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About The 99

I'll be honest with you: I'm still kinda new here.

My wife and I moved to Yamhill County in February 2024, and we fell hard for this place. The wine country, the outdoors, the local pride, the way it feels just far enough from Portland to feel like somewhere else entirely. We sold our first house in the county for more space and bought again without a second thought. We're not going anywhere.

When I started The 99, I tried to cover a little of everything. Events, restaurants, local life, history, sports. And every week, the same thing happened - the stories you opened, shared and showed up for were the ones from under the lights. The game-winning catch. The senior night. The kid from your street making a play in front of the whole town.

That's not a surprise to me. Sports has been my whole life.

I've spent 23 years in media and content creation - starting as a sports editor at a daily newspaper covering a community roughly the size of Yamhill County, then working my way through college athletic communications at programs across the country. I know what it means to a town to have someone show up, cover its teams with care and get it right. And I've watched too many communities lose that.

I'm a born and raised Oregonian - Portland kid, Gresham raised - who took the long way home. Military service, journalism school at the University of Oregon, newspapers in New Mexico, college athletics from Kansas to Albuquerque to SoCal to the mountains of Colorado. I almost took a job in Hawaii before deciding, after 17 years away, I wanted to be in my home state. I landed at Western Oregon University and eventually found my way to Yamhill County.

The 99 is named after Highway 99W, the road that ties these towns together, from Sherwood down through wine country. Rival towns, shared road. It's our road, and this is our newsletter.

Here's what you'll get: Previews, recaps, photos and video from the sidelines of 99W, free in your inbox every Wednesday and on social media. Field-level coverage from someone who's actually at the game, not writing it from a stat sheet.

It's just me right now. One person with a full-time job, a camera, and a genuine love for this place. I can't cover every game and I won't pretend otherwise. But what I do cover, I'll cover right.

— Clayton Jones
Founder, The 99