DATE: Monday, October 13, 1997              TAG: 9710130068

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE, CORRESPONDENT 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   51 lines

MONUMENT DEDICATED TO MEMORY OF SOCCER PLAYERS

On the surrounding fields, soccer balls were booted and games continued. But beside a small monument, a poem was read for Matthew C. Fidler and Ryan C. Smith.

The young men are remembered in two facing pieces of granite, towering over a round ball of white marble, at the Virginia Beach Soccer Complex.

They played together for the Beach FC travel team, and against each other: Matthew played for Cox, Ryan for Princess Anne. They died together in a scuba accident near Hopetown, Bahamas, in 1994. They were 17.

Sunday, as the Columbus Day Soccer Tournament came to a close, parents and friends remembered.

``What do you think?'' Patti Fidler, Matthew's mom, asked J.B. Maas. Maas had been a friend of Matthew and Ryan, and had played soccer with them.

``I like it,'' he told her.

``I can just see Matthew like this,'' she told Maas, crouching as the column of granite seemed to do. Then she straightened up and thanked him for coming.

In front of the monument is a smaller stone, which will soon hold a brass plaque. The words from the plaque are, for now, written on a sheet of paper taped to the stone.

We leave this life to you . . . Our love, our smiles, our light . . . Forever young.

Other words are carved into the stone. Leaning over, Fidler read them: ``Determined. Dedicated. Generous of spirit. Kick butt. Considerate. And compassionate.''

These words are important, she explained. They describe the boys.

``Ryan was as fast as the wind,'' Fidler said. ``Matt was determined. I mean, he never quit. Ryan? I can still see him running across the field. He was like a gazelle.''

Ron and Gail Smith came up from Florida for the ceremony. With the Fidlers, family friends and sculptor Matthew Fine, they helped bring the monument together.

The Smiths and Fidlers hope it will help people remember their sons. That is why they and the artist decided to keep the words and the art separate.

``We didn't want people to mistake the piece for a headstone,'' Gail Smith said. ``But we wanted it to describe the boys and still be an encouragement for other soccer players.'' ILLUSTRATION: During a soccer tournament at the Virginia Beach

Soccer Complex, a memorial was dedicated to Matthew C. Fidler and

Ryan C. Smith, who died in a scuba accident in the Bahamas at the

age of 17 in 1994.

JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE

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