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About Athlete

My name is Jordan Adejumo and I’m a volleyball player from London. My objective for my college experience is to both strive to achieve my highest potential both on the court with an excellent team, and off the court in the classroom where I will also take advantage of the brilliant academic resources at hand in college. I plan to play and win many competitive games with a team that constantly pushes me to be a better player and I plan to get my degree from college by the end. I strongly believe that I am a serious asset for any team to have considering the vast progress that I have made in such a short amount of time and the fact that I will only continue to go up with the help of a coach that can bring me under their wing.

GPA

3.7

SAT Total Score
1300 (660 Maths) (640 English)
TOEFL Total Score
N/A
ACT Score
N/A
Teams

Epsom volleyball club adults
London giants U18
London sharks U18
All nations juniors Nigeria team
London BAKS (Current team 2022-23 season National Volleyball League and London League)

Championships
Additional sporting info

Spiking Reach: 330cm
Approach Jump: 330cm
Blocking Reach: 310cm
Standing Reach: 232cm

Personal Best

One of my biggest strengths is my physique which allows me to do many things that others cannot. This includes my ability to reach the top of the antenna on mens height and spike from that high, despite seemingly being at a height disadvantage.
I have spent hours in the gym working on mobility to increase my range of motion in my shoulders and back and also strengthening my upper body in order to have a very powerful spike which causes a lot of problems for defenders.
Also I have extremely quick reaction speeds allowing my defensive brain to aid my body into creating good passes and defensive decisions consistently and also being able to react to block touches and hard spikes.
I also can vary between a fast spin serve with my fastest ones clocking in at around 55mph to a float serve which can throw defenders off as I can switch between the two accordingly. Also I can control where I am aiming both types of serve whether to left or right, long or short.
My ability to read hitters has vastly improved, and pairing this with my high vertical jump has allowed me to attain a very reliable blocking technique. I can work well doing one on one read blocks or alternatively I can work in a double or triple block if needed.

Aside from physical, my communicational skills that came from my previous team sports that allow me to express opinion in game with a level of integrity but also see and take on advice when given to me. My ability to quickly adapt to new scenarios make new drills and experiences easily understandable to me.

What makes you different?

As I have come past my first year of playing the sport, I question a lot of the time why I have surpassed a lot of the people that I started with of that have started before me. One thing that has been made more clear to me as time went on is that my drive for this sport was different. My sheer hunger to improve and constantly wake up better than I was yesterday set me aside from many. Especially in volleyball, height was a factor that even many people I played alongside told me would hinder my progress, but I saw it as more of a challenge than a threat. I wanted to prove them wrong. I trained 8 times a week in my first year (twice on a Sunday) and spent a lot of time studying the game in my first few months of playing. This allowed me to pick up a lot of skills relatively quickly. Flash forward to now, I have represented my home country in an all nations competition, played alongside national team players and am currently playing alongside ex professionals and current ncaa players and keeping up with them in national league games and scrimmages. I also spent hours in the gym working on strengthening my body to allow me to swing really fast and have an explosive take off allowing me to reach heights that many taller than me still cannot get to. I can confidently say this is a testament to my mindset that really sets me apart from many.

Why do you want to compete in college?

Being a player in England is a blessing and a curse. On one side you have a very close and small volleyball community who all know and push for each other to succeed but on the other hand, it is severely underfunded and overlooked. To be able to get to the level where I am playing in national league games having just over a year of experience is unheard of for most people here due to that fact and I know that given the resources, coaching and time that will come within competing at college level will only allow for my progress to exponentially increase. The players I look up to are those such as Colton Cowell and Keoni Thiim who are both “undersized” players who made a severe impact on the game, and seeing how the college volleyball scene has treated them in such a positive way only makes me more hungry to get myself involved in such an atmosphere.

College Goals?

To be able to fully tap into my potential both on and off the court. That means that not only becoming the best player for myself and being a very useful asset for the team, but also utilising my opportunity in the US to achieve academic excellence and attain my university degree. As well as this, I will also make the most of my opportunity there to both widen my connections within sport and out of sport to ensure that I have a very strong surrounding and that the people I talk to are also very ambitious and high achieving.
On top of this, being academically strong is another, if not more important factor to me as I always ensure to push myself in the classroom and make sure that I can achieve the highest grades so long as I work for it. Being in a good college will allow me to tap in to that side of me and I want to be in a place with other like minded individuals that will make me push myself every day to become a better student overall.

Anything else we should know?

As of recent, I have been putting a lot more emphasis on defence in my training to ensure that I have a solid pass and good spike receive and this has really shown as my consistency with passing fast serves and floats alongside hard spikes has gone up by a lot and I definitely feel as if my defensive side is becoming one of my stronger assets

Education

W

Wilsons Grammar School

2015-2022

Portfolio

Awards

A

ALL Nations Juniors winners

2022
I had competed in the first ever junior all nations competition for team Nigeria. This was a very competitive event as I was competing against and alongside national level players and Grand prix division 1 winners. Despite the odds of our team having no subs and previously less training time than other teams, we still managed to complete the whole tournament with no losses and win in the finals against a very strong team Europe.