USC rising star tailback Waymond Jordan never gave

When he first began spreading the phrase about Waymond Jordan, Mike Bennett figured the movie would converse for itself. The Escambia High coach had been in the South Florida preps scene long enough to know what he was seeing from his new working back.

“Just watching him run the football for the first time, he was amazing,” Bennett said. He figured scholarship provides would roll in soon enough.

Jordan had related expectations. Since he first picked up soccer, at 4 years outdated, he’d always told himself that he’d play at a big faculty, on the most important stage. He’d come to Escambia as a senior with that in thoughts.

But in 2021, 4 years before Lincoln Riley and USC would see that same star potential, other school coaches, for whatever purpose, weren’t paying a lot thoughts.

Given where Jordan stands today — the top working back on one of the nation’s top speeding offenses through two weeks of the school soccer season — lots of them in all probability remorse that now.

“Every coach in the country, I sent stuff to,” Bennett said. “I mean, everybody. I sent it out to everybody.”

Some smaller faculties monitored Jordans’ senior 12 months at Escambia, conserving a close eye as he rushed for 1,225 yards and 12 touchdowns. A few faculties said he may walk-on. But none of them prolonged a scholarship offer. Jordan couldn’t perceive why.

Hutchinson Community College, a junior school in Hutchinson, Kan., was one of the only locations to give him an alternative. Hutchinson was a thousand miles from his hometown of Pensacola, and a world away from the major school soccer he thought he’d be enjoying. But the workers there knew Escambia nicely, and they believed in what they noticed in Jordan’s tape.

If all went nicely with junior school, he may still get the Power Four provides he was trying for.

“He believed in himself. And he bet on himself,” said Greg Cross, the Hutchinson working backs coach. “And I would say he bet right.”

Cross figured it was a worthy wager then, before most anybody else. He may see on movie that Jordan had a uncommon intuition for making defenders miss. In the open discipline, not many people may carry Jordan down on their own either. In some methods, his skillset reminded Cross a little bit of Alvin Kamara, who performed the 2014 season at Hutchinson.

“But that wasn’t going to happen for him overnight,” Cross said.

USC’s Waymond Jordan stretches out to rating a landing against Georgia Southern at the Coliseum on Saturday.

(Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

Jordan was by no means a completed product on arrival at Hutchinson. He hadn’t actually realized yet how to take care of his physique. He was out of form. He needed to add muscle and change his diet. Plus, he struggled early on with move safety.

Then his hamstrings began bothering him.

“I knew it was in the best interest for him to redshirt,” Cross said.

Hutchinson may afford to be affected person with him. But it was a robust capsule to swallow for Jordan.

“He went through a phase where he was kind of down,” Cross said. “We had a lot of talks. We would talk every day. I just wanted to keep him focused, keep him locked in, keep him motivated.

“So, me and him had a talk about it, and I said, ‘You can either let it get the best of you, or you can stay motivated and work 10 times as hard.’”

It was a formative chat for Jordan. Cross implored him to get critical about taking care of his physique. He needed him in the training room every day. They began monitoring his meals. He started utilizing the top coach’s YMCA membership.

From then on, Cross says, “I was grilling him, 24/7.”

He got here back that second season trying like an fully different participant. He misplaced weight. He was stronger and more explosive. He had a full recovery routine.

But his hamstring was still appearing up. Then, after showing in two video games as a redshirt freshman, Jordan suffered a minor fracture in his foot.

“It felt, to him, like he couldn’t catch a break,” Cross said.

He wore a boot for a couple of weeks. When he got here back, he had to play through pain.

Even still, there have been glimpses of what Jordan could possibly be. Late in the season, in a sport against No. 2 ranked Iowa Western Community College, Jordan broke out with two fourth-quarter speeding scores, one from 47 yards out, the other from 16, that helped put Iowa Western away. He completed with 4 carries for 99 yards and two touchdowns.

Hutchinson misplaced its next sport to East Mississippi Community College and fell short of an NJCAA national title in 2023. But for Jordan, all the pieces was trending upward that offseason.

“You really saw him take that next step,” said Drew Dallas, Hutchinson’s head coach. “It was just how quickly he was hitting the hole, how fast and confident he was playing. He’d trimmed down his body fat to hardly any at all. He was just this rocked-up ball of muscle who could see the field really well.”

That spring, as phrase bought around, some smaller faculties like Florida Atlantic and Florida International began asking about him.

By the end of that spring, Jordan had the scholarship provides he’d been ready for.

Cross figured he would take the chance and run with it. And he wouldn’t have blamed him for doing so. In fact, he couldn’t keep in mind anybody in his time at Hutchinson turning down an FBS alternative to return to junior school.

But in Jordan’s case, he believed larger provides may come.

“He told me that if I stayed, I would be able to come to places like [USC,]” Jordan recollects. “That it would all pay out in the end.”

USC working back Waymond Jordan cuts and adjustments direction while carrying the ball against Georgia Southern at the Coliseum on Saturday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Jordan called Cross back with a choice just a few minutes after their dialog.

“When you leaving?” Cross remembers asking him.

“He says no, ‘Coach, I’m gonna stay. I know what I can be.’”

Cross was surprised at the time. Thinking back on that dialog, he laughs.

“He put it all on red, I guess,” he said.

But it took all of one week that season for Jordan’s wager to be vindicated. He rushed for 179 yards and two touchdowns during Hutchinson’s season opener on just 14 carries. That Sunday, Cross bought a call from a coach at Michigan State. Was Jordan for real? Because, he said, they had been watching intently.

It was “one phone call after another, every week after that,” Cross said. Jordan rushed for 174 yards the next week, then 175 yards and 4 touchdowns on just 9 carries in Week 4. Over a two-week stretch in November, Jordan exploded for 348 yards and 4 touchdowns, prompting Missouri and Central Florida, two Power Four faculties, to offer him scholarships.

He finally had the chance he’d been ready for. So in December, just before the NJCAA playoffs, Jordan dedicated to Central Florida.

USC didn’t come into the image until later that month, just as Jordan was named the junior school national participant of the 12 months. Other Power Four faculties, like North Carolina and Mississippi, had been already making their instances to Jordan. But USC had a connection to Cross through Doug Belk, the Trojans’ secondary coach.

USC didn’t essentially have a need at working back, having already added explosive New Mexico switch Eli Sanders to its class. But when Anthony Jones, USC’s working backs coach, spoke to Jordan on the telephone, he got here away satisfied that “USC needed this young man.”

“Waymond checked all the boxes that we were looking for,” Jones said.

Hutchinson beat Iowa Western to win the NJCAA national title in spite of Iowa Western’s all-out efforts to bottle up the Blue Dragons’ star working back. Two weeks later, he was on USC’s campus.

As soon as Jordan called him during his go to to L.A., Cross knew he was committing to USC.

Nine months later, the same working back who didn’t have a single Division I offer as a high faculty senior was bursting out of the USC backfield, weaving through a crowd of defenders on his manner into the Coliseum end zone, just like Reggie Bush, Marcus Allen and O.J. Simpson once did.

As he scored his first landing as a Trojan, Jordan regarded up into the stands and noticed his household.

He’d waited 4 sometimes-frustrating years for that second.

“His patience, his perseverance really built him into something a lot bigger and better,” Dallas said.

“I think that’s as big of a part of his journey as anything.”