STONY BROOK, N.Y. — Shortly before the fall semester began at Stony Brook University, Rebecca Kinsley traveled to Pamplona, Peru, as part of a Fellowship of Catholic University Students mission.

She packed several lacrosse sticks from her childhood to bring to the South America country, too.

Months later, she continues to see reports that the children have embraced the sport, which had been foreign to them until Kinsley — a junior attacker for the Stony Brook women's lacrosse team — had arrived.

"Not too many of them have phones. It's a pretty poor area there," Kinsley said. "But the people who went on the missionary trip with me and are still missionaries there, I see their videos on Instagram of the kids still playing.

"It gives me a new perspective. We grew up playing lacrosse. It was second nature. These kids, seeing it for the first time and how much appreciation they had for it even though it was their first time experiencing it, sometimes I don't think we appreciate it as much as we really should — just opportunities in general, not only with lacrosse."

Kinsley spent two weeks in the Portada del Sol area of Pamplona in late August.


A boy in Peru plays with a lacrosse stick provided by Kinsley.

Last spring, as a sophomore attacker for the Seawolves, she appeared in 13 games and recorded five assists, one ground ball and one caused turnover. Three of the assists came in a career-high performance against Johns Hopkins on April 9.

"Playing since I was little with my brothers, we've had a bunch of different lacrosse sticks that we've used over the years," said Kinsley, an information systems major from Manhasset. "The ones we don't use anymore, I figured I'd bring with me and not just have them sitting in our garage anymore. I had to cut each one of them down a little bit so they would fit in my suitcase.

"The second or third day we were there, it was their Independence Day. So they had a little fiesta. It wasn't so little, actually. It was big. I figured I'd bring the sticks that day, since we weren't doing any work that day. We had a mass first, so we weren't supposed to be playing at first. But the kids saw the sticks. And when they first saw them, their eyes lit up and they said, 'What is that?' They had never seen lacrosse sticks, or heard of lacrosse, before. They were messing around with it at first. After the mass, we played a bunch of different games. I was able to show them how to catch and throw and was able to show them the skills so they could continue to play once I left."

Now, Kinsley has lasting memories from the trip, which primarily was designed to spread the word about Roman Catholicism.
 
A Spanish minor, she also had the opportunity to polish her language skills.

"I always wanted to explore different Spanish-speaking countries and use what I've learned rather than just talk to people here," Kinsley said. "At first it was hard to understand people's accents and them speaking faster than I'm normally used to. But I caught onto it pretty quickly after that. I noticed when I was there my Spanish did get better than it was before."