Terry Jonz’s story of becoming the new voice of Oregon women’s basketball starts with a noticeable L-shaped scar on his right elbow. The surgical wound followed an injury he suffered while pitching for Oregon State in the early 1970s. For Jonz, the injury ended one career and began another.
Jonz’s journey to covering women’s basketball at Oregon is the result of his odyssey both to and from his hometown of Eugene. His elbow injury was just the beginning for him. With it, he shelved his cleats and textbooks and entered the working world after two years of college. One thing he kept in his back pocket was his dream of becoming a play-by-play announcer. Because he was in need of a well-paying job he could only find elsewhere, his career behind the microphone was left for another day.
“Without baseball I didn’t see a need to stay at Oregon State so I left early,” Jonz recalls. “I wanted to get into the radio business but had to put that on hold. I started working in finance for Honeywell.”
Jonz climbed the corporate ladder with ease at Honeywell. The company sent him to Ohio where he worked until a death in the family brought him back to Eugene.
“My grandmother passed away and I came home thinking I’d stay for only a few days,” Jonz said. “It turned out to be years.”
Eugene felt like home for Jonz, who was more accustomed to having the rolling hills of the Willamette Valley as his backdrop.
“I asked people in Ohio if there were any mountains around and they told me ‘yeah,’” Jonz said. “Then they pointed to one no bigger than one of the hills you see heading up 18th Street and I was like ‘you got to be kidding me.’”
Staying in Eugene turned out to be Jonz’s biggest career move. One of his co-workers at Honeywell had friends working as commentators for the Portland Trailblazers. Jonz passed them tapes of himself covering games and wound up doing play-by-play alongside them. His talent had already taken him to the level of professional sports, but after listening to himself years later, Jonz can’t help but wonder how he got so far.
“I don’t have that many tapes to be honest,” Jonz said. “I think I burned all of them.”
Trying to balance his radio career and life with his wife Stacy, whom he married in 1981, was not easy for Jonz.
“It was hectic trying to follow a dream,” he said. “But my wife was very encouraging.”
The ball kept rolling for Jonz. After receiving a two-year degree in broadcast journalism in 1982, he had his own half-hour sports talk show and refined his skills doing play-by-play for high school swimming while working for WNND. Jonz recalls passing the microphone between him and coaches in the press box frantically trying to cover swim meets.
“I figured if I could do that I could do anything,” he said.
In 1987, Jonz joined Magic 94.5 in Cottage Grove where he covered high school and collegiate sports. He spent 19 years in the booth until November, when he signed on with KSCR to work at his new stomping ground – McArthur Court.
“(KSCR) called me out of the blue,” Jonz said. “I couldn’t refuse.”
Now six games into the season, Jonz has his feet wet, and he’s loving every minute of it. He enjoys covering women’s basketball and his interactions with Oregon’s players and coaches. He feels the Ducks can go further than many expect.
“I like to have fun, and working with coach Bev (Smith) is fantastic,” he said. “It’s been fun getting to know the new staff and players. The media picked them to finish fifth in the conference and I think they’re going to be good. Anything is possible.”
Aside from KSCR, Jonz recently made another career move. He became the new Program Director for Cumulus Media’s Star 102.3. Acquiring the job was a surprise for Jonz, who still finds time to juggle working in the media and his four daughters.
“God has a sense of humor,” he said, referring to the fact that he grew up as one of four brothers. “It was unexpected for me to be here. It started with my wife and me, and I had my one dream. Soon we had four daughters, and I had new dreams to fulfill. As life changes, you change your priorities.”
For Oregon fans tuned in to the women’s basketball games on KSCR 1320 Thursdays and Saturdays, Jonz offers accurate and concise play-by-play commentating. His attention to detail is a tribute to his decades working in radio, which he plans on doing at Oregon for many years to come.
“I love doing this with the women’s team,” he said. “And I’d love to do this as long as they keep me here.”

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