Toya Jones

Toya Jones was born on 28 October 1976 in Victoria, Texas, and grew up in Refugio, a small town in South Texas. At Refugio High School, from which he graduated in 1995, he competed in both football and track and field. He later said that his coaches and friends were all part of the track team, and that it was like having a second family while also being able to achieve things on his own.

He made four appearances at the University Interscholastic League state track meet and won 17 medals, a record 13 of them gold, scoring 147 points over his career. As a sophomore he won gold in all five events he entered: the 100 metres, 200 metres, long jump, triple jump and 400 metre relay. Refugio won the state title in each of his last three years under coaches Tim Freeman, Alfred Marshall and David McKinney. In football, under coach George Harris, he was named all state, the 1994 Class 2A Defensive Player of the Year and a Parade All-American. In 1994 he was a member of the United States 4 x 100 metre relay squad at the World Junior Championships in Athletics.

Jones had committed to Tennessee but chose Texas A&M, saying it felt like a small town with a big time programme. From 1995 to 1998 he was a four year letterman in both football and track. On the football field he was a defensive back and special teams standout on the Aggies' Wrecking Crew defence and made 87 tackles. In the 1998 Big 12 championship game, with Texas A&M having rallied from 15 points down against undefeated Kansas State, Michael Bishop threw a 54 yard Hail Mary to Everett Burnett as time expired in regulation, and Jones made the tackle at the one yard line. The Aggies won 36 to 33 in double overtime, still their only Big 12 championship. On the track he was a sprinter and long jumper and ran the second leg of the 1997 NCAA champion 4 x 100 metre relay team, which also won at the Texas Relays, the Penn Relays and the Big 12 Championships.

Undrafted in 1999, he spent training camps with the San Francisco 49ers, the Denver Broncos and the Houston Texans in 2002 without appearing in an NFL regular season game. He played for the Birmingham Thunderbolts of the XFL in 2001 and spent time with the BC Lions of the Canadian Football League.

After football he worked in sales in the Houston area, as a sales representative for Sagis Diagnostics, and in 2017 founded Sagis Transport in Sugar Land, a company that collected medical specimens for the laboratory. Texas A&M's McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship included the company in its Aggie 100 list of top businesses run by former students in 2023 and 2024.

Jones lived in the Houston area. Friends described him as one of the funniest people they had known, with an infectious smile and a positive outlook. Former Major League Baseball pitcher Randy Keisler said he had been one of his closest friends for more than 20 years.

Toya Jones suffered a heart attack in the weekend before his death and was placed in hospice care on Wednesday 21 October 2026, where friends and family gathered to say goodbye. He died on Thursday 22 October 2026, aged 49, a few days before what would have been his 50th birthday. His death was first reported on social media and then by the Corpus Christi Caller-Times and the Houston Chronicle.

Randy Keisler wrote that the world was losing someone whose personality was one of a kind, and R.C. Slocum, who recruited and coached him at Texas A&M, wrote: "What a great guy. This is so sad. He was a special athlete and person. God rest his soul." Funeral arrangements had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Jones is remembered as one of the greatest high school track athletes in Texas history: his 13 state meet gold medals remain a record, and he was inducted into the Texas Track and Field Coaches Association Hall of Fame with the Class of 2020. Texas A&M supporters remember his goal line tackle in the 1998 Big 12 championship game as one of the most important plays in the programme's history.