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Peyton Presson, 18, here wearing Inter Miami colors, realized his dream of becoming a professional soccer player when he signed recently with LASK of the Austrian league. Photo provided

By Brian Biggane

Steven Presson says his son Peyton told him — when he was 6-1/2 — that he wanted to play professional soccer. Peyton himself tells a different story. 

“My mom would claim it was about 3.” 

After physical struggles that kept him sidelined for about two years, Presson, 18, realized that dream just a few weeks ago when he signed with LASK of the Austrian league. He followed that up in late March by making his first appearance for the U.S. Soccer program in an under-18 tournament in Portugal that also included England, Portugal and Iceland.

“This was his goal and I was going to do everything I could to help him achieve it,” said Steven Presson, who lives on Hypoluxo Island in Lantana and runs the Presson Team real estate group in Palm Beach.

Peyton, who grew up in Ocean Ridge and plays the No. 9 position in soccer — or center forward — remembers always having a ball at his feet growing up, resulting in the domination of his age group until his dad decided to pull him out of Gulf Stream School during his fifth-grade year and enroll him in a soccer academy in Port St. Lucie.

That began a ritual in which Steven Presson would wake up at 5:30 every morning, drive his son to the academy and return to Palm Beach for work, then repeat the trip in the evening.

“I was taking the initiative, but as soon as I say that, he was the one who would give me absolutely anything, any resource, anything I could possibly need to reach my goals,” Peyton said.

Peyton’s scoring prowess at the club level was starting to attract national attention when at age 12 he suffered his first significant injury to his knee, which sidelined him for six months. 

But it was three years later, after he had joined the academy program with the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer, that his real problems began. 

His mother, Kimberly, an Allentown, Pennsylvania, native, had moved with him to Philadelphia. Peyton got off to a flying start, scoring four goals his first game and 12 in his first seven, earning calls to the Union from almost every other team in MLS asking about this scoring machine.

Then came unforeseen physical problems, which Steven Presson attributes to a growth spurt that resulted in Peyton’s shooting up from 6 feet to 6-4 in just a few months.

For the next two years, which encompassed most of 2023 and 2024, Peyton was unable to play due to what were diagnosed as back and hip injuries. At one point Steven Presson said he took Peyton to 40 specialists over one 30-day period.

“I didn’t sleep for two years,” Presson said. “Every doctor has either an answer or another question, and you just keep going down these rabbit holes.”

After crisscrossing the country and visiting every specialist from LeBron James’ trainer to the Miami Dolphins’ chiropractor, Presson heard about Johnny Veira, a Delray Beach physical therapist, in September 2024.

“It was there everything started to come together,” Presson said. 

Peyton said, “His program follows the belief that your whole body is connected through something called myofascia,and training your body in a way that incorporates your whole body and realigning your posture and the way you move.”

By January 2025, Peyton was physically well enough to return, and hungry to prove he was still the same player. 

But he had lost weight and needed time to regain his form. 

After brief stops with the Union and the Colorado Springs Switchbacks of the United Soccer League — where he broke his arm but continued playing — he came home to join Inter Miami, where superstars like Lionel Messi and Leo Suárez were on their way to what became the team’s first MLS championship.

Playing with the under-19 team, Peyton, who now stands 6-foot-5 and weighs 194 pounds, scored two goals his first game, one in his second, and finished the season scoring at least once in each of his last nine games.

“The highlight of my time was getting to train one day with the first team, with all the superstars,” he said. “So, I’m warming up and I see Messi, (Sergio) Busquets, and I started getting emotional reflecting on everything it took to get back to this moment.”