A confident Gillian Baker has been voted by her teammates as tri-captain for this year’s Delaware Valley University women’s soccer team, and she will also be a key performer at midfield.
With that in mind, it’s hard to believe that just a few years ago, the former Bordentown High standout was ready to abandon the sport.
During her junior year — a key time for recruiting — Baker’s travel team disbanded and morphed into another squad. It was a somewhat chaotic time, and got her thinking.
“After three years of my travel team being different clubs, different girls, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this anymore,’” Baker said.
By her senior year (2020-21), which coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic, she had stopped reaching out to college coaches who might be interested in taking her on board at the next level.
“I said, ‘I don’t think I’m gonna do college soccer. What if all these changes happen in college? It’s a lot more serious,’” she said. “I decided I wasn’t going to play, and I applied to all the state schools around here.”
What Baker didn’t know is that she was already on the radar of Joe Nemzer, then head coach at Delaware Valley College, who had been monitoring her progress during travel soccer. Nemzer left a voicemail that changed her thinking.
“His message made me entirely reconsider,” Baker said. “My first thought was, ‘I’m not gonna do this.’ And then it was, ‘I can’t give up soccer. I can’t just join a women’s league and be happy with that. I know that I want to compete at the next level and keep going.’ So that’s what got me looking at DelVal.”
* * *
Ironically, a situation similar to her travel issues arose. DelVal was rebuilding in her freshman year and, after a season building team chemistry, Nemzer left for an assistant’s job at the University of Maryland. Thus, a new coach with a new system came in, and the upheaval Baker had dreaded appeared to be happening.
One positive, however, is that Nemzer did not leave the roster a mess.
“He totally built a good base for us, and we weren’t left with unanswered questions,” Baker said. “We were left with a fully built team, which I really appreciated.”
That, however, did not prevent concern.
“It was definitely scary,” the 2021 BTHS graduate said. “My first thought was, ‘Do I need to transfer right now?’ It took a while, because they were interviewing a lot of people. During that break, I was really confused about what I was going to do.
“I absolutely loved Joe as a coach. I’d gotten comfortable with him. I liked the way he coached and his style of play. Once we met Ben (Wilson), I was still a little confused about my future path. I think a lot of our team was like that.”
But when Wilson was brought on board, the majority of women opted to stay. Baker, for one, has come to appreciate Wilson’s coaching style on and off the field. And the coach feels the same way about the player.
“Gill, along with our other two captains (senior Marabelle Burkert, junior Jess Williamson) all received a bit over 75% of the team’s votes for captain,” Wilson said. “This definitely says a lot about Gill’s quality and investment in the program especially with her being only a junior.
“Gill is very involved with programs all over. Camps, SAAC, working in the sports information office. I think that involvement helped our program see her setting a good standard for our team alongside her academic and playing performance. She is a pretty quiet person, but only in her volume of speech. She talks a lot and is always involved in group discussions, just in a quieter fashion than most. ”
Baker was “blown away” that her teammates saw her as a leader; although she did feel it was a necessary role to take last year, with a new coach coming in.
“Having two rebuild years is a struggle for everybody to define your place on the team and define what we are as a team as a whole,” she said. “How are we going to be, what are we going to play like?”
Thus she and Williamson, who is her roommate along with Burkert, discussed the direction they hoped to see the team take.
“It’s hard to rush building relationships and building team effort in the two weeks of preseason that we had,” Baker said. “It was an ongoing effort, and I think that’s another reason they voted for me. They saw me working with (Williamson) and we were able to do these things together and bring up team morale. But it was totally a team effort.”
* * *
With that taken care of, Baker is looking toward a strong year for the Aggies, and Wilson is looking for her to help lead the way. As a freshman, she started all but two games, picking up a goal and two assists from her midfield spot. Last season, starting all but one game, she tallied five goals despite being more of a defensive middie.
“She is very comfortable in possession of the ball compared to most other collegiate-level players,” Wilson said. “She has an excellent first touch and a great range of passing that really helps open up other teams’ defenses. Where she often gets highlighted most in games is on her free-kick ability, especially from long-range. She scored on a couple of really great efforts last season.”
Baker said her restarts just sort of came about. During her freshman year, Nemzer asked if anyone wanted to take free kicks. The former Scottie volunteered, “and I just worked on it through last year’s off-season and kind of mastered the free kick,” she said.
As for being comfortable possessing the ball, Baker feels that has come to her by playing all over the field. Through experiencing each position, she has come to grasp each situation and knows what to do next with the ball at her feet.
“In high school, I found myself most comfortable in the middle,” she said. “I’m not just here to score a bunch of goals, I’m not just here to stop a bunch of goals. I feel like I’ve always seen the field very well and I’ve always been able to direct very well. That’s where I found myself being the holding center mid, possessing the ball, distributing the ball. That’s when I feel like I’m doing my best and when I was in high school I began to work on that and master that position more.”
Wilson agrees with that assessment, calling Gillian a “well-rounded” center midfielder. He noted that last year she was primarily in a defensive role but based on the returning personnel and incoming players he hopes to give her more freedom to attack this season.
“I enjoy being in the attack,” Baker said. “I’m not gonna lie this past year I was up there all the time. Our center mids consisted of me and Marabelle; and Jessica floated in between. Being roommates and best friends we really had good chemistry. It’s really nice to hear it’s more of a solid plan this year. We’ve already worked on it subconsciously so it will be a very good thing for all of us.”
Off the field, Baker has switched majors from Business to Media Communications. She is a part-time worker in the sports information department, and Sports Information Director Chris Elliot said “Gill is awesome. I have her helping us with a lot of graphic design work, photography, videography and broadcast production.”
Baker hopes to promote a successful women’s soccer season in 2023, as she says “I think the rebuilding is done and we’re just gonna play.”
And they will play behind her leadership.
Bordentown’s Gillian Baker in action for Delaware Valley University. (Photo courtesy of Delaware Valley University Athletics.),
