Brielle Jordan was a taekwondo prodigy. Now she’s a key piece for Slippery Rock girls basketball
SLIPPERY ROCK — There are people who look tough, then there are people who are tough.
Brielle Jordan fits into the latter category. No so much the first.
“You look at my build and, definitely, you’re not like, ‘Wow, she’s pretty scary,’” said Jordan, a sophomore guard on Slippery Rock’s girls basketball team. “But, I think that it helps me being able to be physical in basketball, like in the paint and everything. In soccer, going 50/50 with people running up the wing. ... People don’t really expect me to be able to.”
Jordan’s only in her second year of playing organized basketball, for a Rockets team 9-3 that’s turned things around under first-year coach Jeff Steele. But she was formerly a taekwondo prodigy.
She attended district competitions three times, worlds twice. At 12 years old, she was a third-place finisher in the sparring category of the 13-14 black belt girls division at the American Taekwondo Association World Championship in Phoenix, Ariz., in 2021. At 14, she earned a third-degree black belt.
“For anything from there, you need to be pretty much 18 or older — and I was 13,” Jordan said. “I didn’t wanna wait.”
It wasn’t an easy decision to cut taekwondo from her daily schedule. For years, she took private lessons every week with instructor Christian Weber in Grove City. She didn’t miss a class, sometimes even going to extras and summer camps.
“I sobbed,” Jordan said. “I just had so many friends and memories from there. I mean, you can imagine. I was doing it since I was 7 years old. It was a huge part in my life.”
She strives to play college basketball like her mother did at Thiel College, and she is a fan of the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark and UConn’s Paige Bueckers, both of whom she’s gone to see play in person.
The process of becoming a more well-rounded basketball player, which Jordan listed as a reason why she loves the sport, is an ongoing one.
“There’s a lot of growing pains with just not having played, not having the experience of playing a team game,” Steele said. “There’s a lot of times where she compounds mistakes, but the mental discipline, the mental toughness derived from taekwondo, it certainly helps in that aspect.”
“It really taught me how to get through struggles, and whenever you’re down, you’re still in it,” Jordan said.
Jordan was averaging 7.8 points, 3.4 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game before this week’s games. She is trusted with an independent role in Slippery Rock’s defense. Steele likened it to a pair of stingy defenders in a different sport.
“She’s kind of out there by herself,” Steele said. “She’s like a Troy Polamalu, Ed Reed type of safety where she’s all over the floor. She’s in the middle of the floor by herself. ... She’s on an island playing that spot in our press.”
The credit all circles back to her past athletic life.
“He helped me a lot with my work ethic,” Jordan said of her time learning under Weber. “He had me working my butt off every single day for hours, just running and everything with my cardio. Keeping me flexible. He just really helped me work through challenges, so whenever we’re down in basketball ... I know that we can come back from it.”
