KEEPING UP WITH COACH JONES

Kyle Jones was disappointed.

It was autumn 2019, and North Shore Country Day’s (NSCD) boys’ soccer coach had just guided his Raiders to a fourth-place finish in the Class A state tournament.

He should have been thrilled, since a boys’ soccer team at the Winnetka school had never before reached a state semifinal.

But he wasn’t.

Far from it.

“We were tourists, buying souvenirs every chance we got,” Jones recalls. “We were just happy to be there, including myself.”

Jones vowed to prepare his club differently were his Raiders to earn another Final Four berth.

His 2023 NSCD edition did just that last fall and entered a state semifinal against Peoria Christian High School with a 15-5-1 record.

“The day before, I showed our team a map of Hoffman Estates High School (site of the state finals) and pointed out where we’d practice and where the locker room was,” says Jones, who also serves NSCD as its Head of Physical Education. “I then described how I’d like our boys to walk out ahead of our warmup session, with our tallest player, (6-foot-3 senior forward), Leif Steele leading the way.

“Then I told them, ‘The only souvenir I’d settle for this time around is a state championship trophy. Let’s worry about purchasing state T-shirts later, OK?’”

Three days later, after Jones and his Raiders had piled into the team bus, they had to make room in the vehicle for a most welcome guest that spoke volumes without uttering a word— the first-place plaque.

NSCD blanked Normal University High School 2-0 in the state title match on November 4, two days after downing Peoria HS by the same score in a semifinal. It capped a dominant, remarkable run in the postseason, the Raiders having outscored its seven opponents by a combined 26 goals to one.

The Raiders (17-5-1) were paced by Steele, senior forward Daniel Becker, junior midfielder/forward Henry Gallun, senior back Smith Flickinger, and senior goalkeeper Aram Dombalagian. Becker finished his final prep season with a team-high 17 goals and seven assists; Gallun netted 16 goals and provided eight assists; Steele wound up with 10 goals and 11 assists; and the reliable Dombalagian racked up an impressive five clean sheets in the playoffs.

“What a great group of lads,” says the 41-year-old Jones, who grew up as a soccer-loving lad in Knutsford, a market town in Cheshire, England, located 14 miles southwest of Manchester, and lives in Highland Park with his wife, UK native Nichola, and their 13-year-old daughter, Bluesey; their son, Chapman (California) University sophomore Mason, starred in soccer at NSCD.

“All our players bought in and showed great leadership,” he adds. “But the leadership didn’t just come from our seniors. We experimented with a variety of formations before the start of the postseason, from a 4-3-4 to a 3-4-3 to a 4-4-2 diamond. We were more prepared than ever, for any team. Our top attackers (Becker, Gallun, and Steele) unlocked defenses.”

A 16-year-old Jones visited the United States for the first time on an exchange program with Middlesex School in Massachusetts. The program lasted 10 days. Middlesex’s boys’ soccer coach at the time, Mike Schafer, encouraged Jones to continue his education and soccer at Middlesex.

Jones hit the books and thumped soccer balls there for three years, before enrolling at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, as a Hotel Administration major. “My dad (the late Keith Jones) and ‘Schaf ’ were my role models,” Jones says. “I got most of my love and passion for soccer from Dad.

Dad was an assistant soccer coach for Knutsford’s town team. I was 15 when I started playing for the team, meaning I got to compete with and against men in their 30s and 40s.

“You could say I grew up in a hurry as a soccer player.”

Between his freshman and sophomore years at Cornell, Jones changed his major to Human Development and later chose to minor in Education—all because of soccer, the world’s Beautiful Game.

“I worked summer camps as a soccer coach on campus,” Jones says. “I thought, ‘This is incredible. This is what I want to do.’ I was like a big kid out there. It didn’t feel like work at all. One of the other camp coaches told me, ‘Jonesy, you have a great way with the campers; you connect well with them.’”

Jones searched for education posts after graduation and one came up, an admissions job, at North Shore Country Day. But NSCD’s then-Head of School, Tom Doar, offered Jones a first-grade teacher position in 2005. Jones accepted it and five years later added PE teacher to his plate of duties, which had included boys’ soccer assistant coach.

“I remember filling in as a head coach for one game,” Jones says. “We played Latin School. We got destroyed, 8-0. My first year as head coach (2006) we made incredible progress, and I owe a lot to Tom Doar for that. He allowed me to run an open gym on Sundays for soccer players; it transformed the program, because the boys started taking soccer more seriously.”

In 2007, NSCD battled visiting Northridge Preparatory School in a Class A state regional semifinal match. Darkness suspended play with four minutes left in regulation and the teams tied.

“One of our players convinced the entire school to watch us play the rest of the game the next day,” Jones says. “What a wonderful scene that was, all of the students showing up to support us. You don’t forget a moment like that.”

NSCD’s Raiders advanced to the next playoff round on penalty kicks.

“Even though North Shore Country Day school is small, its students are encouraged to dream big, and when they do—after putting in the work to go along with the dreams— great things are possible, like winning a state championship.”

A month after Jones’s 2019 squad took fourth at state, Keith Jones died. Four years later, on a soccer pitch in Hoffman Estates, Keith was on Kyle Jones’s mind and in his heart.

“I told my wife,” he recalls, “that if I’m ever fortunate to coach another team in the state finals, I’m going to do all I can to win it for Dad.”