BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Stirley Jones, a 2003 Union County High School graduate, earned a first-place medal at the 2025 Toyota USATF Para National Championships, which were recently held in Eugene, Oregon.
Jones, who competes in the T13 visually impaired division, ran a time of 11.26 seconds in the 100m. His race involved two other competitors, who each competed in a different visually impaired division. Noah Malone (T12) ran a time of 10.62 to take first regardless of visually impaired classification, while Mohammed Jauda (T11) ran a time of 12.49.
The former UCHS track-and-field athlete and basketball and football player was diagnosed with keratoconus while in high school. Keratoconus is a thinning of the cornea, which gradually bulges outward and causes blurred vision. Jones wears contact lenses for the condition. He wears sunglasses when competing to prevent the wind from blowing his contacts out.
“People think I’m trying to look cool,” Jones was quoted as saying in an Aug. 27, 2015, Orange County Register story written by Brian Whitehead. “I just wear them for protection.”
As a junior at UCHS, Jones was a district runner-up in both the 200m and 400m. He was the only UCHS boy to qualify for regionals.
Jones placed third in each race at the regional level to qualify for state. At state, he earned a medal with an eighth-place finish in the 200m. He finished 11th in the 400m.
During his senior year at UCHS, he was a district runner-up in both the 200m and high jump, while placing third in the 400m. He was also a member of the third-place 4x100m relay team.
Jones was first in the 200m preliminaries at the regional level, but he pulled a hamstring while running in the finals of the 4x100m relay, which prevented him from finishing the race in the 200m finals. The 4x100m team would place fifth, while Jones took sixth in the high jump.
After working for a year after graduating from high school, Jones moved to Huntingdon, California, and enrolled at Golden West College, where he competed in basketball, football and track and field. As a freshman, he broke the school record in the 200m with a time of 21.31, was named his team’s MVP and earned first-team all-conference honors. Jones was the Orange Empire Conference champion in the 200m and the runner-up in the 100m. He was fifth in the 100m and sixth in the 200m at the National Junior College Athletic Association Southern California Finals.
Jones took a semester off at Golden West after sustaining a back injury in a vehicle accident. Doctors told him he wouldn’t run at the same level he was used to, but Jones took that as a challenge. He re-enrolled at the school and was again named his team’s MVP, while also earning first-team all-conference honors. He was the conference champ in the 100m and runner-up in the 200m.
In 2016, Jones qualified for the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials. In 2023, he competed as a member of Team USA at the Parapan American Games in Chile, earning a bronze medal for a third-place finish in the 100m. His time was 11.39.
