For Brentwood’s Andrew Jean-Baptiste, last week’s MLS SuperDraft in Kansas City was the culmination of a long journey towards a dream that started when he was 12 years old.
“When he was 12 I asked him, ‘what do you want to do with your soccer,’” said Violette Smith, Jean-Baptiste’s mother and youth travel coach in the Brentwood Soccer Club. “He said, ‘I want to play. I want to make it all the way!’”
All the way came last Thursday afternoon when the Portland Timbers of the MLS made Jean-Baptiste the 8th overall pick and
the first defender selected in the draft. The sophomore out of UConn wore a proud smile on the podium along with his Timbers green and gold scarf, but it paled compared to the pride his mom was feeling in the crowd.
“Wow,” Smith said when she spoke to LIJSoccer.com on Friday morning. “To hear his name….I never experienced anything like that before. What a great feeling. The emotions were so high, I didn’t know whether to cry, or laugh, or, I don’t know. To hear his name was just, oh my gosh…”
“Andrew has wanted this since he was little,” Smith continued. “I told him back then that it’s okay to dream, but it’s not going to just happen. When we had that conversation when he was 12, I said to him, ‘That dream will take a lot of work, but it starts now!’”
Smith remembers seeing the change in her son that summer.
“I remember him working so hard that summer,” she said. “He would run on his own, he would shoot on the goal we had in the backyard, he was always dribbling the ball, working on his footwork. That summer he showed me that he really loved soccer. That couldn’t come from me. That could only come from him.”
Changes continued to come for Jean-Baptiste as he got older. With age and practice, his skills improved and his game climbed to an even higher level. By high school, he had become a real leader on the field.
“I made him a captain of our travel team, the Brentwood Terminators, when he was in 8th grade,” Smith said. “You could just see the change in him. You never had to tell him to practice. He couldn’t get enough soccer.”
Jean-Baptiste went on to play with the state ODP team, then the Region I team, and had several opportunities to travel overseas and play soccer with the USSF Academy U16 and U18 squads, where he was named to the US Soccer Development Academy Starting XI. He had attended U18 and U20 National Poo camps and played with the U18 USMNT. His mom remembers one trip in particular.
“Andrew was with a select team from California, playing in Ireland in the Milk Cup, the most prestigious youth tournament in the world,” said Smith. “I guess he had been playing well and some of the coaches over there noticed him. So his coach called me at home and asked, ‘would it be okay if he stays over here?’
“I said, ‘NO WAY! He’s got to come back home. He’s got to go back to school!’”
Clearly, Jean-Baptiste had developed into a top tier player, and while he had visions of playing professionally in Europe, his mother had other things in mind first.
“He was being recruited by all these top college programs at the time,” Smith explained. “He wasn’t really focused on college, but I told him he needed to go and experience that. He needed to go see what that was all about. I also promised him that if he tried it and didn’t like it, we could look into him playing professionally.”
Jean-Baptiste enrolled at UConn, started all 20 games, and was named to the Freshman All-American 1st Team after his first year. This past fall he started and played every minute of all 25 games, was named the Big East Defensive Player of the Year and earned 1st Team Big East honors while leading the Huskies to the NCAA Quarterfinals. By then, he felt like he was ready for the next step.
“He came to me and said, ‘mom, the time is now,’” Smith told us. “He packed all his stuff and came home.”
What has happened since has been a whirlwind of activity and new learning experiences. He signed a contract with Generation Adidas and went to MLS camp in Florida. There was the stress of not knowing where his future would be in the weeks leading up to the draft. But in the end, it all came together in that one special moment last Thursday.
“The feeling I had at the draft was, ‘it’s finally happening,’” Smith said. “Over the past few weeks there’s been so much stress – talks and negotiations, and the tryout camp. You knew this day was coming, but you don’t feel it until you hear his name called.”
And though Portland isn’t exactly around the corner, at least it isn’t Europe.
“My friend texted me that I better start saving up those frequent flyer miles,” Smith said with a laugh. “It’s okay though. We’ll get there as often as we can. We met the Portland coaching staff and the front office people, and they all seem very nice. They are very excited to have him, which is a good feeling. It’s good for Andrew to be somewhere where he’s wanted.”
…and doing something he’s wanted to do for a very long time.