The significance of the April afternoon at UMass’ Rec Center didn’t completely occur to Khary Bailey-Smith until he’d been playing for a while.
Coming off knee surgery six months before, the safety from Weymouth played basketball. He cut, drove and jumped without thinking about or worrying about his knee.
“It wasn’t like I was going to try to play basketball with my knee. I just went and played basketball,” said the redshirt senior. “After I’d been playing for a while, I stopped. I thought ‘I’m bending and moving fine. Everything is fine.’”
There were moments, not long after his surgery, when Bailey-Smith wondered if the athleticism that allowed him to clear 7 feet in the high jump in high school, and grab eight career interceptions and return two kickoffs for touchdowns, would ever fully return. He’d come back from hip surgery as sophomore, but still he tried not to think about it.
“You avoid thinking like that at all costs,” he said. “But there were a couple of late nights just laying there. ‘What if this is it?’ Honestly I was scared, but just very determined. That was my motivation. Making sure that wasn’t it.”
It wasn’t.
As the months passed, his strength returned. So did the flexibility and with it his confidence. The game at the Rec Center was followed by another at home in Weymouth. After that Bailey-Smith was counting down the days until football.
“I just stopped thinking about it and worked on perfecting techniques,” he said.
After missing most of last season and all of the spring, Bailey-Smith still wasn’t ready to say he liked the intense workouts of the early preseason, but he liked participating more than watching.
“It’s still tough. I’m not going to lie,” he said. “It takes a lot out of you mentally and physically. But I appreciate it a lot more because of the lack of practice last fall. Sitting there watching all spring was slow. I got a lot of mental reps, but at the same time nothing compares to being in between the lines. Just being an active participant instead of just a bystander, it’s refreshing. I feel fine out there. Mentally I’m all there.”
UMass defensive coordinator Tom Masella inherited Bailey-Smith when the then-sophomore was coming off the hip injury in spring 2014. He said the redshirt senior is playing better than he has at any point since then.
“Khary is better than he’s ever been in any time since I’ve been here. He’s running around and doing a great job of leading. Athletically he’s doing things he didn’t do the first two years I’ve been here, I’d imagine because of his hip,” Masella said. “He looks really healthy for the first time. It’s great to see. Now his hip is loose. His leg feels fine and he’s doing some really good things.”
UMass coach Mark Whipple agreed.
“He’s had a couple, three interceptions. He’s been around the ball,” said Whipple, who liked that the team’s young secondary had Bailey-Smith to look to.
“He’s been a really good player for us. He’s the first guy down on special teams and does a really good job leading by example,” Whipple said. “Guys respect him. He knows what’s going on.”
ODU KICKOFF SET — UMass’ Oct. 8 game at Old Dominion will officially start at 6 p.m. in Norfolk, Virginia. Road games at South Carolina (Oct. 22), Troy (Nov. 5) and BYU (Nov. 19) are the only games without official start times.
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage