Monday morning Illinois baseball coach Richard “Itch” Jones announced his retirement from coaching after 15 seasons at Illinois and 39 years overall as a collegiate head coach, but his colleagues still refer to him as a role model.

Assistant coach Eric Snider has coached with Itch at Illinois for the last seven seasons and he too expressed his sentiment.

“Both as a person and as a coach, Itch has been a leader,” said Snider, “It has been an honor to coach with him and he will be missed not only here at the University of Illinois, but all throughout college baseball.”

Jones ranks 13th on the NCAA Division I wins list with a 1,240-752-6 record and ranked eighth among active coaches at the end of the 2005 campaign. His 39th and final season ended as Illinois led the conference race en route to the program’s 28th Big Ten Championship. This took place just one year after a ninth place league finish. Jones was rewarded with his second Big Ten Coach of the Year award. The Illini jumpstarted the 2005 season with a 7-0 Big Ten record on their way to a 20-12 mark.

In 1998 Jones led his squad to a 42-21 record and the first regular season Big Ten Championship for Illinois in 35 years. On April 8, 1998, Jones became the 18th coach in NCAA Division I Baseball history to win 1,000 games. Following the 1998 season that saw Illinois win 40 games for the first time since 1990, Jones was honored as both the Big Ten and ABCA Mideast Region Coach of the Year.

After a 1999 season that saw Illinois advance to the Big Ten Tournament for the fourth-straight year, Illinois did something in 2000 that had not yet been accomplished by an Itch Jones-coached squad: win the Big Ten Tournament. The fourth-seeded Illini rode its pitching staff to a championship and, more importantly, the Big Ten’s automatic bid to the NCAA Regionals.

In the last 15 seasons, Jones has sent 40 Illinois players into professional baseball, adding to the more than 110 players and coaches sent to the professional baseball or coaching ranks in his 39 years of coaching. That includes an unprecedented five members of the 2000 team and five more from the 2005 squad that were recently drafted. Overall, Jones has produced 22 major league players.

Dan Hartleb, former Illinois pitching coach, now named the new Illini head coach, finished his 15th season coaching under Itch Jones.

“We had gone through a couple down years and Itch was able to get everyone focused again,” said Hartleb, commenting on the 2005 season.

“I remember when we were playing Northwestern and we had just hit a grandslam and I look up at the scoreboard and Itch is in my line of sight with both hands up in the air; to see that emotion was great,” said Hartleb.

“Itch has touched so many lives in such a positive manner, he’s been a great role model,” continued Hartleb, “17 years is a long time.”

“Three years ago we were playing in a tournament down in Florida. Before we go in the hotel the players and coaches have to clean off their shoes and take them off. Well, Itch sets his shoes on the garbage can right inside the room. The maid came in to clean and threw his shoes away. Most people would get all bent out of shape about something like that, but not Itch, he was laughing about it,” Snider recalled.

“I’ve been very fortunate to have some players who were first class both on and off the field,” said Itch Jones. “We’ve had some great young men on our teams and I just hope our players and coaching staff have had as good of an experience as I have here at the University of Illinois.”