UPDATED: Sept. 13, 2018 at 1:04 p.m.

When Andre Szmyt lined up for a 50-yard field goal last Saturday, his mind went blank. While cheers echoed around the Carrier Dome, Szmyt’s ears heard silence. He’s taken so many kicks at this point in his life, it’s simply muscle memory.

“Sometimes I don’t even remember the kick. I don’t hear anything when I’m out there,” Szmyt said. “(I’m) just staying consistent and trying to make all my kicks.”

Szmyt’s 50-yarder was part of a perfect 4-for-4 start to the season. Consistency is what has vaulted the preferred walk-on from a redshirt in 2017 to the starting kicker for Syracuse (2-0) this season. He replaces Cole Murphy, who played 48 games as SU’s No. 1 placekicker. In fall camp, Szmyt was the most accurate kicker on the team and has continued to make kicks in the team’s first two games this season, splitting the uprights on four field goals in four attempts and nailing every extra point.

“He never missed,” SU head coach Dino Babers said of Szmyt’s fall camp. “He kind of came out of nowhere.”

Although Szmyt’s father, Eric, grew up in Massachusetts as a Patriots fan, Szmyt’s mother, Lala, is a first-generation immigrant from St. Petersburg, Russia, where soccer is king. Szmyt’s great-great uncle on his mother’s side was the starting goaltender on the Soviet Union national team, Eric said. That was the only sport that Szmyt really grew up playing competitively, he said, controlling the top of the pitch as a striker.

“He had played soccer since he could remember … since he could walk,” Eric said. “He did all the travel teams and all that good stuff through most of high school.”

By the end of his junior year of high school, he thought he could go further as a kicker than playing soccer. But it was a transition that Lala didn’t understand. She knew soccer, not American football. She’d never watched it, Szmyt said, so she assumed that the switch would mean that he would be getting hit and tackled.

Szmyt and Eric eased Lala’s anxiety by explaining the role of the kicker and showing her videos.

“She was like, ‘OK. It’s kind of like soccer,’” Szmyt said.

At the end of that year, Szmyt and his friends on the football team went to the field to film him kick. The year before, Vernon Hills (Illinois) High School had some difficulty kicking, Eric said. Then their coaching staff saw a video of Szmyt drilling three consecutive 50-yarders, and he immediately had a spot on the team.

His senior season, Szmyt connected on 75 percent of his field goals, earning all-state honorable mention honors. Additionally, he earned a four-star rating from Kohl’s Professional Camps, the top training camp in the country for kickers, punters and long snappers

His performance at Vernon Hills and in camps earned him recognition from Division I schools around the country. Much of his senior year was spent talking to coaches, just a few months after he decided to give up soccer.

“It was pretty sudden,” Eric said. “It was obvious that he had the talent and ability to do this right from the get go.”

Less than a year and a half after deciding to play football, Szmyt found his place at Syracuse as a preferred walk-on, redshirting his freshman season. Heading into 2018, Sterling Hofrichter appeared to be the starter, and when Eric dropped Szmyt off at SU for fall camp, Szmyt hoped to compete for the kicking job, Eric said. Soon, he surpassed his competition.

“We keep numbers on all our kickers … his numbers were extremely high,” Babers said. “Based off of those numbers, we wanted to exercise some drills that we could do to see if he could handle the pressure, added pressure in practice and still kick with the same high percentage, which he did.”

Those numbers earned Szmyt the right to start against Western Michigan, which he didn’t even know he’d be doing until he saw the depth chart the week before. Two games later, he has yet to miss a kick, whether it be a field goal or an extra point. The 50-yard field goal he kicked against Wagner split the uprights with several yards to spare.

“I had no doubt that he had the leg to hit the 50-yarder, it was just a matter of whether it was going to be through the goal post or not,” Babers said. “It may not have been straight down the middle. But it wasn’t very far off from straight down the middle. Fantastic kick by him.”

Babers nearly sent Szmyt out for a 54-yard kick against Western Michigan, but Szmyt had been perfect on the day and Babers didn’t want to potentially spoil his debut with a miss. Babers said after the game he met Lala, who was “going crazy” with pride.

“It was like the excitement of him coming on the scene in high school all over again,” Eric said.

For Szmyt moving forward, the mindset remains the same as it was entering this season: just stay consistent.

“Staying focused, level-headed and not letting misses affect you,” Szmyt said. “Gotta do my job. I’ve been working all fall camp to get this opportunity, just have to take advantage.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, Andre Szmyt was misnamed. The Daily Orange regrets this error. 

Published on September 12, 2018 at 11:35 pm

Contact Matt: mdliberm@syr.edu