By Cannon Fritz | Reporter
When Leesburg, Virginia, senior Levi Desser arrived at Baylor University in 2022, he carried a simple dream: earn a spot on the Baylor football team.
He trained like someone who believed that dream was already written for him. Spending mornings on the field before class and afternoons in the weight room as well as gaining nearly 30 pounds of muscle in preparation for the spring walk‑on tryouts. Football was the plan. Football was the identity.
His best friend, Ryan Norried, remembers exactly where that drive came from.
“The urge to walk on came from two reasons,” Norried said. “The drive to continue competing at a high level, and still wanting to have a sense of camaraderie that was missing after high school sports.”
The two trained nearly every day, stuck to a clean diet and treated the walk‑on process like a full‑time commitment.
But plans change, and sometimes, violently.
Desser’s path to becoming one of Baylor rugby’s most influential players, and now an athlete preparing for a professional opportunity in France, began with the moment football slipped away. And it wasn’t subtle.
It came with a shattered ankle, a missed tryout and a realization that the sport he thought God had prepared him for wasn’t the one he was meant to pursue.
His first football tryout went better than expected but did not result in a roster spot.
“All of my tests went really well … the wide receiver coaches came and followed me on Twitter,” Dresser said. “They told me, ‘If it were up to me, we’d have you on the team.’ But they weren’t taking anybody that year.”
He trained for another year, determined to try again. But two weeks before the next walk‑on session, during his second semester playing rugby, everything changed.
“I shattered my ankle … one plate, eight screws, a wire in my foot,” Desser said. “Worst pain I’ve ever been in.”
The timing was brutal.
“Half of the guys I tried out with the year before all made it that year and told me, ‘You would have made it so easily,’” Dresser said. “That might have been more crushing than the injury itself.”
Football was over. And for a moment, the pursuit of high‑level athletics seemed over too, but the door that closed opened another.
Norried and Desser stumbled onto Baylor’s rugby club.
“For me, rugby checked both boxes,” Norried said. “Being able to continue to compete in an intense sport and having a sense of brotherhood that the rugby club provided.”
After just a few practices, both realized they had found something they didn’t know they were missing.
Rugby quickly became more than a substitute for Dresser. It became a calling.
“I loved the idea of being on a team again … but the love for the actual game probably only happened after my big injury,” he said. “After sitting on bed rest for a month, all I could think about was rugby … and getting back out on the field.”
That longing forced him to confront which sports he had prioritized.
“I had really been praying and felt like it was God telling me, ‘Yes, train,’” Dresser said. “I thought it was for football. I was clearly mistaken. Maybe I was just looking at the wrong sport.”
Faith became the hinge point of his athletic identity.
“It’s better to walk in what God has for me … than to continue to ask Him to bless everything I want,” he said.
The turning point came when Baylor men’s rugby head coach Kenneth Esterhuizen introduced Desser as the team’s new fly half without warning, rugby’s most cerebral position.
“One thing that stood out about Levi was his coachability,” he said. “If you ask coaches all over what they’d take — athleticism or will — they’ll say will every single time. Levi had that.”
Esterhuizen saw something in him before Levi saw it in himself.
“Funny enough, I saw a vision when I took over,” he said. “I saw a picture of Levi playing at 10. When we started, he applied himself so hard in that position that his skill level grew about 100%.”
Desser spent the entire summer learning the role with morning kicking sessions, evening film study, hours of breakdowns, diagrams and repetition.
And something clicked.
Fly half requires creativity, anticipation and the ability to think three phases ahead. For Desser, who studies apparel design, the position awakened the same part of his brain he used in the studio.
“It felt like my brain had awoken,” he said. “My creative brain was activated in the classroom and on the field.”
By his junior year, Desser wasn’t just learning rugby. He was shaping Baylor rugby’s culture.
The Bears entered the Texas State Championship tournament as a middle‑tier club surrounded by nationally recognized programs like Sam Houston State and Texas A&M. Baylor tore through the bracket, beating every opponent in freezing rain and mud.
“We were able to go out there and make a huge statement … it might have even shocked us,” he said.
Hamilton Rugby Club, the oldest rugby club in South Africa, took notice.
“They really liked him,” Esterhuizen said. “They actually invited him to come back.”
Desser is now preparing for the next step: a professional opportunity in France.
“We’re in communication with an agent in France,” Esterhuizen said. “I know he will take that with both hands … and we will soon read in the papers that Levi is a starter for whatever club he signs with.”
Desser’s story is proof that elite athletic futures don’t belong only to Division I athletes.
“Anybody can play pro rugby from a club level,” he said. “I had no idea.”
He found a sport he didn’t know existed, a position he didn’t know how to play and a calling he didn’t expect. And now, he’s taking that calling to France.
