Editor's note: This is the second edition in an ongoing series highlighting products of local education who are thriving in their chosen professional field.
In the spring of 2012, Jordan Taylor was an eighth-grader at West Middle School preparing to make the transition to high school at South Side.
He was filling out forms that would lead to him making his class schedule, when he was presented with a class option he wasn't familiar with.
"They said I had to sign up for an elective class, and I was like, 'What's an elective class?'" Taylor said.
The elective class he signed up for would actually lead him down a path to his eventual career, and four years in, he recently celebrated an unexpected milestone for himself.
Taylor played baseball and football at South Side and loved to talk sports when he wasn't playing or practicing football.
The elective class he signed up for was Greg Hammond's broadcast media class.
"They said I might want to sign up for that one because eventually I'd probably be able to talk about sports," Taylor said.
Taylor came up through that broadcasting program, learning how to do broadcast journalism, conduct interviews and even took part in producing video shows for local media outlets while also helping record and produce a phone interview with legendary Florida State football coach Bobby Bowden ahead of his coming to Jackson to speak at a fundraising event a couple weeks later.
Taylor graduated from South Side in 2016.
"Greg made me enroll at UT Martin, because that's where he came from," Taylor said laughing. "But it's where he learned how to do what he'd done, which is what he'd taught us, so he trusted their teaching there. So that's where I went."
The move actually worked out well for Taylor.
His first semester there as a freshman saw a large group of seniors graduate from the program that December, leaving the student broadcast team without a lot of its experienced talent to do the work that it does including broadcasts of UTM football, basketball and baseball games.
"My partner, John Thornton, and I were kind of dropped off in the deep end," Taylor said. "There was no one else left to do the broadcasts, so we stepped into the broadcasting roles for basketball and football and had no choice but to get better.
"But it was a lot of fun because UTM football played Florida, Ole Miss, Missouri and Kentucky, and here I am, just a young kid out of South Side putting on a tie and broadcasting games for my college class and for our radio listenership."
In addition to that work, he was also coming back to Jackson on Fridays during football season working as a sideline reporter for the E+TV6 broadcast each week with Steve Bowers, Milt Canovan and Tony Black.
Taylor said he enjoyed his time doing that and was ready to hit the real world upon graduation. The only thing happening at the time that might affect that was the worldwide pandemic that hit in March of 2020, two months before he was set to graduate.
"I was getting closer to graduation, and I began putting feelers out for possible jobs," Taylor said. "One of my classmates in Greg Hammond's class at South Side was Ally Vestal. Her dad is Roger Vestal, who is general manager here in Jackson for Forever Communications."
The timing was right for Taylor to reach out to the older Vestal. Forever Communications was putting together plans to expand their broadcast offerings in high school sports, and the first place they wanted to do that was on their station in Union City.
By July of 2020, Taylor was hired to broadcast Union City High School football and basketball games beginning the next month. When they asked if he knew of anyone else looking for work, he mentioned his partner from college, and Thornton was brought into the mix.
"Because we were in COVID and sales had slowed down, they were nice enough to not throw me to the sales sharks just yet," Taylor said. "But I was willing to do sales if it meant I had a sports job.
"I was officially hired full time with Forever in January of 2021, and they began to train me to do sales."
Soon after, Taylor was brought back closer to home to do sales in Jackson. In 2023, began work trying to expand its streaming services.
"We already had Union City and Henry County, and we began doing a JMCSS Game of the Week because there was only one other radio station covering the district, so that usually left another game to broadcast," Taylor said.
They planned to expand their offerings, and other schools began calling asking if Forever could stream their games to the point that Forever streams JMCSS and eight other schools' games including Henry County, Huntingdon, Union City, Peabody, Milan, Chester County, Jackson Christian and Westview.
"Some of those we're just providing streaming and no radio, and a couple of them - Westview and Milan - we're providing streaming with audio from their local radio station that was already broadcasting their games," Taylor said. "But we've got a crew of five people at nine games each Friday night.
"Some are part time. Some are full time but working late."
Taylor has done a good job of expanding the streaming, doing sales in Jackson and handling the job of sales director at Union City that Forever Communications offered him the job earlier this month of being the station manager in Union City.
"As sales manager, I was already handling some stuff the station that wasn't in sales, so they decided to offer me the job of station manager," Taylor said. "Which I accepted, but they allow me to continue to sell in Jackson too.
"This allows me the opportunity to spend part of the week in Jackson selling for Roger and seeing how he does things running his stations, and then I can implement those same things in Union City."
Taylor said he's not sure what's ahead for him in the future. He knows he's loving his work in West Tennessee sports right now and plans to continue doing that.
"Being a manager, I'm not actually in the sports as much as I was, but I'm still a part of the sports team and making sure everything runs as well as possible," Taylor said. "It's a long way from not knowing what an elective class was coming out of West Middle School.
"I'm appreciative of the education I got from JMCSS - all the way from Malesus ELementary to Bemis Intermediate, West and South Side. All schools were great with great teachers. I'm also thankful for the role my parents played in always encouraging me to do my best no matter the path I chose."
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news