This feature appeared in the Penn State Football Game Day Program for the Ohio State game.
Can a family's decision on middle school education for their son cause an avalanche of sound at a Penn State White Out?
It's a crazy question on its face, but if a butterfly flapping its wings results in a tornado elsewhere - as the so-called "butterfly effect" metaphorically states - then Trace McSorley's time in Costa Rica as a 13-year-old is very much a part of his path to Penn State.
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A study abroad in middle school?
The foundation for the unique path was laid before Trace even began school, as his late-August birthday presented a difficult dilemma for his parents: Was he ready to begin kindergarten as one of the youngest members of his class? The decision was made to enroll him on schedule.
"I had taught school, and I felt he was academically ready to start school," said his mother, Andrea. "So I didn't want to hold him back. We went back and forth on it pretty much after kindergarten, after first grade, it was certainly in the back of our heads all the way through school because he was young."
Initially, Trace resisted when the idea of repeating a grade came up, but his feelings changed when one of his best friends, a year older but also an August birthday, moved overseas briefly and repeated seventh grade.
"When we went to visit with them, the family just shared with us how great it was," said Andrea. "It was just great for his confidence. He went from being one of the youngest kinds in his class to one of the oldest kids in his class, so when we got back, Trace actually said, 'Do you think I could do that here?'"
Trace's parents reached out to the school counselors and his teachers, and they agreed that holding Trace back a year would benefit him since he was still very quiet and shy. Additionally, academic pressure was mounting too, as Trace was already taking high school-level courses.
"It wasn't like we held him back because he was going to be this amazing football player and win all these state championships," said Andrea. "At the time, it really was because he was very quiet, very soft spoken and in a crowd he definitely melted into the background. We just wanted him to be a little more confident going into high school."
"All my other friends were bigger, were growing chin hair, arm pit hair, all that other stuff and I was just still a tall, skinny kid," said Trace.
So in February of his eighth-grade year, with everyone in agreement, Trace was removed from school. Inactivity was not an option though, and legally, he needed to be homeschooled if he was not actually going to school.
"My mom being my mom, didn't just want me sitting around the house for seven months until the next school year, so she found some things for me to do," said Trace.
First was a couple weeks in Colorado with his aunt, doing "…all the mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, rock climbing – all that kind of Colorado outdoorsy stuff."
Next, with his mother a firm believer in the benefits of traveling and studying abroad, she and Trace set off for a month-long immersive Spanish program in Costa Rica.
"We went down and lived with a family in Quepos, Costa Rica," said Trace. "It was a small, two-bedroom house that was actually a three-bedroom house, but they turned the third main room into an ice cream shop, and that's where the mom who lived there worked. All of the kids worked there too."
Despite the "shock" of the new culture, Trace settled in quickly.
"The first week we were there I was like, 'we could move to a hotel,' but he was like 'Why? It's great!'" said Andrea. "We had running water but we did not have hot water. We did not have windows in the place we lived. You were sitting on cots, which turned out to be fine. The people were lovely."
He settled into a routine of classes in the morning, and exploring in the afternoon.
"You'd basically do Spanish classes until noon or 1 p.m., but then the rest of the afternoon you'd take hikes down to the beach, you'd be able to go hang out and go to restaurants and kind of live the life down there," said Trace.
"It was actually nuts because the first week I was there I couldn't speak Spanish, so I had trouble communicating. It was kind of one of those things that you just figure it out. If I hadn't figured it out I wouldn't have been able to enjoy the entire trip. I wouldn't have been able to walk down the street and go get something to eat on my own. By the second week, I was fairly fluent in Spanish, being able to talk with everyone, hang out with the other kids. There was a family of three boys we were living with, so being able to hang out with them and talk with them, was something that was just an awesome experience."
Trace, found a college-aged student from Texas to throw a football around with on the beach, but he also did his best to spread American sports culture to his Costa Rican family, as well.
"Soccer is the big sport they had there," said McSorley. "Being who I was, I brought a football with me, and I would play catch with one of the other kids. I was big into lacrosse at that time too, so I had a lacrosse stick. Obviously, lacrosse was kind of a weird sport [for them]."
"The director of the school and the maintenance director called him the butterfly catcher, because he'd carry this lacrosse stick all around," said Andrea. "He'd say 'you and your butterfly net, you love that butterfly net!' so they would tease him about the sports that he loved."
Despite playing several sports growing up, soccer was not Trace's forte.
"I was the guy who had no idea what I was doing on the soccer field," he said.
All in all, Trace enjoyed his time abroad.
"It was awesome, I wouldn't trade that experience for the world," said Trace. "It's something that every single day I am thankful that I did."
"He really enjoyed the experience," said Andrea. "It was a really cool experience. We were glad from the minute we did it, that we were doing it. We could see almost as soon as he stopped going to school, when we took him out to Colorado that the weight of the world was off of his shoulders."
The experience is something he can still reference today.
"It's something that I've always carried with me, doing things outside your comfort zone and being able to grow because of that. Having that experience, now when I get out of my comfort zone, I'm not feeling so new to it.
"I've just been able to carry that with me and apply it to so many different things in my life."
Trace repeated eighth grade after he returned to home, and then moved on to an illustrious high school football career. Then-Vanderbilt quarterbacks coach and current Penn State offensive coordinator Ricky Rahne loved what he saw in a workout session, and he and head coach James Franklin recruited him to the Commodores as a quarterback.
There was a change of plans as Franklin and staff landed at Penn State in 2014, the year McSorley graduated from high school. However, McSorley followed Franklin and staff to Happy Valley.
The rest is history.
McSorley now enters his third-and-final Penn State White Out game as a starter, and if his six touchdowns responsible for and two victories in his first two games are any indication, another avalanche of sound is about to be unleashed.
