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My name is Jordan. I’m currently Head of Scouting at Phoenix Rising FC, a football club based in Arizona, in the United States.
My first contact with KES came through the Summer Camp in 2005 for children from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds – I was one of those kids. Both my parents came from council estate families, and I came from a single-parent household in which our income was less than the annual school fees! My mum was blown away by the facilities at KES and commented that she wished she could afford to send me. As I was a bright kid, it was suggested I took the entrance exam. I passed, was awarded a full bursary, and the rest is history. After going to four different primary schools, I remained at KES from 11 to 18 years of age!
My seven years at KES were some of the best years of my life so far. Initially, acclimatising was not easy but through the support of several teachers and the close friendships I made, I came to love the School. I studied Sports Science (A), Business Studies (A), and English Language (B) at A-Level. My aim was to pursue a degree in Sports Science at a Russell Group University and become a sports journalist. I fulfilled this by beginning a Sports Science degree at the University of Birmingham in 2012, but after six weeks of newly trebled tuition fees, I realised a degree was unnecessary for what I wanted to achieve. I left university and have been self-taught, without regrets, ever since.
Undoubtedly, I would not have had the confidence to take this seemingly unstructured path without a KES education and grounding. KES empowers you to teach yourself and become a lifelong learner. To me, this is far more important than GCSE or A Level grades – what means something is knowing how to learn. It was this belief and determination which the School instilled in me that gave me the confidence to secure a graduate job when I wasn’t a graduate and to maintain a secondary freelance source of commissions related to my real passion – football. This culminated in my current role as Head of Scouting at Phoenix Rising, coming after 3 years working as a scouting consultant for agencies.
I have also published a book in two languages (Red Wine & Arepas: How Football is Becoming Venezuela’s Religion), which I am very proud of. I am married to a wonderful woman and I am father to two amazing daughters.
Aged 11, all of this would have seemed unlikely to me. Some of my primary school classmates who had the biggest influences on me ended up in jail or on tag by the time I left KES. It was the routine and structure provided by KES that ensured I didn’t follow a similar path.
If you are reading this and thinking of donating to the bursary fund - please do. You will be giving to an institution that can genuinely have lifelong and positively life-altering effects on young people, like it did for me. I have that same desire to give back myself and I’ve enjoyed visiting KES a number of times to speak to current pupils. One day I would even love to return to KES in a fuller capacity. It is a great place and I am really proud to say that it is my school.
