Berkeley Prep soccer player gives Haitians hope

You try just walking away.

When you hear how 17-year-old Madeline Delice spent six hours on foot, picking her way through smoke and rubble to reach her home, only to find it was destroyed and her parents were dead inside, just try walking away.

Bryane Heaberlin couldn't.

She's only 16 years old, a junior at Berkeley Prep, but so what? We do what we can in this life, and she already has done a lot. She's one of the best high school soccer goalkeepers in the country, but that's not why she's special. This is one of those times when sports really does become a way to help and heal.

We told you about Madeline Delice. She plays for the Haitian national under-17 team. Her story is just one of several on that team that will break your heart into tiny pieces as they all try to recover from the 7.0 earthquake that killed an estimated 230,000 people on that island nation six months ago.

She and her teammates survived because they were practicing in the national stadium in Port-au-Prince. The head coach, Jean Yves Labaze, was inside a building meeting with some assistants, planning for an upcoming tournament.

They all died when the building collapsed.

"The only reason I'm alive is because I was running practice that day," assistant coach James Morisset said.

He spoke in his native Kreyol language, as did all the members of his team. A translator was nearby.

"We had to try to hold this together," he said. "After the earthquake, these girls needed laughter. It was hard because so many had suffered so much, but the girls needed this. The people of Haiti needed this."

So there they were Thursday, the girls of the Haitian U-17 national team, laughing and dancing just like young kids should as they toured Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park. They were taking advantage of a break in the Disney Cup, a tournament they've been participating in this week.

And how did they get here?

We go back to Bryane Heaberlin for that.

Bryane was in goal in March for the United States team in the CONCACAF U-17 women's championships in Costa Rica. They opened the tournament with a 9-0 win against Haiti, a team that was there because Morisset decided it had to go and wouldn't be stopped.

"It was really hard to get everyone together," he said. "We had to find out where everyone lived. We people spread out all over, looking for the girls."

Two worlds change

The traditional postgame handshakes were going on when two worlds began to change. Haitian goalie Alexandra Coby had fallen to the turf in tears after the final whistle sounded. Many of her teammates were in tears, too, because the loss meant they had to go back to Haiti.

"There's nothing there," Coby said. "Nothing at all."

Heaberlin has a social conscience far beyond her years. She couldn't get the image out of her mind. The look of despair, the tears ... she walked the length of the field and wrapped her arms around Coby in a long embrace. The stories of the other girls and their misery struck deep.

Back home in St. Petersburg, she talked about the experience with her father, Bryan.

"She told me, 'Dad, we have to bring them here,'" Bryan said.

She talked about it with her teachers at Berkeley.

Her club team, the Clearwater Chargers, got involved.

And a foundation - Many Hearts, One Goal - was born.

"I put my heart into helping these girls and I wasn't going to let them down," Heaberlin said in an e-mail from Germany, where she is competing in a soccer tournament. "After everything they have overcome, I wasn't going to let ANYTHING stop me."

Many Hearts, One Goal

She helped find sponsors to provide equipment and uniforms for the Haitians. She pushed to bring them to this tournament at Disney. There is talk of funding scholarships to help the girls get through college.

So many of the girls need the basics - shelter, clothing. They have talked with experts who might help rebuild Haiti's destroyed national soccer headquarters.

"This has developed into something that is way more than what it started out to be," Bryan said. "These kids need to eat; they don't have any food back in Haiti. They live in the streets. They live in tents. They are scattered."

But then you see the faces of the Haitian girls.

You see Madeline Delice, and how much fun she was having as she toured the theme park.

Smiles few, far between

She hasn't smiled much in months. She wandered the rubble in tears after finding her parents, a 17-year-old now suddenly alone. She wound up in a field where refugees had gathered. A woman offered to let her share a tent - although it was really just a few bedsheets held up with sticks.

"When it rained, the sheets got soaked," she said. "It woke me up. The only way I could get back to sleep was to wait until the rain stopped."

She was taken in by the family of a team member. She says she'll probably go back there when the team returns to Haiti on Sunday.

"I don't have any place else to go," she said.

The girls were hoarding food when they first arrived, but a few days at Disney helped them relax. They were relaxed, happy, smiling, laughing tourists Thursday. They'll play their final game in the tournament at 10 a.m. Saturday against the Clearwater Chargers at the Wide World of Sports Complex.

Bryane was supposed to be in goal that day, but she got the chance to play in Germany. That's OK, though. You can see her impact in the faces of other girls who might have been forgotten.

"I felt good after she hugged me," Alexandra Coby said. "The entire U.S. team embraced us, encouraged us. It meant so much."

The devastation is still there. According to news reports, even though billions of dollars of aid flowed into Haiti, hardly any repair work has been done. Political corruption gets in the way of food distribution. Too many people live in tents made of sheets.

But a few girls got to escape that for a few days. And thanks to a foundation begun by a goalie from Berkeley Prep who couldn't just walk away, those girls have something they had for a while.

They have hope.