By Matt Vines, Northwestern Sports Information
NATCHITOCHES – Peyton Rector was at peace ending her college soccer career with one year of eligibility remaining.
Finishing a psychology degree in three years, the Northwestern State product decided she would go on a worldwide whirlwind of a mission trip, visiting more than a dozen countries in 11 months.
Soccer was never far away, but Rector came to a harsh realization that prompted her to reprioritize her life while paving the path back to collegiate soccer.
“My faith grew a lot in this process,” Rector explained. “I always considered myself a Christian, but I realized that my real identity was in soccer.
“God finally had to completely take (soccer) away from me to realize that. My relationship with God is different now, and I feel that I am able to return to college soccer and share these experiences.”
Despite being away from competitive soccer for nearly two years, Rector will start at her old center back position.
Rector hopes she can meld with a young but talented team to help the Lady Demons to a Southland Conference Tournament appearance, a place the program hasn’t been since 2008.
THE DECISION
An active Fellowship of Christian Athletes member at NSU, Rector discovered the organization Adventures in Missions through an acquaintance while working a summer camp for middle and high schoolers.
Rector, a self-described introvert and “mama’s girl,” said the 11-month mission spread over four continents intrigued her, but she didn’t think she could muster the courage to leave her familiar environment.
Rector and her group throw a Christmas party for girls in Thailand.
“It was an amazing thought – explore the entire world while doing something good for mankind,” Rector said. “At first I thought it was just going to be a high – that the thought would pass in two weeks and I would come back to reality.
“But two months passed, and I still was really interested. I had never been outside of North America, and my mom said if this something I wanted to do, now is the time.”
Rector, who said bad experiences as a freshman led her to start a track toward graduation in three years, completed an application before her junior season.
The Keller, Texas, native shined as a defender that season, finally finding a comfortable position after bouncing between the back line and forward at the beginning of her career.
‘THE RACE’
Rector worked with special needs kids in Chile.
Rector left in July 2015 on a trek that snaked its way through Albania, Romania, an unplanned foray into Greece, on to Africa’s Malawi and Zambia before spending time in Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia. Spending roughly a month in each country, the trip continued in South America’s Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia with a side trip to Brazil and ended in Chile.
Her duties ranged from teaching English in the schools of Malawi and Zambia to relying on her Spanish minor to communicate with her Peruvian counterparts, from street evangelism near the lighthouse of Greece’s Thessaloniki to the night ministry in the brothels of Thailand’s Chiang Mai.
Rector traveled in a group of 55 participants, and the journey started in an Albanian combine where the missionaries wouldn’t mention God because, as a startup, the combine wanted to build relationships with locals.
“The combine had a big soccer field, which was my oasis,” Rector said. “We hosted kids’ camps that featured activities like archery, rock climbing and bounce houses.”
Rector was often clad in her Northwestern State soccer gear and could be found kicking a ball when given the chance.
But the group’s next stop in Romania revealed how intertwined Rector’s life had become with soccer.
Rector and her group of Adventures in Missions participants pitch hay in Albania.
“I was content that my soccer career was over, but when I started ‘The Race,’ I made sure everybody knew I was a soccer player,” Rector said. “I put myself in that box.
“As part of our ministry, one group played soccer with local kids every day. And it wasn’t my group. Everybody knows that I’m a soccer player, why wouldn’t you make my group the ones that organized the soccer activities? That hurt. I finally realized that I was putting everything into that part of my identity, and I needed to give God control of my life, not soccer. I realized I had so much more to offer people.”
Already a developed leader via athletics, Rector tested those skills when called upon to cultivate contacts for future mission trips in Greece. Rector introduced herself to strangers on the street, locating churches or other groups able to host future missionaries to the Mediterranean nation.
Teaching English to young children in Malawi was rewarding, and Rector discovered the worldwide joy for soccer despite unrelenting poverty in Africa’s poorest country.
“We went to a girls’ soccer game that was the equivalent of our elite teams, and it was a regional final,” Rector said. “The girls played on a field of straight dirt, and one of the girls was barefoot.
“It was hard to watch. But the girl wasn’t ‘Woe is me,’ … she had a smile on her face.”
The group witnessed a different kind of religious experience in Zambia, being present for an exorcism of sorts.
In Southeast Asia, Rector said her group rarely saw their Cambodian pastor contact and chalked that trip up as “a month of rest.”
Rector’s favorite part of the trip occurred in Thailand where her group of strong women participated in “bar ministry.”
“We lived in a hostel and worked in its café during the day, but at night, we were ministering in a large Red Light District,” Rector said. “We’d go to the bars and talk to the prostitutes, the men trying to buy them and the bar moms.
“It was eye-opening. You find different ways to love people. You love the prostitutes because they are the ones being used, but you also have to love the male customers, too. They need God just as much as anybody else.”
The group befriended former and current prostitutes, throwing a Christmas party for the bunch before leaving for Malaysia. A few months ago, Rector learned that one of the prostitutes, a woman in her mid-20s, escaped the industry to become a tour guide.
The Racers were fond of bar ministry, and Rector said her group initially had trouble transitioning to a Malaysian orphanage than housed girls ages 14-18.
“We were angry and bitter at first because my team got attached to Thailand,” Rector said. “But we started to connect with the Malaysian girls and built relationships with them.
“We did Bible studies, hung out, played games – just loved on them.”
Rector’s group often participated in daily Bible studies and services in churches, but in Ecuador, the host family ran everything from their personal home. The group visited nearby villages, bringing remote locals to hospitals or caring for disabled orphans.
Her limited fluency in Spanish was tested in Peru, where nobody spoke English, serving as an amateur translator between her hosts and her group.
“Our contact would get frustrated because he had to dumb things down for us, but they were speaking a different dialect than I was used to,” said Rector, who has a Spanish minor. “I shared my testimony in Spanish in a church. I am praying I did it well because I translated my message from English myself. I don’t know what I actually said, but I got applause afterward, so I guess it worked.
“I particularly enjoyed working with disabled children in different places because the language barrier didn’t matter. With them, it was just love.”
After teaching English to Bolivian children and hopping the border to serve several Brazilian towns, Rector’s race ended in a destitute part of Santiago, Chile.
The group worked in a different kind of orphanage designed to help young adults transition to life off the streets.
“More often than not, once orphans hit the maximum age (18), they would just go right into the streets again,” Rector explained. “The House of Hope was for girls aged 18-30, and we lived with them and hung out with them.”
THE RETURN
Rector entered The Race not sure about her future.
By the time the group reached South America, Rector decided to pursue a master’s in clinical psychology.
Rector taught English to young school children in Malawi.
She contemplated soccer again, dabbling with the idea of being a graduate assistant coach at NSU.
“My group would ask me if was going to play again, and I thought, ‘There’s no way. I’ve been out of soccer for more than a year, and I haven’t been able to work out,” said Rector, adding that she used that fact as an excuse. “But being a graduate assistant – there was no way I would be OK standing on the sideline just watching them play knowing I still had a year of eligibility left.”
Van Linder said he hadn’t even considered a return for Rector.
“Peyton didn’t have much Internet access on the trip, but I got an email one day asking if she could play again,” Van Linder said. “I didn’t know where in the world she was. But with her size and ability, and having such a great season as a junior, we would certainly welcome it.”
Rector returned to the U.S. in late May and began her comeback. But doing stadium runs with former teammate Yanci Johnson showed Rector how far she had to go.
“Yanci was trying to be sweet, but she looks at me and says, ‘Peyton, you have preseason in two months,’” Rector remembers. “It was a look that said that I had to get my butt in gear. After that, I went hard.”
Rector trimmed the fat, but she still hadn’t touched a soccer ball in a competitive match since ending her career in October of 2014.
“I worried if I still had the touch I used to. Can I make a 40-yard pass downfield?” Rector said. “But once I got into preseason camp and back on the field, it felt like home and I was confident and comfortable.
“I still didn’t know if I was going to get playing time or just be along for the ride, but I was going to try to be content with whatever happens.”
Fellow senior Patry Carrion, a natural offensive player, moved to the back line in 2015 and helped NSU lower its goal against average by nearly a full goal. But the Lady Demons needed more attackers, and Rector’s return prompted Van Linder to move Carrion to forward.
Van Linder said Rector’s maturity and life experience will boost a young defense.
“We all grow up a little bit when we spend a year out in the real world, and Peyton was in the real world more than most of us will ever experience or ever want to experience,” Van Linder said. “She has always been a stable and calm person, but when you do something like she did, you appreciate and have a better understanding of what you have.
“She has the respect of coaches and players, and she can bring a calm to the team by being a coach on the field.”
Rector said transitioning to a team with so many new-to-her faces hasn’t been easy, describing a meal at the beginning of preseason as “feeling alone in a crowded room.”
But she’s more comfortable now, relying on missionary experience in which she was tossed into a foreign environment not knowing a soul to form bonds with her new teammates.
Rector played all 90 minutes in an exhibition against TCU, and she feels that everything happened for a reason.
“I do feel that way now, God showed me the pieces of the puzzle,” Rector said. “My friend Katie Mastropaolo from The Race said she had wanted to tell me from the beginning of the trip that I was going to play soccer again. But God kept telling her that I needed to figure it out on my own.
“I learned how to be a better me, and I am treating every day with respect.”
