South Side girls and boys soccer teams honor heroes in Tunnel to Towers Walk

Al Freeman and the South Side boys soccer team stood at midfield alongside Massapequa boys soccer just three days after 9/11 in 2001. The national anthem boomed across the field, but not one person was thinking about the game that was to come.

Freeman, who coached the varsity program from 1979 to 2007 and the junior varsity program prior, didn’t remember how the game went. Who would? But he did remember a sixth-grade ball boy coming up to him and introducing himself.

“He said to me, ‘My dad passed away in 9/11,’” Freeman said. “I said, ‘Pat, I know.’”

That’s because the ball boy was Pat Tighe, whose father, Steve, had played under Freeman for South Side in the 1970s. Both Steve and Pat Tighe’s uncle/godfather, Tim O’Brien, had died in the tragedy as employees of financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald on the 105th floor of Tower One.

“[Steve Tighe and I] stayed in touch over the years,” Freeman said. “When 9/11 happened, we were devastated.”

It led to the creation of New York City’s Tunnel to Towers 5K Walk & Run in 2002, an event 48 players of South Side boys and girls varsity soccer participated in Sunday morning alongside three boys soccer coaches, to help raise money for those impacted by the tragedy. The foundation supports struggling families of first responders and military members.

“You can still do some good even though 9/11 was a while ago,” South Side boys soccer coach Pat Corvetti said. “I think it’s great for the community to see their athletes do great things off the field as well as on the field.”

Then-assistant coach Fred Paul suggested to Freeman in 2005 that the team attend the Tunnel to Towers event to support Tighe, who had been participating in the event alongside his family since its debut in 2002.

“When you wake up kids that early on a Sunday when they’re practicing Monday through Saturday, you never know what you’re going to get,” Paul said. “But it was something the kids looked forward to every year, something they took pride in.”

That decision launched a tradition that exists to this day. Tunnel to Towers was inspired by Stephen Siller, an off-duty firefighter who drove into New York City and ran from the closed-off Brooklyn Bridge to the Twin Towers with 60 pounds of equipment to help those in need at the cost of his own life.

Tighe said “looking back on it, it was more important than I realized” that his teammates had decided to join.

“I felt proud that my team, my teammates, my school was willing to take part in something that I obviously cherish,” Tighe said. “It was a situation that impacted the nation as a whole. As intimate as it was for me, it was nice to see, and I felt proud to have the school’s support.”

Steve Tighe was a soccer coach in his spare time. From painting the lines of local soccer fields to coaching soccer for Kellenberg Memorial High School, his No. 4 jersey for South Side was only worn by Pat and his siblings and remains retired out of respect to this day.

“My father was actually looking to get out of the Trade Center and coach full time,” Tighe said. “That’s what his passion was … but he knew how to separate fatherhood from coach.”

Now, 20 years after South Side boys soccer walked alongside Tighe at the Tunnel to Towers walk, dozens of boys and girls soccer players took the literal step Sunday to keep tradition.

“It just shows how we’re all connected as one,” senior Karter Kasschau said. “We’re just trying to support a great cause.”

And they’re not alone, either. Eleven members of South Side’s football team also participated.

“It shows that we’re all about community, and we’re thinking about things bigger than ourselves,” senior Sofia Anisansel said.

Both Anisansel and fellow senior Brooke Doreste have participated since joining varsity as freshmen, with the girls soccer team joining alongside. Doreste remembered her first impression of the event four years earlier, calling it a “surreal experience.”

“As a team, we always look forward to this tradition,” Doreste said. “It’s just so cool to give back and be able to run for the people who can’t anymore.”

It’s a testament to South Side and Rockville Centre that this community-based mindset exists, a display of unity and what high school sports can do to make a difference beyond a team’s record.

“These kids, even though they may not have seen it or been alive when everything happened, it still impacted so many in the community that they feel it from their parents, from their aunts and uncles,” Paul said. “So, I think it still resonates.”