Page 45 - Sports Illustrated for Kids Magazine (December 2019)
P. 45
THROWBACK
I modeled my game after his. My I have no love for shot put.
parents were on the same page with Discus? Absolutely. My junior year, I
not allowing me to play contact sports took second at state. My senior year
until I was a teenager. That was the I won it and broke a school record. I
rule in the house. Geoffrey turned 13, was even a wrestler at one point my
senior year for a couple weeks.
I played basketball my freshman
year and then sophomore year,
midway through football season, I
got my first C, and Mom shut
everything down. It was in science.
She took me out of football and shut
down the idea of basketball. She sat
me down and started going to my
Then he dropped me off at classes, no less. I sat out a couple
games. I did all the extra credit, all
the makeup assignments. It was a
crash course in biology in two weeks
just to get it back up to a B. Anita
Jordan doesn’t play.
Junior year I started getting
recruited for football, and that was
it! Basketball was sort of nixed
because I wasn’t a dominant player;
I wasn’t a starter.
Somewhere around my
sophomore year at Cal, I realized
I was really good at football. I was
starting, and I had so much going
By the end of freshman year, I for me. Junior year, the defensive
end opposite me, Tyson Alualu, was
a first-round guy. In my mind, I was
Though Jordan (above
gritty attitude to me; I like to finish like, If I can be better and more
and top right) and
off blocks, and maybe Coach saw that dynamic than him, I can lock myself
his older brother,
I had some intangibles. I started at in as an NFL player. That was the
Geoffrey (top left),
followed their father left tackle on varsity my sophomore goal junior year. Senior year it was:
(top middle) to the year and then transitioned over to I have this first-round grade, how
gridiron, they dabbled defensive end. I got a little taste of high can I go? Then I fell through
in many other sports the better side of life and never the floor.
and activities first. looked back. I was 24th overall, and I’ve
Freshman year, I went out for always carried a chip on my
track. I think I signed up and then I shoulder because I didn’t go as
Geoffrey; my younger sister, talked my brother into signing up. high as my other guys.
Steffanie; and me in soccer as young We did discus and shot put, and I My first couple years in the NFL,
as three or four. From soccer we went was out there running the open 400 I kept my head down and kept
to ballet and tap dancing, basketball, a couple times too. I could win a working. Whatever was around me,
COURTESY OF CAMERON JORDAN (2) into everything, and the sad thing is, every now and again. But then I time I hit my third-year stride, I was
track, piano. She tried to throw us
I was just absorbing it. Then by the
B heat, and I could slide into an A
like, All right, this is what works.
I can’t read a sheet of music. Just
thought, Run a whole lap as fast as I
Then I had my first Pro Bowl, and I
can? I’m gonna stick to this football
wasted her money, completely.
thing, where at most I’m going to have
was like, Lock it in. Exactly this for
Basketball was the love of my life. I
to go 100.
n
the foreseeable future.
grew up watching Kevin Garnett, and
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