Why is this resulting in a 'attempt to index local 'plyr' (a nil value)' error, but still working?

I have a portal that only allows access past a certain Stage.Value and it works fine... once. Prior to this I didn't have the debounce which caused the message to fire way too many times when someone under the required level tried to access it. With the debounce it works as intended for both the message and the initial teleport but if I come back to the portal in the same session it does nothing.

This error pops up in the console after/during the initial teleport so I presume it is disabling the script in some way? attempt to index local 'plyr' (a nil value)

Or my code is just pure rubbish lol.

Any thoughts?

local place = CFrame.new(61.861, 310.247, 245.514) -- Where you want the player to go on touched
local debounce=true
    
script.Parent.Touched:Connect(function(part)
	if debounce == true then
       debounce = false
	local parent = part.Parent
	local plyr = game.Players:GetPlayerFromCharacter(parent)
	if (plyr.leaderstats.Stage.Value < 25) then
		local note = Instance.new("Message",game.Workspace)
		note.Text = "Requires Stage 25 to access"
		wait(2)
		note:Remove()
		debounce = true
	elseif (plyr.leaderstats.Stage.Value >= 25) then
		local plyrmod = plyr.Character.HumanoidRootPart
		plyrmod.CFrame = place
		debounce = true	
	end
	end
end)