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.

Pin on the map

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."