Syracuse, N.Y. -- Syracuse football stumbled into one of the nation's best kickers with a LinkedIn message and a phone call from his older sister.

That's how Dave Boller first got wind of Andre Szmyt, who is sailing balls through the goal posts this season at a rate unmatched in college football history.

Szmyt has scored a nation-leading 103 points and has recorded at least 10 points in each of the team's first eight games. The school's single-season scoring record is 128, set by former running back Walter Reyes in 2003.

His 21 field goals have already eclipsed Cole Murphy's single-season record of 20 from a year ago, and the redshirt freshman from Vernon Hills, Ill., a northern suburb of Chicago, is well within reach of the national record of 31 set by Georgia's Billy Bennett in 2003.

There have been twists and turns up to this point, but Szmyt, true to form, has stayed the course in believing a season like the one unfolding was always possible.

This is the story of how, for a team needing a new kicker, Szmyt happened.

***

Szmyt was a soccer player, with legs resembling tree trunks, who had less than two years' worth of experience kicking footballs before needing to decide where he wanted to attend college.

Boller, who worked for Louisville before joining the Orange in the spring of 2017, followed up on the LinkedIn message from Szmyt's sister and scouted Szmyt, helping recruit him to Louisville.

Backed up by the evaluation of trusted kicking expert Rick Sang, Boller knew Szmyt could perform at the Division I level, but where he would do so became muddled after Louisville's freshman kicker earned a scholarship the same spring Szmyt was set to graduate high school, meaning the prospect for playing time and earning his own scholarship likely wouldn't come for a few years.

"That's kind of the only place I really had the option to go," Szmyt said.

When Boller took a job at Syracuse that same spring, he needed to sell Szmyt on a longer distance from home, a better -- but pricier -- education and the prospect of seeing the field sooner with Murphy set to graduate after the 2017 season.

Another factor was Syracuse was OK allowing Szmyt to remain home through the summer, report for the first day of fall classes and save money on a semester of schooling, allowing the former walk-on to spend the summer with family and friends.

He understood he could use his first year learning how to approach the mental aspect of kicking from the senior Murphy and could further mature off the field. Come the following spring, the motivation to earn the starting job -- and the likelihood of a scholarship -- dominated his focus.

"I figured it was now or never," Szmyt said. "Whoever was going to win this was going to play until they can't play anymore.

"This was my one opportunity I would have to win the job. I took it seriously to train very hard in the offseason."

By the end of training camp this past August, Szmyt's conversion rate in practice mirrored what he has done this season -- earning midseason All-America honors from several respected publications and hitting 21-of-23 attempts, including all three from 50-plus yards.

During a team meeting after the Orange's crushing, 44-37 overtime loss at Pittsburgh on Oct. 6, a game in which Szmyt hit a 54-yard field goal in the final 6 minutes of regulation to give SU a three-point lead, he was asked to stand up while the kick was shown on film.

Then, Dino Babers announced Szmyt was on scholarship.

After the meeting, Szmyt FaceTimed his parents, who were driving back from Pittsburgh with their younger daughter.

"They couldn't believe it," he said.

***

Szmyt's success, to be sure, can be summed up by his steady approach. He is laid-back, controlled and probably would feel at home on the West Coast as much as he does at Syracuse University.

It is also a byproduct of the pieces around him: long snappers Matt Keller and Aaron Bolinsky as well as holder Nolan Cooney, who tilts the ball toward him ever slightly to give Szmyt more surface area to strike.

"They throw it back, and 90 percent of the time I don't even have to move the ball," Cooney said. "They give me the laces, and I just have to put the ball down for him."

Murphy said he used to bring an iPad to practice last year and noticed on film Szmyt may have been too relaxed at times.

"It's really good as a kicker to stayed relaxed," Murphy said. "There is real small wiggle room where if you're too loose, the ball is either going to shoot way right or it's going to hook left, and if you're too tight and you're too anxious, you're going to hit a shank or a really bad-looking ball."

With repetition, Szmyt has found that sweet spot where the ball sounds more like a pop than a slap, like a golfer striking a clean iron shot. His form and power does not change regardless of distance -- teammates say he can touch 60 yards on distance -- and most of his makes have been center-cut rather than leaking through the uprights.

"It's amazing," Murphy said. "I'm really, really proud of the kid."

Szmyt has met every challenge up to this point -- knocking both attempts in during his debut on the road at Western Michigan, drilling a trio of kicks in front of 80,000 fans at Clemson, hitting three in wet, sloppy conditions that October afternoon in Pittsburgh and three more in a pressure-packed, nationally televised victory against North Carolina State last week.

There are four games remaining -- plus a bowl -- for Szmyt to chase down Bennett's single-season record, including November road games at Wake Forest and Boston College and, notably, a nationally televised contest against a Notre Dame team vying for a playoff bid at Yankee Stadium later this month.

"He has ice in the veins," Boller said. "Even in practice, if he's nervous, I never saw it."

"Being in the situation, it's got to be on you," Szmyt said. "You can't prepare for something like that. You can handle the pressure or you can't zone them out and you crumble under the pressure.

"I kick so many footballs at practice. It's all year 'round I do it now. Coming in here as a freshman, I was like, 'How do you play in front of all these people?'

"I'm super confident in how my kicking has become. It feels like it's practice when I go out there."

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