Ahead of the 2019 football season, Cranbrook Kingswood was looking for a new head coach.
Athletic director Stephen Graf was looking for a candidate with specific skills that he felt would lead to success: a knowledge and passion for football, an incredible work ethic, a teaching ability and an ability to connect with those around him.
The Cranes offensive and defensive line coach Ben Jones thought he met the criteria. He felt his time had come.
“Ben stepped up, came in my office and said ‘Coach, you don’t need to look for a head coach. I’ll be your head coach, and I’ll do the job you need me to do,’” Graf said.
Cranbrook senior Bryce Hall already knew the passion Jones had for the game.
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As a junior defensive lineman, Hall had firsthand experience of Jones’ coaching: his drive and expectation that each rep, each drill, each play would not be only OK, average or just all right, but great.
Hall watched that mentality Jones instilled blossom for the entire team. And even before the Cranes took their first snap of the 2019 season, Jones’ first as head coach, the culture had changed.
“You know as well as I do, Cranbrook is not really a football school,” Hall said. “You have your West Bloomfields, your Oak Parks, your Cass Techs, your Clarkstons, all those schools. Cranbrook is not one of those football schools.
“When he got that head coaching job, he was going to turn Cranbrook into a football school.”
Jones died in a car accident Wednesday night, leaving the potential, leaving the culture he helped create in only his first season as head coach of the Cranes.
But to those closest to him in the football program, Jones’ transformation of Cranbrook Kingswood football, and the personnel inside of it, has only just begun.
'I'm not going easy on you'
Hall’s first experience of high school football came in the eighth grade, joining the high school team for lifting sessions each morning.
His first example of a high school coach was Jones, a first-year offensive and defensive line coach that was a product of Muskegon Catholic Central and Hillsdale College.
To Hall, Jones had this intimidating stature and a tendency to yell.
“He’s not a small guy. He’s a pretty big guy, you know: deep voice, the beard,” Hall said. “It was just kind of intimidating seeing my first high school coach.”
But as time went on, as Hall jumped from junior-varsity to the varsity team for playoffs, he saw Jones as an expert motivator, seeing the potential of every player on the other side of his deep-voiced shout.
Prior to the start of the 2019 minicamp in August, Jones met with his varsity players, and asked them two questions: What are your goals for the season, and what are your goals in life?
Hall was clear ahead of his junior season: he wanted to play college football and earn college offers
“He told me, ‘I’m not going to go easy on you,’” Hall said. “‘Nobody is going to take it easy on you at the next level, so I’m just going to get you ready for that now.’”
In the 2019 season, Jones led the Cranes to a 5-4 record, earning dominant wins against Pontiac and Ann Arbor Father Gabriel Richard before falling to Harper Woods in the first round of the playoffs.
More importantly, Jones helped Hall get one step closer to achieving his long-term goal: earning 20 offers and cutting that list down to eight schools prior to the start of his senior season.
“It really pains me not to be able to sign in front of him, have him be there when I commit,” Hall said. “He really, really helped me live my dream.”
Familial bond on, off
Jones made it clear that he loved football.
When Cranbrook Kingswood took the field for summer conditioning and football practice in the middle of the coronavirus, Jones, according to Hall, was the only person more excited to return to the field than he was.
However, to those close to him in the Cranes football program, Jones clearly loved and cared for people more.
“They saw he cared and that it was not fake,” Graf said. “It was a guy that really cared about the program and each of those kids and their ability to be the best they can be and the program to be the best it could be.”
Hall saw that in his life. After his brother, Braden, was diagnosed with leukemia in January, Jones was one of the first coaches who called Bryce.
Between Bryce Hall and Jones, there was a trusting relationship, representative of what the head coach strived for with the rest of the team: a familial, father-son atmosphere.
Hall believes Jones always put people ahead of himself. And to the incoming senior, that was true until the last day of his head coach’s life.
Hall met up with his head coach Wednesday evening at a post office at 11 Mile Road and Lahser Road. Jones wanted to return a thermometer to the defensive end’s family after using it to check in players that week at practice.
The meet-up was brief, five to 10 minutes. Hall and Jones talked about spring football, with the head coach making sure that his Division 1-offered senior defensive end would be available to play in his final semester of high school.
“He told me that he’s going to do everything possible to make sure that we are ready,” Hall said.
Hall left the conversation believing the same characteristics he had always felt of his head coach: that he was strong, loving and caring. That Jones was an example of what it looked like to be a strong man, who just so happened to coach football.
“He’s one of those guys that you don’t believe anything bad can ever happen,” Hall said. “He was a strong person. I didn’t believe something like that could happen to him.”
Hall found out Thursday, as he took his brother to high school orientation at Birmingham Groves, that Jones — his mentor, his example — died.
“Thinking that I might have been the last person to see him alive, it hurts,” Hall said. “I wish I could have held onto him five more minutes so he didn’t get in the accident, didn’t even have the conversation so he would have passed it.
“Just knowing he’s in a better place now is kind of comforting, but this is one of the most difficult times I’ve ever had. It feels like a part of my family died.”
Building off the foundation
Graf knew Jones passed every criteria the athletic director had of being Cranbrook Kingswood’s head football coach.
Jones was the young individual who wants to be there, in season and in offseason, who aspires to be great in every aspect of his role.
“Ben, he was every one of those bullet points that I mentioned,” Graf said. “He had that.”
Hall was confident Jones, if given the time, was going to transform Cranbrook Kingswood into a powerhouse football program.
Instead, Jones built the foundation. With his death, players and coaches will try and continue to build off the foundation.
“He was creating something here,” Hall said. “Seeing that cut short, that sparked a fire in every single one of us on the team this year.
“This season’s and all the seasons after are for Coach Jones.”
Contact reporter Colin Gay at cgay@hometownlife.com or 248-330-6710. Follow him on Twitter @ColinGay17. Send game results and stats to Liv-Sports@hometownlife.com.
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