Dave Jones had an outstanding athletic and scholastic career at Napa School. As an athlete, he played basketball, football and baseball, earned honorable mention on the North Bay League football and basketball teams, and was a two year first team all NBL player on the baseball team. Jones was a key member of the 1967 NBL championship baseball team that included future major league great, Napa High School Hall of Famer Bill Buckner. Jones was chosen Napa High’s outstanding Athlete for the 1966-67 year, and his baseball success was partially responsible for his earning an appointment to the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, where he continued his baseball activities and earned All-League honors at the college level. Jones’s scholastic achievements were recognized by his selection into the 1967 National Football Foundation Hall of Fame and his selection by the Napa Chamber of Commerce as the Outstanding Student of the year at Napa High. He had a grade point average of 3.86 when 4.0 was the maximum. He also received a State Scholarship Award for having a college aptitude test within the top 6% in the State. When Jones’s high school teammate Bill Buckner was asked to submit a letter to the Selection Committee on Jones’s behalf, Buckner, who played with and against most of the great baseball players of his generation, wrote in part, “First and foremost Dave Jones was what every parent would want in a son. Class guy and outstanding student. I can’t think of a single incidence where Dave Jones didn’t show total class…No athlete represented his school better than Dave Jones.”
