Kyle Jones overcoming adversity and making an impact at Florida

Story by Hunter DeLauder

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida baseball is almost a month into fall practice, where the Gators are not only prepping for their upcoming exhibitions against Jacksonville University on Oct. 31 and Georgia Southern on Nov. 9, but working to get back to Omaha after its early exit in the Conway Regional last season.

Outfielder Kyle Jones is one of the many Gators hopeful to be a part of this 2026 revival season. Like many, Jones is off to a good start this preseason and expected to be a key figure on this team. He’s back from his season-ending shoulder injury and will likely be UF’s starting center fielder and leadoff hitter. Internally, Jones is considered one of the most talented players at Florida.

It is an impressive feat for someone who has not been in Gainesville very long. He carries himself like a veteran on the team, but he’s only played four games for the Gators. Jones was never recruited by Florida out of high school. But with dreams of still wanting to play on the grandest stages of college baseball, he took an alternative route to which he hoped to end with a dog pile in Omaha.  

Jones, a native of Bogart, Ga., played multiple sports growing up. He discovered the game of baseball at the young age of 5 and had an instant connection to it. Jones said it was the only sport that really stuck with him as a kid. From there, Jones took it on as his primary sport and quickly rose through the ranks as one of the top outfielders in Georgia.

When he arrived at North Oconee High School, it did not take long for Jones to make an impact on the team. By his sophomore year in 2021, he was already playing varsity and serving as a role player. But in his junior and senior seasons, Jones was the Titans’ starting center fielder and played a key role in North Oconee’s back-to-back state championships.

Eric Bounds, a former assistant and now coach of North Oconee High School, raved about Jones, calling him “an outstanding baseball player.” Bounds emphasized that Jones’ impact on those state title-winning teams should not go unnoticed and said his speed is what made him a difference maker.

“Any ball that went up in the air, he was going to basically get to it. Between right field and left field, he was covering all that ground,” Bounds said. “Anytime he put the ball on the ground, you were like, ‘Yeah, he’s going to be safe, like he’s just going to beat it out.’ If it was a two-hopper or more, he was going to be safe. So I was like, ‘We’re just trying to make sure you don’t fly out too much because if you can just hit the ball on a line or on the ground, you’re going to be on base.’”

In his junior year, Jones hit .409 with seven doubles and one home run and was a part of one of the great seasons in any North Oconee sports that 2022 season. The Titans went 39-1, which included a 36-game winning streak. The following season, Jones had a .360 batting average with three doubles, triples and home runs and went out on top again with his second straight title.

Those back-to-back championship seasons top the list of Jones’ most exciting moments during his baseball career. It’s an experience the three-year letterman would not trade the world for.

“I feel like I had one of the best coaches I could ask for in Coach (Jay) Lasley and the assistant coaches, also with some of my best friends on the team with me,” Jones said. “Being able to win those titles with my best friends was something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

When a team has that much success, it is bound to draw the eyes of college scouts from all around to watch your players. Jones was one of them. He lived 20 minutes away from Athens, Ga., and grew up watching the Georgia Bulldog games. Jones followed in the family footsteps of becoming a lifelong Bulldog fan.

Living in the heart of the south, Jones had big plans of playing high-caliber baseball in the SEC. He had the makings to be recruited by the big boys from his sheer athleticism, speed, twitchiness in the field and overall prospect rankings. Jones earned a Perfect Game grade of 9 and was ranked the 13th outfielder and 73rd overall player in the state of Georgia. However, his body frame lacked at 6-foot-3, 170-pounds, which led to many schools shying away from the talented outfielder.

Jones did not receive a single offer from an SEC school, including Georgia, despite former UGA coach Scott Stricklin’s son Cale playing with Jones on the same high school team. Only a handful of mid-majors reached out to him with offers; still, Jones made the best of it.

“I talked to a few different schools out of high school, but my only official offers were Kennesaw State and Stetson,” Jones said.

With a limited number of choices, Jones had to decide whether to stay in-state at Kennesaw State or head down south to DeLand and play for Stetson. Ultimately, Jones decided that getting away from the distractions of being so close to home would be best for him and took his talents to Stetson, a place Bounds thinks was the perfect fit.

“He had that kind of  laid-back attitude, and I think when he went to Stetson, I was like ‘Oh, that’s a great fit for you,’” Bounds said. “At the beach, obviously, DeLand is a lot closer than Athens is, but you could see that fit his personality better to go that way, then maybe stay at home.”

Back at the bottom of the totem pole, Jones wasted no time making an instant impact for the Hatters. He was named the starting center fielder and hit leadoff all 62 games during the 2024 season. The success he achieved in one year at Stetson was one of the most impressive things in all of college baseball. Jones slashed .355/.459/.476 with a team-leading 88 hits, 15 doubles, five home runs, 32 RBIs, earned ASUN Freshman of the Year, a Second Team NCBWA Freshman All-America selection and a 2024 NCAA Div. 1 Gold Glove finalist after boasting a .994 fielding percentage on 167 chances.

His strong efforts helped propel Stetson to one of its best seasons in program history. The Hatters went 41-22, won the ASUN conference, where Jones went 8-for-19 and made the All-Tournament team, and clinched Stetson’s first trip back to the NCAA Tournament since 2018.

The Hatters drew the Tallahassee regional, where they went 1-2 with an elimination game win over Alabama. Similar to the conference tournament, Jones showed out again — going 5-for-12 with two home runs and a double.

At the end of his historic first season, Jones looked to get an increased NIL deal at the school. After meeting with his agent, Jones listened to what Stetson had to offer but ultimately decided to test the market in the transfer portal.

​Jones came home that following summer and spoke to Bounds. 

“Are you going to stay at Stetson?” Bounds asked.

Jones answered with uncertainty. However, he intended to take visits to other schools that offered more NIL money.

“For a minute there, I think there were some other places that he was looking at just because they’re ahead of the game,” Bounds said.

Multiple teams took their best shot at landing Jones, but in the end, he was down to a pair of schools — Georgia and Florida. These old border rivals, who have been at each other’s throats for over a century now, were locked in another battle.

Under new leadership, the Bulldogs did all they could to bring the hometown kid back to the Classic City. Jones listened to what they had, even going on an official visit, but deep down, he had his mind already set on playing for the Gators.

“I honestly went there because it was in my backyard. I was like, ‘Well, you know, I might as well go see what they have.’ But in my mind, I kind of knew I was never going to go there,” Jones said. “It was just something that I could never do.”

Falling back on the same playbook of choosing Stetson over Kennesaw State, Jones wanted to carve out his own path away from the footsteps of his parents’ house.

“I always wanted to get away, do my own thing, and that’s what I did,” Jones said. “That was the best decision I’ve ever made.”

Moving to Gainesville and committing to Florida came with some tough-love questioning from a family whose roots run Bulldog red and black. But Jones expressed no hard feelings and contentment with his decision. 

“That was something, when I committed here, they were like, ‘Man, now I’m going to have to change whatever.’ But no, they love the Florida Gators now,” Jones said. “People ask me that all the time, “Why did you go to Florida?” I was like, ‘Well, I’m supposed to be at Florida.’”

Finally, he had achieved his childhood dream of playing in the SEC, proving that being physically undersized is as strong as how built you are with your demeanor.

Things can be very strange when you make a jump like Stetson to Florida. So much changes, from your everyday routine outside of baseball, to being on the field and having to raise your level of play to the ones around you in order to stay competitive. Former Gators outfielder Ty Evans took Jones under his wing and became one of his biggest mentors.

“Ty Evans was my biggest mentor when I got to Florida,” Jones said. “He was older and I was new and he pulled me under his wing and showed me how they did things at Florida and what the expectations were. I thank him for what he’s done for me.”

Like his previous destinations, Jones wasted no time making an impact. He found his way on to the opening day lineup, where he would again assume his duties as the starting center fielder. In his first game with the Gators, he went 2-for-4 with one double and one run scored.

While the start of the season was good, the in-game result for Jones was not. On the same play as his double, Jones got greedy trying to unsuccessfully stretch it into a triple and suffered a hamstring injury in the process that benched him for the next nine days.

Jones returned to the lineup for the series finale against Dayton on Feb. 23, where he went 2-for-4 again with an RBI and walked once. Things seemed to be back in order for the sophomore transfer; he had just made his return to DeLand for a mid-week matchup and was gearing up for a weekend series against in-state rival Miami. But his fortunes were about to take a serious turn during that Friday night series-opener against the Hurricanes on Feb. 28.

Playing his usual routine in center, Jones dove out for a ball and landed awkwardly on his shoulder. Sensing something did not feel right, he was pulled from the game to be checked out. It turns out Jones had suffered a significant shoulder injury that would require surgery, ending his 2025 season. He was heartbroken, a loss for words, as if he just took a gut-punch from a boxer.

“The emotions I felt last year after I got hurt was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt in my entire life,” Jones said. “It was a feeling knowing that your entire season was going to be taken away from you for something that I couldn’t control. I remember sitting in my truck after I talked to the surgeon, just wondering what the next eight months was going to look like.”

There, Jones sat helpless in the dugout, wearing a sling around his shoulder, watching his teammates out there competing. Florida hit a rough patch in the middle of last season, getting off to a dreadful 1-11 start in conference play. Though watching from the dugout proved difficult, Jones’ confidence in the team never wavered.

“It was hard, but it was almost one of those things, like I believed in our team, and I think everybody else believed in our team, and I knew what was possible,” Jones said. “I think towards the end of the season, in SEC play, when they actually started heating up, started playing well, they all showed that.”

Facing a tough offseason of rehab, Jones found a partner in crime during it all with senior infielder Cade Kurland, who also endured an offseason of recovery from season-ending shoulder surgery. The duo helped push each other and grew their relationship to the point where they are now roommates.

“We definitely got a lot closer, because we were kind of going through the same thing. We’re roommates now,” Kurland said. “He’s my boy.”

Limited in what he could do with the sling still on and even when it first came off, Jones put all his efforts towards getting stronger and building a better range of motion. Fully cleared, Jones entered this fall at 185 pounds and feels good about where he’s at.

Wanting to ease him back into things, Florida held Jones out of the first four intra-squad scrimmages before letting him loose for scrimmage No. 5. He was productive at the plate, going 2-for-2, but also showed off the leather a few times with a couple of nice catches in the outfield.

Penciled in as the starting 2026 center fielder for the Gators, Jones is excited about the outfield group, which should be one of Florida’s biggest strengths this season. One reason for that was the addition of Jacksonville transfer Jaden Bastian, also a projected starter. Unfortunately, Bastian suffered a serious right-leg injury last Saturday that resulted in him getting season-ending surgery to fix a fractured tibia and fibula.

Despite the tough blow to the entire team, Jones still thinks this year’s squad should be good and is excited about its upcoming exhibition against Jacksonville.

“I think the team is looking good for the game on Friday,” Jones said. “Obviously, the loss of Bastian is pretty devastating, but we gotta find ways to battle through adversity and go out and play to the best of our ability. A lot of pitchers are going to throw, so hopefully they have all their stuff and we should be looking good.”

A series Jones is looking forward to the most this spring falls on April 10-12, when the Gators make the trip back to where it all started in Athens for a weekend series against Georgia. The Bulldogs came to Gainesville last season and got their first road sweep at Florida since 2006.

Once the schedule came out for the 2026 season, Jones realized that he would be returning home. He’s expecting a heavy crowd of his supporters in attendance.

“I knew they came to us last year, so I was like, ‘Oh, that means next year we’re gonna be in Georgia.’ So I’ve been planning for a long time,” Jones said. “My whole family is gonna be there. Probably, cousins, aunts, uncles, everybody’s gonna be there. So all my friends that I grew up with, I’m super excited to go back. I got that marked on the calendar for sure.”