By Dan­ny Barletta
UConnHuskies.com
Sep­tem­ber 30, 2019

Jor­dan Hall has had a tremen­dous start to the sea­son for the UConn men’s soc­cer team, scor­ing eight goals through the team’s first sev­en games. His eight goals are tied for sec­ond in the coun­try, and they have rep­re­sent­ed the bulk of UConn’s offense so far this sea­son, which has just 11 goals total.

How did this kid from Eng­land wind up across the pond scor­ing goals at a tor­rid pace for UConn in his senior year? He took a path much less trav­eled, includ­ing stops in Mis­sis­sip­pi and New Jer­sey, but equal­ly as effective.

From the time Hall was grow­ing up in Old­ham, a sub­urb of Man­ches­ter, Eng­land, soc­cer was a huge part of his life. His father Stu­art was a huge soc­cer fan and used to take him to Leeds Unit­ed games when he was real­ly young. Hall said that it was then that he real­ly fell in love with the game.

Hall start­ed play­ing soc­cer at the age of five, and by sev­en, he was already prac­tic­ing with Man­ches­ter City, one of the top clubs in Eng­land. He had the tal­ent to be an elite soc­cer play­er, so he start­ed devot­ing near­ly all his time to the sport. He bounced around to a bunch of clubs over the next sev­er­al years, includ­ing Black­burn Rovers.

Then at age 15, he just quit. The game that Hall once loved had stopped being fun for him.

“I was just com­plete­ly burned out,” Hall said. “My main focus my whole life was always on soc­cer. Try­ing to go pro, try­ing to play at the next lev­el. I nev­er real­ly took any­thing else too seri­ous­ly… It was becom­ing more pres­sure and frus­tra­tion more than it was enjoy­able any­more, so I just kind of want­ed to give it a break.”

Hall bare­ly played after that, and the year before he came to Amer­i­ca, he didn’t play at all. It looked like his once-promis­ing soc­cer career was over.

How­ev­er, a month before the 2016 col­lege soc­cer sea­son, one of Hall’s good friends from home, Liam Eads­forth, decid­ed to come to the Unit­ed States to try and play. Hall agreed to go with him, admit­ting that he only went at first for the adven­ture, not for soc­cer. They wound up at Mis­sis­sip­pi Gulf Coast Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, which was the only place that would accept two new play­ers just a month before the season.

“It was a bit of a cul­ture shock,” Hall said when reflect­ing on his time there.

It was at that small junior col­lege in Perkin­ston, Mis­sis­sip­pi, that Hall’s love for soc­cer, as well as his career, was reborn.

“Once we start­ed com­pet­ing and I real­ized how the col­lege for­mat was and how com­pet­i­tive it was and how many peo­ple take it seri­ous­ly, I fell back in love with it,” Hall said. “I didn’t expect it to mean as much as it did to as many peo­ple as it did. It was a nice surprise.”

Hall played his two years at MGCCC like he nev­er missed a beat, rack­ing up 57 goals and 24 assists in just 35 games. He earned All-Amer­i­can hon­ors in both years, and was recruit­ed heav­i­ly out of junior college. 

He ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to play for Rut­gers and leg­endary coach Dan Donigan for his junior year. Hall led the Big 10 with 14 goals last sea­son and earned a spot on the All-Big 10 First Team. How­ev­er, when Donigan left Rut­gers at the end of last year, Hall decid­ed he would move on too.

“I didn’t real­ly want to be part of a rebuild­ing process for my senior year,” Hall said.

He said Donigan, who both played and coached at UConn, put him in con­tact with head coach Ray Reid, and UConn pur­sued him more than any oth­er school.

“We got on him right away and were able to con­vince him to come,” Reid said. “He’s a com­peti­tor who scores goals. He’s giv­en us a lit­tle bit of an edge.”

So Hall wound up here at UConn for his senior year, and he’s mak­ing a strong impact right away.

“Jordan’s def­i­nite­ly been a fan­tas­tic addi­tion to the team,” team­mate and room­mate Day­onn Har­ris said. “I real­ly wasn’t sure what kind of play­er we were get­ting in the spring, but he’s def­i­nite­ly lived up to all our expectations.”

The con­nec­tion between Hall and Har­ris has been spec­tac­u­lar so far this sea­son. Har­ris leads the coun­try with sev­en assists, and six of those have gone to Hall’s goals. Har­ris said Hall brings a dif­fer­ent dynam­ic to the team with his pres­ence in the box.

“He just brings the grit and the will­ing­ness to get inside the box,” Har­ris said. “His runs are just superb. He just makes great runs, and he makes my job eas­i­er to find him. I love play­ing with him.”

Reid said that being sur­round­ed by great play­ers like Har­ris has real­ly allowed Hall to thrive in Storrs so far. Hall agrees with that.

“I feel like I com­pli­ment Day­onn pret­ty well just because of how well he ser­vices,” Hall said. “I feel like I’m able to bring the best out of him and vice ver­sa. He brings the best out of me, so I think that helps.”

Hall actu­al­ly enrolled at UConn in the spring so he could start work­ing out with the team ear­li­er, and he said he thinks that helped his rela­tion­ship with his teammates.

“Obvi­ous­ly as an old­er guy, I want to have an influ­ence on the team,” Hall said. “But com­ing in you don’t want to try and dic­tate straight from the start, because you got­ta earn your team­mates’ respect… I think com­ing in the spring helped me get to know my team­mates and my team­mates get to know me. I think there’s a mutu­al respect there to where we lis­ten to each oth­er now.”

Hall is on his third school in four years. He said that has been dif­fi­cult because he’s nev­er been able to get com­fort­able some­where. On the oth­er hand though, he said it’s been cool to expe­ri­ence dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try and dif­fer­ent cultures.

In all the places he’s been, Hall said he’s nev­er expe­ri­enced a fan­base like the one here.

“I love the atmos­phere,” Hall said. “Last year I didn’t real­ly have that. The crowds weren’t the same. I know we’re play­ing 45 min­utes off cam­pus, but we still have a whole Goal Patrol sec­tion. When you score, everyone’s like scream­ing. It’s nice. That’s one of my favorite things.”

Hall has got­ten to hear the crowd scream for him a lot already this sea­son due to his scor­ing prowess. He has adapt­ed very well to this team and is putting up big num­bers like he has every­where else he’s played.

Reid gave Hall a big com­pli­ment by com­par­ing his ear­ly pro­duc­tion to that of Darin Lewis when he trans­ferred to UConn in 1999. Lewis would go on to be a major con­trib­u­tor to the 2000 Nation­al Cham­pi­onship team, win­ning the Most Out­stand­ing Play­er Award for offense.

If Hall could help the team do some­thing sim­i­lar this year, he would go down in UConn soc­cer his­to­ry. At 3–4 right now though, Hall knows the team has to be bet­ter to get to that lev­el, even if that means him tak­ing a backseat.

“I think that it’s going to be impor­tant for every­one to play a part this sea­son for us to be suc­cess­ful,” Hall said. “I’d rather win games and not score than score and lose games.”

Even with his incred­i­ble stats, Hall still has a team-first men­tal­i­ty, which is exact­ly what you want from a play­er of his caliber. 

There’s a rea­son Jor­dan Hall is turn­ing into a house­hold name on cam­pus. His instincts on the field are some of the best you’ll see, and his stats are proof of that. The best thing about him though? He’s nev­er satisfied.

“I always feel like I have a point to prove every sin­gle game,” Hall said. “I think that helps me because I’m nev­er like 80 per­cent. I always feel like I have to give 100 percent.”