TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KLIX) – Nancy Jones loves basketball – and basketball loves her.

Jones, girls’ basketball coach at Twin Falls High School, has been appointed to a four-year term on the National Basketball Rules Committee of the National Federation of High Schools. It will be a challenging position, she said Thursday afternoon – “but I’m up for the challenge.”

Basketball rules are always in flux, she said. Her job will be to represent Idaho in an effort to make sure there is open dialogue among those with whom she works and that rules are properly applied to the sport.

[Basketball is] about building the whole athlete, about becoming a better person.[/pullquotes]

“We’re trying to stay ahead of some of the concerns of safety and fairness,” Jones said, noting that coaches and officials often share differing views. “We also want to promote better working relationships among coaches and officials.”

She’ll visit Indianapolis in December to learn more of her duties and topics the commission wishes to tackle, and she’ll meet frequently with other coaches and basketball officials to make sure Idaho, as far as her watch goes, has a good representation.

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The position on the rules committee is right up her alley.

Jones played basketball in high school, and at Idaho State University from 1985-89, after which she was inducted into the university’s Athletic Hall of Fame. She coached junior varsity at Twin Falls High School in the 1990s, before taking time off to raise her family. She returned to coaching in 2002 at O’Leary Middle School, and then moved back to TFHS in 2007.

Her decade of coaching at the high school not only increased her love for the sport, but of how it can impact young people. High school basketball is not just about becoming a better player, she said – “it’s about building the whole athlete, about becoming a better person.”

As she embarks on another adventure in a sport she’s spent the better part of her life playing and coaching, Jones says she's not too worried. If there’s anything she knows and is passionate about, it’s basketball.

Jones still gets onto the court whenever she can, but anymore she enjoys seeing her students achieve success with the sport.

“It’s a sport I love,” she said. “But I also love building relationships with the players and seeing them build relationships with each other to make a unified team.”

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