Jordan Ready for Next Hurdle : UCLA: Wide receiver was hampered by a high school program that didn’t feature sophisticated pass routes.

Track and field was easy. He could hurdle with anybody and could high jump 6 feet 9 inches, the best in Maryland, with ease. And without coaching. All they had at High Point High in Beltsville was a dad to line them up for meets.

Football was tougher. High Point used the winged-T, which emphasizes the run and deals with the pass as an act of desperation. Kevin Jordan was a tight end and played defensive back well enough to be a high school All-American. His pass routes were fairly deep, but infrequent and with little sophistication.

His interest in track has waned. He loves football.

“My mom always said that I did things the hard way,” Jordan says.

It’s the way he has played football at UCLA, where he has caught 21 passes in four games, but where he is still learning how to be a wide receiver, trying to catch up to his teammates.

“He’s a terrific athlete, so it’s not the rags-to-riches story that it might sound,” receivers coach Rick Neuheisel says. “But the fundamentals of receiving were new to him” when he came to UCLA.

His teammates were better grounded in the passing game and made the transition from high school to college a smooth one.

“Lots of guys, like J.J. Stokes, for example, had sophisticated passing offenses in high school, and I guess this has been easier for them,” Jordan says. “I’ve had to learn pass routes, and I am learning to recognize defenses.”

As do most college and all professional teams, UCLA uses a passing offense in which the receiver’s routes are determined by the defense. Freshmen who were used to following the lines on a high school’s printed playbook tend to be overwhelmed when presented with options that must be sorted out in the three or so seconds between the center snap and the quarterback’s pass.

Over time, they learn that there is no time to think, only to react.

“One of the things he missed, not coming from a passing school, was being instinctive about the way defenses play,” Neuheisel says. “(Former Bruin and now a Ram) Sean LaChapelle is an example of a player who knew instinctively how defenses play, who understood that ‘if a linebacker shades me like this, I can get open if I do this.’

“Kevin really didn’t understand that and consequently was running his routes blind--running them on a track, rather than shaping them to a defense. He’s worked hard on that, but it doesn’t come natural. He still has to study.”

Jordan believed he was ready last season, when he started three of the first four games. His third start was against Arizona.

“It was our first Pac-10 game, and I guess I really learned how fast college football really was,” he says. He had fallen into a trap of assuming that UCLA’s scout team and the defenses of Cal State Fullerton, Brigham Young and San Diego State were as good as it got.

Then he ran into Arizona, the nation’s No. 1 defense.

“I had a lot of ‘busts’ on my routes, and I was shell-shocked,” he says. “I saw how fast the pass rush was, and I was cutting my routes short, but I didn’t know it. I was supposed to run six steps and out and I saw them coming and I was running four steps and out, but I didn’t know it until I saw the film later.”

It was testimony to his inexperience. He was shocked, and he wasn’t alone.

“I guess I was shocked that he was shocked,” Neuheisel says. “It was a wake-up call for him.”

It was also a call to watch more often than play. He did not start another game the rest of the season, though he caught passes in all of them, except for the victory over Oregon.

His progress was displayed early. Jordan caught nine passes in UCLA’s season-opening loss to California, and he has had games of three, six and three receptions since. He has 264 receiving yards, second to Stokes, who has 352.

Both players have 21 catches, but their differences remain. Stokes has five touchdown receptions. Jordan is waiting for his first.

Stokes is the deep threat. Jordan wants to be one.

“Kevin has been great,” quarterback Wayne Cook says. “Not to downplay J.J., but Kevin has been overlooked. He’ll get his touchdown passes.”

It could well be that his first score will come on a pass-and-run play in which he breaks tackles along the way. It would be the sort of thing Jordan would appreciate.

“Kevin has shown the ability to take a four-five-yard route and turn it into a nine-yard gain,” Coach Terry Donahue says. “He’s really impressed with his ability to run with the football after he catches it.”

It’s something he didn’t have to learn, that he brought with him from high school. It’s getting downfield the hard way, which is the only way Jordan knows.