JayJay Jordan knows only one speed: full speed
It’s the middle of June, in a mostly empty gym, in a summer league basketball game where everything is relaxed. The coaches and refs are wearing shorts; the players’ uniforms consist of a T-shirt with a sponsor’s name across the front. No one’s keeping a score book or tracking personal fouls.
Josiah “JayJay” Jordan doesn’t seem to notice any of that. If he’s on the court, or on a football field, he’s always going 100 mph.
He’s darting around, stealing the ball with those suction cup-like hands of his, then racing toward the other end of the court to lay it in the basket.
“Any time I go, it’s full throttle,” says Berks Catholic’s rising senior. “Always.”
He’s always, it seems, on the go. He’s had a busy spring, competing in track and field for the first time, hitting football combines and showcases at major colleges, playing a little basketball in between.
On this night — the last of the games for the 50th West Reading Cultural Exchange program — he appears to be in mid-season form. He’s dashing into the lane, drawing defenders, then kicking out to one of his able 3-point marksmen, Ryan Koch or Jack Miller.
At times he pulls up for a mid-range jumper, a new wrinkle to a game that often sees him twist and turn his way to the hoop.
At other timers he’s zipping the ball to teammates open under the glass, something you expect of a point guard — though Jordan doesn’t fit easily into the narrow confines of the prototypical lead guard.
His game is too mercurial to fit inside a neatly defined box. He’s capable of doing anything at any time and often does.
“It gives me goosebumps watching him, because you never know what he’s going to pull off,” says Greg Johnson, an assistant track and field coach at Berks Catholic.
Johnson caught a glimpse of Jordan on a football highlights show last fall and was intrigued. He made his way to a Saints basketball game and was further pulled in. Oh my goodness, he thought, what could this kid do in track?
Turns out, just about anything.
When Jordan showed up at track practice a few months back a fight easily could’ve broken out on the Saints’ coaching staff: Everybody wanted him for their events.
“When the athlete’s (this) good, you want him to try every event,” Johnson said.
Johnson guided the 5-10, 160-pound Jordan to the high jump and triple jump. Jordan found his way to the pole vault pit, an event he dabbled in a little as a freshman in 2020 before the season was shut down by the pandemic. He was drafted to run a leg in the 4×100 relay, too.
“Somehow,” Jordan said, “it all worked.”
It worked because of his natural speed and explosiveness and because he applied himself to his new sport. He grew frustrated, sometimes, when the results didn’t come immediately. But that only made him come back the next week and try harder.
“He just has that raw athletic talent,” Johnson said. “When we threw him in those events, man, he was like a natural; it came to him (just) like that.”
Jordan teamed with Alex McGeary, Dylan Sutton and Kevin Olivier to set a school record in the 4×100 at 44.01; they went on to finish fourth at the Firing Meet.
Jordan reached 10-6 in the pole vault, a demanding and dangerous event that takes equal parts power, explosion, speed and nerve.
“I go up in the air and get some air time,” he said. “Why not try it?”
It can be scary, he admits, “(But) you can’t back out.”
Not when your motto is “The sky’s the limit.”
He cleared a personal best 6-0 in the high jump at the Firing Meet to finish seventh in the county; a week later he earned a District 3 medal, placing eighth.
He found similar success in the triple jump, reaching 41-0 at the Firing; he also medaled in that event at districts.
“Triple jump is not one of those events you just pick up and learn that quickly,” Johnson said. “The fact that (he) did in his first season . . . he’s just a monster.”
If Jordan isn’t the best Berks athlete in the Class of 2023 he’s certainly on the short list.
He led Berks Catholic in scoring (15.6 points), steals and assists and averaged close to six rebounds a game on the way to a District 3 Class 4A basketball championship.
In football he was a two-way all-league pick, as a cornerback and running back. Just like his other sports he can do just about anything at any time: He rushed for 100 yards three times, had a pair of 100-yard receiving games and tied a program record with three TD catches in a game — out of a Wing-T offense which averaged fewer than seven throws per game last season.
He scored a team-high 20 touchdowns, two of them on interception returns. With Christian Cacchione now graduated you can figure he’ll be the Saints’ primary kick returner and will take a couple punts and kickoffs to the house — if anyone bothers to kick to him.
“He’s pretty gifted,” Johnson said. “Football, basketball and track: I’m glad we have JayJay out there.”
Berks Catholic moves into Section 4 of the Lancaster-Lebanon League this season, where it will compete against Cocalico, Conrad Weiser, Lampeter-Strasburg and Wyomissing. That should be fun to watch; so will Jordan.
On a recent trip to Penn State, where he competed in a prospects camp, Jordan got out on the golf course.
Tiger Woods, look out.
