HEAD COACH - Marcus Jones.

Coach Marcus Jones comes to Kempner High Baseball after a brief three-year “retirement” from coaching. He has logged 22 years of coaching (11 as a head baseball coach) and a total of 25 years teaching in the public school system in the state of Texas.

He graduated second in his class from Taft High School, in a town just north of Corpus Christi, where he was a three-sport letterman in football, basketball, and baseball. He won All-District and All-South Texas honors in football his junior and senior years in high school, leading the Greyhounds to a 17-3 record as the school’s quarterback. He was also an All-District performer on the diamond his sophomore and junior seasons, and was named to the second-team his senior season as an outfielder and first

baseman. He was awarded a football scholarship to Cisco Junior College in 1980 and was a part of a team finishing in the top ten in the NJCAA his freshman year. He was injured in his sophomore season thus virtually ending his football career.

He then graduated from Texas A&M in 1985 and returned home to Taft under current Brazosport ISD Athletic Director Jesse Crow, coaching wide receivers for the football team, along with freshman basketball and track. His second year at THS, he was named offensive coordinator, running backs coach, assistant head track coach, as well as an assistant under Coach Jamie Lechler in the baseball program.

He then moved with Coach Crow’s staff to Wharton High School where he was again named offensive coordinator, head basketball coach (five years), and served as an assistant to Coach Floyd Ciruti for nine years on the baseball diamond, becoming a part of the success that Wharton High athletics achieved from 1987-1996.

Coach Jones then was given the opportunity to become the head baseball coach at Bridge City High School in the Golden Triangle where he helped turn a program around from an 8-19 record his first year at the helm of the Cardinals to a 19-8 record just two years later. Coach also served as the JV offensive coordinator in football his first year at BC and the outside LB’s coach his last two years there under Les Johnson.

In 1999, Coach Jones was asked to start the baseball program for “brand new” Cinco Ranch High School in the Katy ISD. It took some time to build the program from a rice field to the facility you see now on the Grand Parkway, but the program seemed to match the growth of the facility with Cinco Ranch making some noise in Coach Jones’ last three years there, with a district runner-up finish and bi-district championship in 2005 (24-8), a district championship and bi-district finalist position in 2006 (24-9), and a third-place finish in 2007 (13-17) from very young team who fought hard and gave Langham Creek all they wanted in a one-game playoff, losing 4-1 in the bi-district round of the playoffs. Coach also served as a DL coach and head sophomore football coach during his stay at CRHS under Coach Don Clayton.

Coach Jones and his staff (Kevin Hildebrand-current Cinco Ranch head coach, Jerry Miller-current Cinco Ranch head softball coach, Shane Weaston-current Cinco Ranch pitching coach, and Eric Folkerts-current AD at Atchison (KS) High) were honored after that ’07 season in being selected by the Greater Houston Area Baseball Coaches Association to coach the Southwest 5A team at Reckling Park (Rice University) in June of 2007 and Coach Jones was then chosen to assist in coaching a team from Texas that flew to Surfer’s Paradise, Australia and participated in Major League Baseball’s Australian Academy Program (MLBAAP) in June/July of 2007 led by former major leaguers David Nilsson (All Star C/OF/1B-Brewers) and Rod Carew (MLB Hall of Fame 18-time All Star 1B/2B-Twins/Angels).

Coach then “retired” due to family obligations that included assisting his wife Karen (a former volleyball and track star at Sinton High and Texas A&I and former head women’s track coach at Wharton High) in caring for his oldest son, Brenning (15) who is mentally handicapped and suffers from Autism, along with his younger brothers, Jordan (13), and Kendall (11) who both hope one day to don the maroon and white for the Cougars.

Coach Jones has kept his “hands in the game” for the last two years, serving on Coach Jerry Miller’s (scout-Colorado Rockies/former Jones’ assistant/current CRHS head softball coach) staff as the third base coach for the Katy Collegians Baseball Club (ktcollegiansbaseball.com) that has qualified for the NBC World Series in Wichita, Kansas in ’09 and ‘10. The Collegians are made up of student-athletes from the Greater Houston Area (West) that are currently playing college baseball for (Division 1) programs such as HBU, UT-Arlington, New Mexico, New Mexico State and several other schools such as Mary Hardin Baylor and local Juco programs including Wharton and San Jacinto (’09-’10 participants in the Junior College World Series in Colorado).

Coach hopes to add several Kempner High grads to the roster of the Collegians in the summers to come adding, “It’s a great way to get our kids more exposure to scouts for both college and professional ball clubs if this (a college or pro career) is in fact something that our athletes wish to pursue.” And he also notes that this summer, the Collegians had their very first professional signee in Cliff Archibald from Cinco-rival James E. Taylor High in Katy, who was chosen by the Pittsburgh Pirates and is currently in Florida taking part in their rookie-league season.

About Kempner, Coach Jones says, “I always enjoyed competing against Kempner High and Coach Sellers while I was at Cinco Ranch. We had some awesome battles, but I could always count on lots of “yes, sirs” and “no sirs” when I spoke to the Kempner kids. They always approached the game and their opponents with a lot of class and character and I always remembered that……It’s one of the reasons I am eagerly awaiting the beginning of the opportunity that I’ve been given at Kempner High by Coach Brown and FBISD. I have been blessed by our Lord with a wonderful family that has been supportive of my decision to get back to what I love to do and that is to coach kids to become not only great players, but to be great citizens, great sons and daughters, and great parents because that’s what is ultimately important. I want to help them get to where they might not be able to get by themselves. The lessons that can be learned from this game particularly and athletics in general about dealing with adversity, perseverance, and persistence in accomplishing a task are the qualities that are going to get our young people through the tough times they are almost certain to face in their lives……….baseball is good about teaching that.”

COACH - Coach Nick Anderson is in his 9th year of teaching Biology and coaching, this is his fourth year at Kempner.

He attended Texas A&M University receiving a B.S. in Education and he is currently working on his Masters in Education at University of Houston.

Coach Anderson comes from H.I.S.D. Davis High School as a varsity assistant and head sophomore coach, where his team was a perennial playoff team.

 COACH- Coach Steve Ahrens is in his first year as the Varsity Assistant at Kempner.

Travis Ferrell