchdowns – who went on to shine at Ohio State, sign with the New York Jets and play in the Canadian Football League.
Artrell Hawkins – who played 10 years in the NFL; six with the Cincinnati Bengals – is on the staff, as are some of Jones’s former players and Moyer helps out too.
The Middies stunned everyone this year when – ahead of schedule in the rebuilding process – they went 11-2 and last Friday night came from behind in lousy weather conditions to beat Wayne, 21-14, in the regional final.
While there were many stars in the game, none stood taller than Jordan Vann, a Michigan State commit as of now, who ran the opening kickoff of the second half back 89 yards for a touchdown, scored the go-ahead TD with 34 seconds left and secured the win with a final interception.
And that sets up Friday night’s showdown with 10-2 St. Xavier, which has won four state titles in the past 20 years.
‘This is just the start’
These past couple of weeks Jones has heard from many people in the Middletown community, including some of the Middies’ most celebrated sports alums.
Jones said Pro Football Hall of Fame receiver Cris Carter called and he heard his team got shout outs from Kyle Schwarber of the Philadelphia Phillies and Kayla Harrison, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in judo who is the current UFC bantamweight champion.
And, of course, he hears regularly from Place, the Ohio Hall of Fame coach, who spent some 50 years on the sidelines, has been teaching building character classes at the University of Dayton and with Coach Al Powell launched the nationally-acclaimed “Coaches for Social Justice” 7-on-7 jamboree that stresses diversity and brotherhood among players of different races.
“I try to reach out to Kali every week just to tell him how proud I am of him,” Place said. “He really blossomed after the military. His teams are disciplined and skilled and now they’ve made school history.
“He’s done a wonderful job.”
Jones credits Place, Minton, Moyer, Roosevelt Mukes at Wayne, Al West, the former Central State coach, and Jim Lippincott, the Bengals former director of football operations, as some of the people who have helped shape him and what he does.
“We have all kinds of kids: some may be homeless, others are impoverished or struggling with different life challenges,” he said. “But because I have seen a lot, I think I am able to help a lot. I understand what some of them are going through.
“The kids respond to truth and love. They know when they are hearing the truth and when they feel love.
“I’m thankful for every young person that I’ve been allowed to coach and be a part of their lives.
“And I’m thankful to have the opportunity to make relationships that help young people grow and reach the goals they set and the ones they didn’t even know they wanted to reach.”
Place saw that same realization take root in Jones and now it’s blossomed into one of the best football stories of this season.
“And this is just the start,” Place said. “Kali has got a great future ahead of him.”
He’s finally been able to put the past to rest.
No more “no thanks.”
For Kali Jones today, it’s all about giving thanks.
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