THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: IHSAA head Ty Jones visited — and looked out for — all of Idaho

When Ty Jones took over 10 years ago as executive director of the Idaho High School Activities Association, one of the goals for the head of the governing body for high school sports in the state was to visit every school in the state. 

“Took me a couple of years,” he said the other day, in a phone interview from Boise. 

“But I always thought, ‘How could I sit down behind my desk, and know exactly what Bonners is going through, unless I’ve actually been to Bonners?’ And looked at it logistically and went, ‘Wow, they’ve got quite a trip to make here.’ And when they make a trip to this place, what type of things do they face.  

“What happens when I go to Clark Fork?” he added. “I go all the way around the lake to get to Clark Fork, and then realize that they not only have to get back around the lake to Sandpoint, but then they have another two hours in some instances to get to certain places that they play.” 

Administrators in North Idaho noticed. 

“When he came in he said, ‘I’m going to go to every school in Idaho, and visit,’” Post Falls High athletic director Craig Christensen said. “And he did it. And talked to the principals and ADs. One of the things he brought was, just being able to go out and meet people and build relationships, which is a big part of that job. He knows everybody everywhere now.”   

Everywhere. 

“I went to a football game in Mullan,” Jones recalled. “It’s a really cool place, but it was with Horseshoe Bend (more than 380 miles away, near Boise), a playoff game a few years back. Seriously? I just thought it was important, plus I like getting out and seeing the schools.  

“That’s a neat thing ... it took me to some pretty good places, and every once in a while you take a wrong turn on a road and you’d end up in a spot that you didn’t know existed. But at the end of the day, it was pretty neat.” 

Jones, 59, is retiring at the end of this coming week as head of the IHSAA. He had some “health issues” three years ago, but mostly, he’s reached the Rule of 90, and is ready to spend more time with his family. 

“For me, I got two years with Ty Jones, and he’s been a pretty influential person for me, with this job, because there’s so much new coming at a new AD,” said Troy Anderson, who recently completed his second year as athletic director at Lake City High. “He was a great person to bounce ideas off of. He was probably one of the most available leaders of any association I’ve ever seen. He was ready to talk to talk to you at any given moment.” 

Shelley superintendent Chad Williams will replace Jones beginning July 1. 

BEFORE BECOMING head of the IHSAA, Jones was athletic director at Jerome High, near Twin Falls, for 11 years, then was superintendent at Hagerman for two years after that.  

Before that, he was at Gooding for eight years and coached basketball at a couple of other smaller towns, including American Falls in eastern Idaho.  

“I was never in a spot where we only played people from our spot," Jones said. “When North Idaho talks about travel, we lived it. We were driving to Pocatello or Idaho Falls or Elko at least once a week ... that’s just the way we had to deal with it. I would never say our travel was as bad as in Northern Idaho, but on a weeknight, we could be two and a half hours away, and have to go to school the next day.” 

Sound familiar? 

“He came from Jerome, so he kind of understood not being a school in the Boise valley,” Christensen said. “So I think that kind of helped us, and him kinda making sure he kept an eye out for the North, too.” 

JONES SAID there were probably 2-3 things he was most proud of during his tenure. 

“We added girls wrestling, and to me that was a big deal for our female wrestlers, and gives them an opportunity to compete at the state level, and for state championships, facing other female athletes,” he said. “As that sport grows, that’s been really neat to watch that happen.” 

Also under Jones, the IHSAA added swimming, which like girls wrestling had a state championship competitions for a few years before the state took it over. 

“Maybe the most important thing, we’ve really tried to focus on the mental health aspect for our schools and our student-athletes,” Jones said. “We have a student advisory council, and one of the things that has been a focal point of that was, the mental health piece for kids. It's more prevalent than people realize. If you’re not actually in that realm all the time, you don’t necessarily see the issues that kids have, so anything we can do to promote the safety and the mental health aspect of it ... at the end of the day, we’ve really fallen back on health and safety issues for our kids, continued a lot of the things John (Billetz, the former Post Falls High principal and Jones’ predecessor as head of the IHSAA) started. 

Jones said the feedback he and the IHSAA board of directors received from the student group was an “eye-opener.” 

“Our youngest was just going through school at that time, so you’re kinda tuned into it,” he said. “But being out of a building takes away from the day-to-day, and we’ve really relied on those kids for a lot of information. Just to listen to them ... we’re in pretty good hands. They want to focus on things like sportsmanship, with fans, and student mental health. I don’t worry about the future of where we’re going, simply because of the kids we get to work with them. And every school has them.” 

JONES ALSO helped guide Idaho high school sports through the COVID-19 pandemic. Spring sports shut down everywhere in 2020.  

While neighboring Washington delayed the start of its 2020-21 athletic season, then played abbreviated seasons, Idaho returned to fall sports on time. While at times no fans were allowed in the gyms, and other times attendance was limited, and some games were canceled due to COVID, Idaho managed to complete each of its seasons with state tournaments. 

“He handled COVID very well,” Christensen said. “He got us through that, and we played games.” 

“I think what it showed more than anything else was how important activities are to kids, and to families and to communities,” Jones said. “In the forefront of our mind, we kept telling ourselves, ‘What’s best for kids?’ And everybody was doing everything that they could to get kids back to participating, because we know how important that is, to give kids that safe place, and the place where their friends are at. You want to talk about mental health — you want to talk about what a drain the pandemic was on student mental health. It’s amazing that our kids are pretty dang resilient.” 

UNDER JONES, Idaho has gone from drawing ping-pong balls out of a can to determine matchups for state (which is what Jones did, during his six-year stint as an IHSAA board member), to using a system which ranks the eight teams that qualify for state, no matter which district they are from, and sets the first-round matchups that way — No. 1 vs. No. 8, No. 2 vs. No. 7, and so on. 

In the old days, the IHSAA tried to keep the district champ and district runner-up on opposite sides of the bracket. In some classifications, like 3A, there are five district champions, so there would always be one first-round matchup pitting district champ vs. District champ. And sometimes, those were the best two teams in the state. 

That doesn’t happen with the new format — but sometimes you get Coeur d’Alene vs. Lake City in the first round at state. 

“And we warned them about that,” Jones said. “We flat-out told them, if you do this, there’s a potential for what might happen. You might have two district teams that just met the week before, playing again. And at that time everybody said, 'We don’t care, we want a change,’ and after about one year it’s like, 'Well we don’t like that.’ Well, you were warned about that. We knew it was going to happen potentially, because there’s no way to get around that, because if you’re going to rank teams, and 1 and 8 are from the same conference, that’s what you’re going to get.” 

While most sports use the same format for seeding state tourneys, football does not. Each classification has its own format; most use MaxPreps rankings for seeding to some extent.  

“There’s a reason every division has a different football playoff system,” Timberlake football coach Kelly Amos said. “He (Jones) was very willing to allow our division to make decisions. He let us meet, talk, discuss, and make changes, and let us do what we thought was best for our divisions. Every division has a little different dynamic, so it was a good thing he allowed us to have that flexibility.” 

The 5As use a modified version of the “old way,” with teams scattered through the 12-team bracket based on their district finishes. 

“I did like that; he didn’t force the 5As into the MaxPrep thing,” Coeur d’Alene football coach Shawn Amos said. “Which I’ve been against, and most of the 5As have been against, seeding by MaxPreps.” 

AS FOR the future, under Williams, the new executive director? 

There may or may not be a change in the size of state tournament fields, but Jones said there could be a change in how teams qualify for state. 

“I think we’re closer to that than people think,” Jones said. 

Right now, math is used to determine representation from each district — the more teams in your district, the more berths you get to state. And in many cases, there were play-in games between different districts to give them a chance to get another team to state. 

But that didn’t help on the occasion where, say, one district had three of the best teams in the state, but was only a three-team district, and could only get one of those teams to state — maybe two, if a play-in game was available. 

One suggestion is for district champs to automatically qualify for state, with the rest of the field determined by MaxPreps rankings. 

“I think you’re going to see the use of MaxPreps, or a ranking system, to either determine how people get there, or how representation is determined,” Jones said. “I think the lengthening of a tournament, going from three to four days (which would happen with a 12-team tournament), would be a much tougher sell. But I think the easiest way to say it is, whatever ranking system you use, and right now it’s MaxPreps, that will play a major part in helping determine who gets there, and who plays who.” 

So there’s hope. Idaho has historically been slow to change, but in recent years under Jones, there’s been plenty of changes, from how tournaments are seeded, to adding a third official at state basketball, to use of a shot clock, to adding sports, to a new format for state baseball next spring which looks kinda like the way the colleges do it. 

“One of Ty’s strengths was, he was a great communicator,” Lakeland AD Matt Neff said. “He really did stand by his commitment of, 'Here’s my cell phone, if you have any question, call me.’ It was rare that that guy didn’t answer the phone. For a guy that’s at a state-level position, with hundreds of ADs and principals … you could call him at pretty much any time and get him on the phone to answer your question. I really appreciated that.” 

JONES’ ADVICE for his successor? 

“I’d say listen; listen to everybody,” he said. “Chad’s a good listener. To me, that’s the biggest thing. You never know where a good idea is going to come from ... sometimes you get ideas from people on what not to do. If you just listen, and weigh your options, you’re going to be pretty successful.” 

On his way out the door to retirement, Jones said he was pretty fortunate that he ended up where he did, and met all the people and saw all the places he did as executive director of the IHSAA. 

“I hope that at the end of the day people would look at it and say, ‘Ty was pretty fair, looked at all things, and tried to do what was best for all areas of the state, and not just focus on one,’” he said. 

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @CdAPressSports.