In South African township, a memorial to Narberth soccer player

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - Before the radio station has gone from a pop song to a commercial, you can drive from Cape Town's landscaped doorsteps to the dusty entryways of Khayelitsha's improvised shacks.

The trip is a few kilometers along South Africa's N2 highway, just a long bending cross from Cape Town's gorgeous Green Point Stadium, nestled along the Atlantic Ocean, a landmark venue for the recent 2010 FIFA World Cup visited by precious few - if any - of Khayelitsha's residents.

But everything south of this township - the mountains, the restaurants, the seductive ocean views - deflates like a punctured balloon when exiting off the N2 and into a world built of scrap materials, corrugated metal, used plywood, and plastic.

In South Africa, this world is the reality, not those initial kilometers.

Within this stretch of land, which goes for miles and houses millions, poverty exists unlike anything in the United States. Amid this ordered chaos, around the corner from the hair salon and down the street from the used mattress shop, is a four-cornered hope: a glistening turf soccer field.

Welcome to the Chris Campbell Memorial Field.

Outside its fences are unemployment, gangs, crime and disease.

Inside its fences are energy, passion and hope.

The Chris Campbell Memorial Field was built in Khayelitsha for its residents, but the field's heart beats in Philadelphia, soothing the broken hearts here.

Christopher T. Campbell Jr. was 21 years old when his heart stopped on Aug. 15, 2007.

The afternoon was hot and muggy when Campbell died while running near his Narberth home. His death came only 24 hours before the start of his senior soccer season at Franklin and Marshall.

Campbell, a star midfielder for the Diplomats, had graduated in 2004 from Wynnewood's Friends' Central School, where he played soccer for his father, Chris Campbell Sr., who still coaches the program.

Before the younger Campbell's death, Franklin and Marshall coach Dan Wagner had planned a give-back trip to South Africa, scheduled for after the 2007 season, where his athletes would run a soccer clinic in Khayelitsha.

"We put a pin on the map and it happens to be there," Wagner said of the selection.

Friends said Campbell was especially anticipating the trip, having just spent a summer abroad in Spain and having traveled significantly with his father.

"It just gutted our team," Wagner said of the player's death. "We forgot about Africa and in many ways, we forgot about having a soccer season."

Following Campbell's death, his father and mother, MariAnn, asked for memorial donations to be made to Franklin and Marshall's "Soccer Africa Project."

Contributions far exceeded the program's needs.

At the same time, Wagner and the soccer players who had competed with Campbell in a Radnor summer league were eager to memorialize him on a grander scale.

At Franklin and Marshall's home opener and dedication ceremony of Tylus Field - the college's new turf playing field - Wagner approached Campbell's father.

"Chris Jr. was so excited to play on that field," Wagner explained. "I grabbed Chris and I said, 'Why don't we build a replica of this facility in Khayelitsha?' " The vision was straightforward, but ambitious.

"What you feel like doing is chucking everything and saying, 'Forget this,' " said Campbell Sr. of his son's death. "But the world got cheated out of a really good soul and you feel responsibility to make sure that good impact is felt."

"When he died it was the classic, 'What do you do when life gives you lemons?' " said Rich Rizzo, Campbell's cousin. "Everybody, so badly, wanted to have something to do to help Chris and MariAnn."

Added Wagner, "I laugh - because here's this kid, he's passed away now for two years, and we're all still just working our tails off for him."

That dedication resulted in the creation of the CTC Ten Foundation, which stands for Chris T. Campbell plus his soccer jersey, No. 10.

In the years following FIFA's announcement that the 2010 World Cup would be played in South Africa, which had been an international pariah until apartheid's 1994 demise, many promises were made to the country's struggling communities.

Those revitalization projects were often specifically promised to townships, which served as the potent, lingering reminder of the country's racial segregation.

But not all of those projects were completed. Some were never even officially started.

In March of 2008, as planned before Campbell's death, Franklin and Marshall ran soccer clinics in Khayelitsha. During that trip, the Campbells, Wagner and the Franklin and Marshall soccer team dedicated the vacant lot on which the memorial field would be built.

The land, previously covered in dirt, sand, chicken bones, and broken bottles, was serving as the recess area for the primary school located next door.

"Someone had to translate to the kids," Wagner said of the dedication ceremony. "But I remember the moment where I said there would be lights going up, and the guy demonstrated the word - 'lights' - and the kids went crazy. And I'm sure the adults around were thinking, 'Yeah, right.' "

In September 2008, construction began. The project, to date, has cost approximately $500,000, and more is needed to maintain the field, the lights, the clubhouse and an intern program, which helps oversee the project and is expanding in conjunction with Franklin and Marshall.

The field officially opened in January 2009 and the clubhouse on June 11, 2010.

CTC Ten does not plan to duplicate this model in other needy townships or other countries. Its vision is to witness this one field, this rectangle of land in South Africa, as it changes the surrounding community.

Ryan McGonigle, Campbell's best friend and teammate at Franklin and Marshall, has been on location in Cape Town for two years as CTC Ten's first intern.

"We pretty much just dropped [McGonigle] off in Africa and said, 'Figure it out,' " Wagner said. "We didn't know what to tell him. We said, 'At some point, you're going to get a field.' "

McGonigle provided the link to efforts in the United States, taking pictures and communicating between CTC Ten and local construction workers as first the field, and then the clubhouse, was built.

Now, Amy Cawley, who was Campbell's girlfriend and a former soccer play at Franklin and Marshall, joins McGonigle, with the pair providing direction for local fund-raising.

The foundation has transferred responsibility for leagues and programming to the local organization, Amandla Ku Lutsha, which boasts a mission statement aiming to "educate through sport."

"This is what Chris could have been able to do and more," McGonigle said. "I see that and I try to help it along, ease the process for his parents and for myself, make the impact as good as it can be."

The idea for the field came from a place of grief and hope for betterment, but it was being built in a community devastated by the effects of apartheid and years of unemployment (nearly 80 percent within Khayelitsha), crime (there were once 11 homicides in one week), poverty, and disease (HIV/AIDS rates are thought to be as high as 1 in 3).

Quite simply, no one could predict the community's reaction; other outreach projects have been rejected, stolen from, disrespected, or not fully utilized.

"I remember getting in the tour bus after the site dedication and asking one of the dads in the group, 'What do you think, honestly?' " Wagner remembered. "He said, 'This field will last one week. People are going to come in with exacto knives and line their shacks with your turf field.' "

Not so.

Now they line the fields, waiting for a chance to play.

"They embrace the field as their own," said McGonigle, who has learned portions of the local dialect.

Toward the end of June, as the World Cup prepared for the penultimate group-stage match at Green Point Stadium, McGonigle, wearing Crocs in the colors of South Africa's flag, walked the field's sidelines and pointed outside the fence toward crime locations: the yellow shack that serves as the neighborhood bar, the site of a stabbing; the side street down which a double homicide occurred.

"Nobody has ever touched this place, ever," McGonigle said. "Not one thing has ever been stolen, not one crime committed within its fences."

As Campbell's father explained, the foundation decided early on, whether through faith or naivete, to employ township men who had grown up on its streets, some who had struggled with drugs and crime but had found a different path in search of doing better.

CTC Ten employs three such program directors.

The acronym within the township is AYK, Ambitious Youth of Khayelitsha, which is dedicated to the revitalization of the Khayelitsha township.

"They have the keys to the kingdom," the elder Campbell said. "They have rock-star status in the neighborhood now. The kids know: If you want to be on the field, they're the guys."

There are youth programs, girls programs, adult leagues, crime prevention nights, and even a month-long tournament in honor of the just-finished World Cup. There are Frisbee programs and field hockey programs because not everybody is obsessed with soccer, but everyone still needs a chance.

"It brings a lot of hope, because there was no hope before the field," said Sakhele Tima, one of the aforementioned "rock stars" employed by CTC Ten. "After school, they are here, until 6 o'clock, weekends, they are here. Every time, they are here."

Wherever Chris T. Campbell went, he played soccer: in Philadelphia, in Lancaster, in Radnor, in Spain, in Morocco, in Turkey.

He never played in South Africa.

But thousands play now in his place.

"He used to have this silly smirk on his face and I think I developed the same thing," said his father. "Whenever I'm there, I'm thinking of him, the entire time. We're not spiritual people, in the religious sense, but that field certainly does it for us . . . It's 8,000 miles away, and it might seem silly to some people, but it's there and it's all about him."