Bishop Gorman's Jake Taylor had the best type of first call with Stanford coaches Kevin Carberry and Pete Alamar. During the middle of his conversation July 15 with the offensive line coach and special teams coordinator he was told he'd earned an offer to play for the Cardinal.
Taylor was in shock and then thrilled.
“This is huge and I know that Stanford could easily set me up for life -- NFL or not,” he said.
The Taylor family and Stanford coaches are familiar with each other. Jake's older brother, Beau, was an offensive lineman at Gorman who signed with UCLA in 2019. He visited Stanford three years ago when Jake was in seventh grade and Jake remembers that Stanford was his older brother's dream school.
It didn't work out for Beau to get an offer from Stanford and Jake said he understands how special it is to get the opportunity.
He also laughed when he talked about the constant friendly competition between the brothers.
“I always looked up to him and had to beat him," he said.
That drive to one-up each other helped Jake become the prospect he is today and to earn the respect of his coaches. Carberry called Bishop Gorman head coach Brent Browner before making an offer and got a strong endorsement of the young man's work ethic and skill.
“I hope they say this, and I think they do, that I’m a first person in and last person out kind of guy," Taylor said.
Maybe the best example of his work ethic is his determination to attain what's called the "Ironman" shirt for Gorman weightlifting.
There are three levels: blue shirt, black shirt and Ironman. Each level has weight requirements that a player has to hit to wear the specific shirt in the weight room.
Blue: 225-pound bench press, 300 squat and 200 power clean.
Black: 275 bench, 350 squat and 225 power clean,
Ironman: 400 squat, 300 bench and 275 clean.
Beau left Gorman with a black shirt and Jake "just missed" Ironman this year.
“I was furious," he said. "I went in 30 minutes before every practice to practice technique and I was in there an hour, if not more, after every practice. It was so bad that the janitors had to kick me out because I kept practicing and had to hit that mark.”
Jake probably won't be able to officially reach the Ironman level this year because the Gorman coaches have forbidden the players from trying to max out when they come back to school after months away from organized training.
Of course, Bishop Gorman is one of the most impressive high school programs in the country and regularly produces college players. It plays against a national schedule and good players have to wait their turn to get onto the field.
Current sophomore cornerback Kyu Kelly starred for the school two years ago.
Taylor need only look at his current team to see a lot of what he wants in his future college.
“It’s competitive, so I can’t lose that in college. I want that tradition of hard work and grit that the whole team is based off of. That’s the biggest thing I need.”
Taylor has built the best relationships so far with coaches at Oklahoma and Penn State. He has a regular schedule with Penn State's offensive line coach and an offensive line assistant.
Former Gorman legend DeMarco Murray is Taylor's lead recruiter at Oklahoma. When Taylor calls Murray lately the phone gets passed around to other coaches, including head coach Lincoln Riley.
“I’m thinking I’m a dog on a leash. I’m so ready to go visit these schools. I get to talk with all these great coaches and I want to see the campuses. All these coaches are saying how unbelievable the academics are, the weight room, the strength program -- all of the things I’m looking for. I’m going to have three visits planned already (for when visits are allowed). It’s going to be Oklahoma, Penn State and Stanford. Those are the for-sure visits I will take.”
