Petke, Olsen, even Real Madrid's Jose Mourinho were students of soccer but never stars.
Across the road from the high school, students kicked soccer balls.
They were students, musicians, soccer coaches, local environmentalists and even a member of Parliament.
And Gaelic Park stadium, where Gaelic football matches were once regularly played, is today mostly used by Manhattan College students for soccer.
"It touches everybody, from celebrities to college students to soccer moms to inner-city kids – white, black, Hispanic, young, old, rich, poor, urban, suburban, men and women".
Elsewhere life on the vast campus returned to normal remarkably quickly, with students playing soccer on the spacious lawns and poring over textbooks in the sunshine.
When Patrick Duvalsaint, a coach and teacher, returned, he was determined to help his students and soccer team back into the rhythm of the fall semester -- back to homework, tests and sports.
They were good students, talented soccer players, popular, responsible, confident high school juniors, flush with the independence that driving offers, and they had not yet started the worrying grind for college admission.
Having realized the worst of it, Coffey and the parents of the Mainland team, known as the Mustangs, signed a card and mailed it to New Oxford High School in Hamilton Township, Pa., after five students, all soccer players, died in an early December accident.
During demonstrations at Zhejiang University after NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade last year, the mood quickly turned from anti-American to anti-Japanese when a ball being kicked around by a group of Japanese students playing soccer accidentally hit a student banner.
