Fort Myers head basketball coach, former Mariner mentor Keeth Jones hanging up whistle

Few coaches last long enough to have 30 years on their resume. Fewer make the trip to Lakeland for the state basketball finals, and even fewer still leave with a state championship ring.

Keeth Jones has accomplished all of the above and says he's done enough. After taking over the head coaching job at Fort Myers in 2019, Jones says the time has come to step away from the game for good as he announced his retirement on social media.

"It has just gotten to be where it was more of a job than it was something I was really passionate about with everything," Jones said. "It was just time. I felt just felt some of the frustrations of things and a lot of things have changed in the last couple of years. I listened to what Nick Saban had to say [on the state of collegiate athletics] and that's kind of filtered down to the high school level."

The decision wraps up a career that began in 1993 at Lake Wales, where Jones led the Highlanders to a Class 4A State Championship in 2000. Between 1993 and 2003, Jones amassed a 168-60 record for the Highlanders. He says the early success helped propel him to a long career.

"It kind of established in the area that we would win big games, games we weren't supposed to win," Jones said. "That was just the toughness of our kids. Those things really impacted me and let me know that not just that I thought we could win games but the kids thought that even more... That helped me in the younger part of my career, just having that confidence that whoever we were going to play, maybe we weren't going to win but we definitely weren't scared and we could compete."

In 2003, he moved to Georgia for 10 years as the coach at Suwannee Peachtree and Rome.

Jones moved to Southwest Florida not as a head coach but as a referee and track & field coach. He took the junior varsity job at Mariner before being thrust into the head coaching role in 2017 after head coach James Harris was arrested for two felony charges of sexual assault on a minor.

That kind of distraction could easily derail a team as Jones took over just one day before the Tritons' district championship matchup against Lely, which Mariner lost. But despite the adversity, Jones and company went on to rattle off four straight wins on their way to a regional title and a berth in the state championship game before falling to Leesburg in the final.

He accepted the offer from Fort Myers two years later in 2019, and the Green Wave appeared in the district title game every year of his tenure.

Jones walks away from the game having amassed 453 career wins.

"I've always been able to keep it simple," Jones said. "I'm a dummy, we're not running 18 plays and five different defenses. We're going to play full-court man and we're going to try to get it inside."

Anyone who knows basketball knows how much the game has changed in the last 10 years, let alone 30. Jones has been there to see not only how the X's and O's have changed, but the Jimmies and Joes as well. The massive culture shift in high school basketball was another deciding factor in his decision to retire.

"You're trying to develop a team but also keep your individuals happy, and that's not what it's about," Jones said. "You build a relationship with a kid, you work with him, you count on him, he counts on you, then the grass is greener somewhere else. And it's not always the kids. Nowadays they go through the parents, the friends, the AAU teams in the summer. It's those kinds of things, just take the guys you have and make that a good experience for them."

As for what's next for Jones, he's just looking forward to enjoying the game without the stresses that come with being a head coach. Be it staying around the program in an unofficial capacity, going back to officiating, or just enjoying the games from the stands, Jones isn't sure what he'll do next outside of two more years as a teacher and assistant athletic director at Fort Myers.

But he does know exactly what he won't be doing.

"What I'm looking forward to having less stress, being able to relax," Jones said. "I may have to cover a game, but I can sit there and if I'm not on a bench I can just enjoy the game. I want our kids in Fort Myers to be successful, but if we don't win I'm not going home and staying up at night or wondering what I can do more of. Just having that off my plate is huge."