Two years later, Baylee DeSmit doesn’t remember much of the goal or how she came to be standing over the ball more than 20 yards from the net.
The 2020 Gatorade Maryland Player of the Year was a highly touted McDonogh School striker with 52 goals and 28 assists in the IAAM A Conference. But a third of the way into her freshman season at Loyola in 2021, she had yet to make the score sheet for the Greyhounds.
That quickly changed when DeSmit laced a free kick over a wall of leaping Iona defenders into the top right corner of the goal past a helpless keeper.
“I am going to be honest, I stepped in front of the ball and the next thing I knew I was celebrating,” DeSmit said. “In that moment, you just take a deep breath and shoot the way I know I can shoot.”
In her first two seasons at Loyola, DeSmit has quickly become an offensive force in the Patriot League with ten goals and eight assists. And like any young player who has occasional moments of doubt, knocking in world-class goals can remind the Towson native what she can contribute to her hometown team.
In Year 3, the sky is the limit for DeSmit, her coaches say.
“She is the one,” Loyola head coach Joe Mallia said when asked how his team’s offense will flow through DeSmit, but he quickly added, “We’ve got to be careful not to heap pressure on her.”
DeSmit’s club coach Santino Quaranta, co-founder of Pipeline S.C. and a former D.C. United striker, however, views this season as a potential breakout year for the young player.
“To be Player of the Year in this conference. For her, there’s no other bar. That’s the bar I would set,” Quaranta said. “If she’s playing at her best and she’s physically fit — and I’ve watched this — she’s the best player in this league.”
There have been flashes of that brilliance in her first two seasons, Mallia said, such as the free kicks he describes as “Messi-like.”
“I never had to worry about stepping up like she can do and taking a free kick around the edge of the penalty area,” said Mallia, a standout goalkeeper at Old Dominion University in the late 1990s. “She can drown out the noise and the stuff that’s going on in your head. There is an art to it and a method to the madness.”
DeSmit’s cool demeanor on the field is perhaps born from a lifetime of playing soccer in the front yard with her four older brothers Daniel, Ray, Riley and Ryan, all of whom played in high school. They were shepherded by their dad, Doug DeSmit, a college All-American in soccer and lacrosse at Division III Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.
“Soccer has been part of my life since I could walk,” DeSmit, 20, said. “My first word was probably ball.”
The youngest DeSmit served as a ball girl at her father’s and brothers’ games, where she was often juggling a ball like a player twice her age. Her skills were noticed when she was around 12 years old by a parent of a Pipeline S.C. player who tipped off Quaranta.
“It took me honestly 30 seconds to figure out — her movement, the way she handled herself — that she was a top player,” Quaranta said. “It was a diamond in the rough.”
DeSmit popped up on Mallia’s radar a few years later when she was a sophomore at McDonogh during an IAAM conference championship game against Archbishop Spalding. (Mallia’s daughter played for the Cavaliers.)
“I said, ‘Who is this kid?’ And this kid was Baylee,” Mallia said. “So from that point on, I was very much in tune with who she was and tracking her. But we knew quickly there was an interest from her.”
DeSmit led the Greyhounds in goals (4) and shots (36) in 2021. She further showed her ability to perform under immense pressure by converting a penalty kick against Howard in early September and providing the assist on a game-winning goal in overtime eight days later. For her efforts, she earned second-team All-Patriot League honors.
She also ran up against the challenges that most high school athletes face when adapting to the college game. Workouts, training and recovery are sandwiched between classes, studying and exams. DeSmit is an elementary education major with a minor in special education, a natural choice given her father’s years as an educator.
“It becomes your whole year, your whole day,” she said. “I’m a big person in routines. My dad always says practice makes permanent, not perfect. So just having that consistency and making sure that my mind is always thinking about the permanent, not perfect, is a work in progress.”
While her technical abilities were off the charts for a player her age, DeSmit’s conditioning needed improvement, her coaches said.
After a rigorous offseason workout regime and summer games with Christos FC, DeSmit returned as a sophomore in 2022 with improved fitness that was immediately apparent. Mallia’s game plans also started to click as the team gelled.
“A lot of things felt different in sophomore year than freshman,” DeSmit said. “The team came together and ideas that were being implemented in practice started translating to games.”
She played the full 90 minutes in five games after only doing so once the year prior. In 18 starts, she racked up 1,394 minutes, 273 more minutes than she logged as a freshman, or the equivalent of three full games.
This year, the Greyhounds will look to build on an up-and-down 2022 season. Aided by 2021 Patriot League Goalkeeper of the Year Paige Sim, the Greyhounds started fast by winning or drawing five of their first six Patriot League games last season. During that stretch, Sim only allowed two goals.
DeSmit added six goals to her career tally in 2022, including game-winners against Rice, Howard and Colgate. By season’s end, she was named first-team All-Patriot League and ranked first in points (19) and second in assists (7), goals (6) and shots on goal (26).
But despite DeSmit’s individual brilliance, with three games left in the season “we just fell off a cliff,” Mallia said. The Greyhounds gave up nine goals in losses to Lehigh, Boston University and American to finish 3-4-2 in the conference and 6-8-4 overall. The season ended with a disappointing loss to BU in the Patriot League Championships.
DeSmit knows she led the Patriot League in points, but results on the field are what matter most.
“Honestly, I don’t care about the numbers, but if it helps my team then I want to get as many goals and assists as I can,” she said. “That means my team is achieving and winning and doing our best.”
DeSmit is almost certain to play the full 90 minutes in many of Loyola’s games this season. And if she gets fouled outside the penalty area, opponents would be wise to add another player to the wall.
Photo Credit: Larry French