Double Dore Express

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — With the season and her collegiate career on the line, Brooke Baker didn’t waste any time. Vanderbilt needed a win against Old Dominion in the final game of the regular season to qualify for the American Athletic Conference Tournament in Norfolk, Virginia, a decidedly exclusive club with room for only the top four finishers in the league.

Baker’s goal gave the Commodores a lead after just 40 seconds, the team’s quickest this season. The first period was less than halfway over when she scored again, helping Vanderbilt race to a double-digit halftime lead and eventual 16-6 win.

Baker’s second of three goals against Old Dominion was her 40th of the season. With Jaime Biskup (45) and Nancy Halleron (43), she’s part of the first Vanderbilt trio to reach that milestone in the same season. She’s scored 76 goals in her two seasons in Nashville. For context, only 15 Commodores have scored more than 100 goals over four seasons.

She’s always been good at goals, whether scoring or setting them. And working under time constraints? Definitely not a problem. Piling up milestones and achievements at a dizzying pace, she won a national championship and graduated in three years from North Carolina, then helped Vanderbilt reach two conference tournaments—while earning master’s degrees from the Owen Graduate School of Management and Peabody College. After completing Peabody’s Master of Education program last year, she used her second year for Owen’s Master of Marketing program.

Extending her final season will be no small challenge. No. 1 seed James Madison awaits in Thursday’s American Athletic Conference Tournament semifinal. But if there is one lesson Baker takes from a lifetime of lacrosse, from chasing a childhood dream at North Carolina to building a future at Vanderbilt, it’s that goals only go to those bold enough to try.

“That’s just always the route that I’ve taken in my life, is to take challenges head on,” Baker said. “I know that if I work hard and put a lot of effort and dedication into it, it pays off.”

The Hometown Dream

For all the games she’s played and practice sprints she’s run, Baker joked that she’s never burned more calories or had a higher sustained heart rate than she did at Baltimore’s Homewood Field on May 29, 2022. And all she had to do was watch her UNC teammates play a game. After a miraculous comeback two days earlier in a semifinal against Northwestern, North Carolina outlasted Boston College to win the national championship.

Plenty of athletes trace their passion for a sport to a team they grew up watching. More than a few kids in Middle Tennessee fell in love with baseball watching the VandyBoys. But North Carolina wasn’t just the hometown team that Baker grew up watching—the school where her parents met is the reason she’s around in the first place. Raised a Tar Heel by Tar Heels in nearby Raleigh, helping the lacrosse team win its third national title was a childhood dream realized. It was fairytale stuff.

But even childhood dreams can have real-life complications. Arriving at North Carolina just as NCAA sports resumed competition during the COVID-19 pandemic, Baker found the depth chart crowded with more experienced players utilizing expanded eligibility. She played a handful of games in 2021, then redshirted the championship season in 2022. By the fall of her third year, with her path to playing time still blocked, she decided it was time to try something new. She loved her teammates and playing close to home. She cherished her championship memories. But growing beyond childhood dreams meant moving on.

Making a New Plan

Entering the transfer portal wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. Baker spent the better part of six months during her junior year developing a plan and acting on it. That included loading up on winter classes so that she could complete her degree the following summer and graduate early. The workload meant she ultimately had all of about 15 days between graduating from North Carolina and beginning graduate classes at Vanderbilt. But from the outset, she determined that if she was going to transfer, she wanted to retain two seasons of eligibility. She needed enough time to make a new program feel like a home.

Vanderbilt had a few serendipitous advantages in its favor. Her brother was already enrolled in the Vanderbilt School of Medicine, meaning she wouldn’t completely forfeit family ties by leaving Chapel Hill. And Vanderbilt head coach Beth Hewitt is a former Tar Heels standout who still has a strong relationship with North Carolina head coach Jenny Levy, who Baker credits for doing everything she could to help find the right destination.

Beyond that good fortune, where North Carolina had been a place to live out childhood dreams, Vanderbilt was a place to work toward future goals on and off the field. In the short run, she was still competing at the upper end of Division I and challenging herself as an athlete. In the long run, prestigious Owen and Peabody programs would prepare her for whatever came after lacrosse. Like most teenagers contemplating college, she had assumed she would play at North Carolina and everything else would take care of itself. She went into her second recruiting process with a much better sense of what she wanted. And Vanderbilt is never in a stronger position than with an informed audience.

“You don’t know what you want, you really don’t,” Baker said of the high school recruiting process. “But now that you’ve come through a college experience, you know your goals, your non-negotiables. Getting on campus, talking to them about the culture here and their goals, it matched mine. I knew I could make an impact. I knew we were on the same page. That’s something you don’t really know going into college. You think you might be, but that’s not always how it goes. You never know what you’re going to get out of your college experience, but when you transfer, you have a better understanding.”

Baker and a young Vanderbilt fan take in the SAAC Christmas party (Garrett Ohrenberg/Vanderbilt Athletics). 

Making a Difference

Baker’s goal-scoring record is tangible evidence of her influence—she’s scored nearly one of every five Vanderbilt goals since she stepped foot on campus. She wanted the opportunity to prove she could do that, and she seized it. But she wasn’t interested in being a mercenary, measured solely by her contribution on the scoreboard.

She wanted to be part of a community, even if figuring out how to do that made putting the ball in the back of the net seem easy by comparison.

Arriving two summers ago, she had national championship experience to share but no earned capital within a new group of people. Being a graduate student with a different schedule than most of her teammates—few others had three-hour classes at night—only compounded the difference. She also felt the pressure of being “the Carolina girl,” everyone waiting to see if her game matched the résumé. Heck, after three years of scant playing time, she was just as curious to see if she was still a player of consequence.

Her teammates were welcoming, but from sports teams to small towns, there’s a difference between welcoming guests with open arms and welcoming residents into the community. She didn’t want to step on toes. Hardly shy, she nonetheless tried instead to lead by example. She stayed after practice to take extra shots or run additional sprints. Teammates soon joined her, recognizing something of themselves in her commitment. Putting on the same uniform in scrimmages helped. Coming across each other in dining halls helped. Something as simple as unwinding together in the locker room helped.

Soon enough, before she ever scored a goal, she earned the trust necessary for her voice to matter.

Along with the goals, she brought that with her to Vanderbilt, hard-earned in her time as a North Carolina freshman too intimidated to be bold. Too scared to be herself.

“If you go into every practice nervous and scared, you’re never going to play your best lacrosse,” Baker said. “You just have to get over it. And I don’t know how to explain how to get over it. It took me over three years to learn how to be confident in myself. That’s something I try to explain to the younger girls so they can get to that point earlier. You have to be able to take matters into your own hands. If I’m not confident in myself, I don’t know how I would expect my teammates to be confident in me. If you can find that in yourself as early as possible, you’re going to have a fair amount of success.”

Baker was honored on Senior Day alongside fellow graduate students Jaime Biskup (No. 1), Katie Poretsky (No. 26), Jackie Norsworthy (No. 29) and Maddie Barkate (No. 39) (Samuel Jordan/Vanderbilt Athletics). 

Future Goals Await

While still not plentiful, there are increasing opportunities to play lacrosse beyond college. Baker still loves the game, but whenever Vanderbilt’s season comes to an end, she’s ready to move on in search of new challenges. It’s worked for her before.

She lived out a dream at North Carolina. She’ll never regret that. Thanks to her time at Vanderbilt, she’s ready for a life filled with new ones.

“I have greater ambitions after school than to play lacrosse,” Baker said. “I knew that I would set myself up best by having multiple degrees. So I said, ‘Why not? I’m going to take this challenge and I’m going to be great. I’m going to be great in all aspects of my life.’

“Lacrosse has had a huge impact on me, and all of those little details it takes to be successful have defined who I am as a person. I feel like I take that mentality off the field. Having a few degrees is testament to that as well and will set me up for the future.

“I mean, that’s the goal.”

She knows a thing or two about those.