Times like these: Soccer's Missimo, Byars decide on one more season
Lexi Missimo, Trinity Byars opt to flip hourglass to extend collegiate soccer careers for senior seasons.
Chris Allen Brown
3/29/2024
Time is the most unfaithful entity of life.
It’s inconsiderate and does not care about you, your dreams, or your feelings.
It’s irreversible.
It’s something people either have too much or too little of. But never the perfect amount.
It doesn’t care about the amount of All-American or All-Conference honors a student-athlete earns throughout their collegiate athletic career. There is no magic number of accolades that will trigger an automatic extension of a career.
The only option is to grab the hourglass and take control of your timeline before all the sand participles finishing falling through the tiniest of cracks between your clinched-together fingers.
Do what Lexi Missimo and Trinity Byars did following the conclusion of Texas’ 2023 women’s soccer season.
Control your narrative. Finish your story on your terms.
Missimo and Byars could have easily both been top five — if not the first and second overall — picks in the 2024 National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) Draft earlier this calendar year. Multiple women’s soccer clubs across Europe were interested in signing the life-long best friends and teammates. Countless individuals around the world wanted to pluck the Lone Star natives off the Forty Acres and insert them into their club’s system.
But only one person heard the answer they were hoping for from the three-year Longhorn starters: Angela Kelly.
OUT OF SAND
When the 2023 Division I women’s soccer season kicked off for The University of Texas in mid-August, many weren’t sure on what the post-junior campaign plans were for Missimo and Byars. Both were coming off record-breaking sophomore seasons, a conference championship and were known nationwide. Many were automatic to assume the pair of Longhorns, who spent part of the previous offseason training in France within the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) system, were putting on the Burnt Orange and White for the final time in 2023.
As the season rolled on, so did the soccer ball on the pitch at Mike A. Myers Stadium.
Byars scored. Missimo scored. Missimo assisted on a Byars goal. Byars assisted on a Missimo goal. Missimo and Byars both assisted on teammates goals. Everything was finding the back of the net for the Longhorn women’s soccer program. The season was turning into the perfect swan song for duo. Records were broken. Eye-popping statistics earned. And another conference championship added to the résumé.
Then it all came to a screeching halt on a warm November day in Tallahassee, Florida.
Poof. The most-historic season in program history was over before it felt it even begun.
No more Byars goals. No more Missimo assists. No more teams having to gameplan for the Longhorn duo. The collegiate soccer careers of two of the best student-athletes in program history had come to an end. The pair have walked off a soccer pitch wearing the Texas Burnt Orange and white for the final time. Next up? To see where the duo was going to sign to play professional women’s soccer.
Or so everyone thought.
But Lexi Missimo and Trinity Byars are writing this story.
ACRES OF SAND
The University of Texas offers a wide range of academic opportunities. In total, the university offers the opportunity to earn an undergraduate degree in 170 different fields of study that spans 13 colleges and school. Texas ranks as the No. 1 public university in the state of Texas and also boosts a Tier-1status as a research institution. UT is also ranked No. 32 out of 439 National Universities, per the U.S. News & World Report’s 2024 edition, and the ninth-best public school in the United States. 1,007 Fulbright U.S. Students and Scholars, 31 Rhodes Scholars and 24 Marshall Scholars have all called the Forty Acres home.
Names like Alan Bean, Jenna Bush, Robert Cade, Tom C. Clark and Matthew McConaughey have left the Forty Acres in Austin, Texas with degrees that have laid the foundation for very successful post-graduate careers.
Athletically, Texas has earned back-to-back NACDA Learfield Directors’ Cup as the most successful athletic department in college athletics. The Longhorns also earned the Women’s Capital One Cup — an honor a university earns following the most collective success in women’s-only sports throughout an academic year — in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Texas is a place where its collective athletic success is virtually unmatched. And with that success comes resources and opportunities for student-athletes that is hard to rival.
Following renovations at Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium throughout recent decades, the Texas Athletics Center for Applied Sports Science and Texas Athletics Nutrition Center (TANC) are housed within the stadium. The Moncrief-Neuhaus Athletic Center and Red McCombs Red Zone are also home to athletic performance and weight training facilities.
With its success throughout the 2023-24 season, the Texas women’s basketball team played host to two first-round and a second-round NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball games at the Moody Center, which recently opened on April 20, 2022. Mike A. Myers Stadium, which is also home for the Longhorn women’s soccer program, plays host to one of the most premier track and field events in the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays every year.
As The University of Texas makes the move to the Southeastern Conference (SEC) in the coming months, everything has — unquestionably — been turning up Burnt Orange and White recently.
LINES IN THE SAND
With the high possibility of hearing their names called early during the 2024 NWSL Draft or putting their names on a contract to play overseas, Missimo and Byars had to draw a line in the sand and determine which side to stand on. And time was ticking. The pair had just under two months to make a choice of a lifetime.
Stay? Go?
Teammates? Opposition?
United States? Overseas?
Earn a college degree now? Return to school to finish later?
Tick. Tock.
What to do? What to do?
What. To. Do.
As those heavily invested in women’s soccer waited for the Longhorns to make a decision, a post went out on Lexi Missimo’s social media accounts on Monday, Jan. 8.
It was the news Texas women’s soccer head coach Ange Kelly wanted to read.
“I look forward to finishing my degree and playing with my teammates. Playing at The University of Texas is an absolute privilege, and I could not be more blessed to continue to be part of the Longhorn Family.”
A semifinalist for the 2023 Women’s MAC Herman Trophy. The first 20-goal, 20-assist player in the history of the Big 12 Conference. The NCAA Division I’s active leader in career points and assists.
Lexi Missimo was returning to The University of Texas for her senior season. The quarterback of the Longhorns’ Starting XI would be taking the pitch at Mike A. Myers Stadium for a fourth season.
Grateful?? @TexasSoccer @TexasOneFund @WM_ent pic.twitter.com/NO3w0e9Cuk
— Lexi Missimo (@MissimoLexi) January 8, 2024
But what about Byars?
The draft entry deadline came. And then it went.
The often soft-spoken forward opted against making any formal announcement regarding her future on social media. But Kelly knew.
Trinity Byars’ name was not submitted into the draft pool. Nor was she planning on going overseas.
She had elected to return for her senior season and join Missimo to complete the puzzle Kelly was trying to assemble since walking off the soccer pitch at Seminole Soccer Complex in Tallahassee months prior.
The entirety of Kelly’s Starting XI is now set to return for the 2024 season.
several familiar faces are returning to the pitch next season ??
— Texas Soccer (@TexasSoccer) January 10, 2024
??: https://t.co/oH7MIScQgO#HookEm | #RunWithTexas pic.twitter.com/yvHHmIhM4P
START THE FLOW OF SAND, AGAIN
With countless people quick to write the future for Missimo and Byars, the duo instead took the pen out of those hands, crumbled up the pages and tossed them into a recycle bin. That was the timeline those individuals wanted to lay out for the pair. But these two record-breaking women’s soccer student-athletes wanted the opportunity most aren’t afforded.
As the last sand participles began to fall through the waist of the hourglass and towards a three years' worth of already piled sand, Lexi Missimo and Trinity Byars reached out, grabbed their respectively hourglasses and flipped it.
Trinity Byars and Lexi Missimo took control of their timelines. Their dreams. Their feelings. Their futures.
All of the aspects of being human.
Something Time had no interest in.
