Cibola High School looked a little different than she remembered it, Rosie Jones said Wednesday morning, when she was inducted into the school’s two-year-old Hall of Fame.

Of course, even to recent graduates, CHS looks different than it did in the recent past, namely because of the renovations going on in the courtyard outside the front entrance and the spacious foyer.

It had been 31 years since Jones had last stood in the CHS gym — the day she graduated on June 2, 1977 — where she was honored in front of the student body. There probably wasn’t a sign reading “We (heart) you Rosie” back on that day, but the Class of 2009 did so last week.

Rosie Jones said she was honored to be back at CHS, where she'd last been on graduation night, 1977.

She was in the state for the second annual New Mexico Shootout at Turtleback Mountain Resort, where she teamed with fellow New Mexican Nancy Lopez in a golf match last Friday against Alena Sharp and former University of New Mexico golfer Kristi Albers.

Jones, who has relatives living in Rio Rancho and wouldn’t need any tips on how to play the Chamisa Hills Country Club course, said her mother (who lived here) passed away in February. Tom Nielson, one-time golf pro at what was then Rio Rancho Country Club, had been “one of the best junior golf teachers in the state.”

Jones, 48, had useful advice for any student willing to listen: “Follow your dream. Keep your passion. And be a good person.”

Born in Santa Ana, Calif., Jones grew up in Albuquerque and the West Side, where she could often be found playing golf.

She got her start in the game with “a broken 8-iron that my father brought home” and the two used electrical tape to fashion a grip, which she says probably led to her lifelong sledgehammer-like swing.

Living in Southeast Albuquerque, she clanked around the par-3 Puerto del Sol golf course until her father finished building the new home in Paradise Hills.

In the 1970s, though, Jones found only two things to do: “Ride motorcycles and play golf.”

Not a fan of motorcycles, she stuck with golf. Not far from the links, Jones hit balls all over what was then Paradise Hills, and since renamed Desert Greens.

The seventh of eight siblings, she said, “I was determined to be somebody. (Golf) was my way to do something on my own.

“Sunup to sundown, you could not drag me off the course,” she recalled.

Going to school meant heading to West Mesa in her first year on the West Side, then attending Cibola as a junior and senior.

“Half of us didn’t know how to pronounce it,” she joked to the student body.

“I spent most of my time in the gym, what they called the auxiliary gym was the girls gym back then,” she said of CHS. “Most of my time, of course, was spent on the athletic end of school and, of course, I had to do all my studies and stuff like that.”

Jones played basketball for three seasons in the winter and ran track in three springs, when it didn’t interfere with golf.

“Eventually I just cut back on all my sports as I became a senior and started focusing on golf, and that’s when I really started to really get passionate about going to college, getting an education and taking my golf to the next level.”

She was a three-time New Mexico juniors champion, 1974-76, and won the state amateur championship in 1979

Following graduation, she accepted an athletic scholarship to Ohio State University, where she became an All-American in 1981. She turned pro in 1982 and headed for the Ladies Professional Golf Association tour.

In her 25 years with the LPGA, she won 13 tournaments before retiring. She now plays on the Legends Tour. She also has worked as a television commentator — Jones has a gift for gab and an effervescent personality — and runs her own company, Rosie Jones Golf Getaways.

Retirement, she says, “has been really different for me the last couple years. I still feel a lot of passion for the game, that’s why I started my company.

“It’s been a great 31 years and the career that I have, I am very, very pleased with,” she continued. “I had a good time. I saw the entire world, almost, and all of the United States and it’s taken me a lot of places, so I appreciate that.

“I wouldn’t trade it for anything — not even a major (tournament victory),” she said.”

Earlier inductees to the CHS Hall of Fame were Jill Burness and Joe Vivian (2006) and Phil Rohr and John Roskos (2007).

“This is the lady we had at the top of the list,” noted CHS athletic director Phil Schroer. As with many things, timing was everything and finally Jones was in the state and able to visit her alma mater.

“I was very flattered to come back and be with you all,” she said.