Meet Yaniv Bazini, the Israeli college soccer star who could lead UVM to a national title

Yaniv Bazini has scored 14 goals for the University of Vermont’s Division I soccer team this season, making him one of the top scorers in the entire country. But he’s still thinking about one particular goal from well over a year ago.

It was Oct. 14, 2023, and UVM was leading Binghamton University 4-0 late in the game — their second contest since the brutal Hamas attack on Bazini’s native Israel only one week prior. Bazini suited up on Oct. 7, but he was, understandably, distracted.

One week later, he scored his first goal since the attack, in which Hamas killed 1,200 and took 250 hostage. After netting UVM’s fifth goal of the 5-0 win, Bazini ran to the sideline, grabbed an Israeli flag, and draped it across his back.

“When everything happened in Israel a year ago, I said, well, I won’t really help if I come back to Israel, but I can be the best ambassador, and to show people the real face [of Israel], not the one that they see in the social media,” Bazini, 25, said in an interview on Monday.

He was speaking just hours before taking the field for another important matchup: UVM faces Marshall University in the NCAA DI soccer championship. It’s UVM’s first-ever appearance in the College Cup Finals.

“Everybody has such a great energy and attitude towards what we want, and the same goal,” Bazini said. “Every game, we take it one at a time, and that’s why we got here.”

The Catamounts wouldn’t have made it to the finals without their Israeli forward.

Bazini’s 14 goals this season are a team high, and he has scored in six of UVM’s seven postseason games, including a clutch game-tying goal in Vermont’s semifinal win over Denver on Friday.

What a moment 😤#MCollegeCup x @UVMmsoccer pic.twitter.com/VcUKqVggno

— NCAA Soccer (@NCAASoccer) December 14, 2024

Bazini, a senior, was named to the America East All-Conference First Team in 2023 and 2024, and the All-Tournament Team this season. His 30 points this season are tied for third-most in program history, and he’s one goal away from tying the single-season goal record of 15.

Bazini was born in Ness Ziona in central Israel and moved to the United States after his military service to pursue soccer. He played one season at North Carolina State University before transferring to UVM for the 2022 season.

Bazini said he was drawn to UVM because of the soccer program and its staff. He’s the only Jewish player on the team and has been pleasantly surprised by the outpouring of support he’s received in Burlington, where he’s been involved with the campus Chabad.

“I did not know that there are so many Jewish people in Burlington,” he said. “Before I came here, I said, well, I’m going to a kind of small place, so I know that most of the Jews are in the big cities. So I did not expect to have [this community], but such a great community.”

It hasn’t been an easy few years to be Israeli in Burlington, or at the University of Vermont. The City Council came close to becoming the first in the United States to boycott Israel, pulling a resolution in 2021 amid allegations of antisemitism. This year, the council narrowly vetoed a citizen-led initiative to declare Burlington an “apartheid-free community,” a protest against the current war. (The city was also the site of a shooting of three Palestinian students in an apparent hate crime one year ago.) Before the current war, the university drew criticism for permitting an allegedly antisemitic climate, in part over its handling of anti-Israel protest; it agreed in April 2023 to do more to protect Jewish students from antisemitism.

“It’s hard to see that people are ignorant and just antisemitic, or just going with something that is not right, just to be part of something,” Bazini said. “So it is sad and frustrating, but I think throughout the year and a half that it’s going on, I grew up and understood that it’s a waste of time to talk with them or to deal with that.”

He continued: “You kind of understand that there are those people in the world, and you will never understand it, and you just kind of need to try to do the best to show the face of the reality of Israel or the Jews, or whoever it is, because it is a good face.”

Bazini echoed a sentiment that many Israelis have expressed about Oct. 7: that it feels like it never ended.

“It makes you take everything in perspective,” he said. “And it took me a while to play like myself, and it’s hard until today. You still read the news every day, and you’re still in it, so it’s the same day since Oct. 7.”

Bazini represented the U.S. team at the 2023 Pan American Maccabi Games in Argentina. Preston Goldfarb, who coached the team, has high praise for Bazini.

“I have had some outstanding strikers and players over my 52-year career in soccer, but Yaniv is without question one of the purest strikers and most complete players I have been honored and privileged to coach and to remain close with,” Goldfarb said through a Maccabi USA press release.

And no matter how Monday’s title game plays out, Bazini is hoping to give Israelis something to be proud about this week. The MLS, America’s professional soccer league, holds its player draft on Friday, and Bazini is hoping to hear his name called. If he’s not chosen, Bazini plans to pursue professional soccer elsewhere, possibly in Europe or Israel.

If he joins the MLS, Bazini would be at least the third Israeli player currently in the league, joining the Philadelphia Union’s Tai Baribo and Charlotte F.C.’s Liel Abada. Bazini doesn’t take the opportunity to represent Jews and Israelis lightly.

“It means everything,” he said. “I got so many messages in the past couple days of kids that are impacted, and not only my soccer, but how I show that I’m Jewish and not afraid of it. By doing ‘Shema Yisrael’ at every beginning of the game or halftime, or every time I score, every time to thank God.

“I impacted a lot of people, and I’m happy that I’ll be in a bigger stage, that I can impact even more people and give them the power not to hide their identity,” he added.