It’s a service-filled summer vacation for soccer players

It’s a service-filled summer vacation for soccer players
Who knew two Owls could make a big difference?

BY JOHN SULLIVAN
Special to the Rice News

With opening game of the Rice women’s soccer season Aug. 22, the Owls wound down their intense two-a-day practices. It was a rigorous training period for the entire team to be sure, but the players were able to make it through and excel in the task despite the hot and humid Houston summer days.

KATE EDWARDS	ELIZABETH NESBIT

Two Owls, the sophomore tandem of Kate Edwards and Elizabeth Nesbit, had a particular ability to take it all in stride. The two know from their respective outreach experiences over the summer that there are plenty of people all around the world having a tougher time in more adverse conditions than varsity soccer practice on a hot afternoon.

Nesbit, a midfielder/forward from Waterford, Va., spent four weeks volunteering at a rural hospital in Malawi, Africa. Edwards, a midfielder from Westlake Village, Calif., traveled to Nicaragua to help a small seaside village recover from a tropical storm that heavily damaged almost three-fourths of the people’s dwellings.

The trip was Edwards’ second to Nicaragua. On the first trip a few years before, she and her mother volunteered to help out the kids at a local school in Chinendega. On the most-recent trip, Edwards was part of an eight-person group from her church on a mission of mercy. Part of the group helped rebuild some of the homes in town while Edwards and her group helped distribute food.

“We put together a food care package of rice, beans, salt, sugar, cooking oil, coffee, pasta, toothpaste, toilet paper and laundry soap, most of which a lot of us take for granted,” Edwards said. “We went door-to-door around the village and distributed the food and preached the Gospel.

“There were some families where the father of the house had to leave the rest of the family behind for periods of time while he tried to find work,” Edwards said. “There was this one instance where there were four kids and the oldest in the house was a 14-year-old girl. Faith is important to a lot people in that community, so we asked if we could pray for them. We often prayed with them. We didn’t get to feed or help everyone, but we were able to reach out to 220 out of the 300 families in the entire town.”

Far away from the Med Center
   
Nesbit had something of a similar experience on how she spent her summer vacation. In this mission trip, her second to Malawi, Nesbit (along with her mother, brother and boyfriend) would often have to improvise travel arrangements or simply hike to get from village to village.

She volunteered at a hospital facility that is about as far away, literally and figuratively, from the various Texas Medical Center buildings that overlook the Owls’ home soccer field as one can imagine.

There is no need to imagine, however, because Nesbit wrote it all down in a detailed and sensational Internet blog. On a side trip to a Malawi children’s school, Nesbit reported the following:

“There are about 50 or 60 kids who board at the school for various reasons (they live too far away or maybe they don’t have families), and we got a chance to tour their boarding rooms. There are about 15 kids living in every room. (By “room” I mean a concrete slab smaller than my bathroom.) There are clothes hanging on wires that run across each room. All of their things are stacked in the corner, and they sleep on the floor on bamboo mats.”

Both Nesbit and Edwards returned home to the U.S. in plenty of time for the start of soccer practice and the fall semester at Rice. For this duo, their Rice education, long regarded as among the best the country has to offer, is only part of a bigger picture. These two Owls are using the whole world to supplement their Rice education, and it’s an education that’s not going to waste because they are making a difference.

— John Sullivan is assistant director of sports information for Rice Athletics.