When Richard C. Knight '90 was 16 years old and living in Northern England, he was signed by the Carlisle United Football Club to play professional soccer. Not unlike other young men his age, he had committed himself to a two-year apprentice program that would prepare him for the world of British football.

Carlisle is still waiting. And waiting. It might as well wait for Godot because Knight, an economics major from Kirkland House, doesn't see himself as just a soccer player anymore. He's about to graduate from Harvard and he's no longer 16.

"When I tell my friends in England now [about my attitude towards soccer], they say, 'You're crazy,'" Knight says. "Where I want to be in the future doesn't include soccer.

For his friends in England, soccer was a way of life. But for Knight, who has lived in many places, soccer had always meant something else: a way of adjusting, a means of fitting in.

But after two years at Harvard, Knight found that he no longer needed soccer to define himself.

After playing his first two seasons for a Harvard men's soccer team that made consecutive NCAA Final Four appearances, Knight opted to take a break from the sport his junior year--the same year the Crimson was expected to capture the elusive national championship, And it was the year that Knight--a fast, creative player--was expected to replace All-America Nick Hotchkin '88 at midfield.

The immediate reasons for Knight's departure seem obvious. The pressure to play for a rising national power could have been too much--forcing Knight to make a full, not -stop commitment to the team. The arrival of a new corps of recruits--many from California and the Northeast--hinted that the team might be headed in a different direction.

No longer would the Crimson look overseas for the bulk of its talent, a policy ex-Coach Jape Shattuck had espoused during his tenure from 1981 to 1986. Now, with current Coach Mike Getman at the helm, the team was changing. Instead of the fast and physical game Knight had grown used to in England, Harvard was gradually beginning to emphasize the skill and patience which characterize the American school of play.

"Here we are [the returning members of the Final Four teams], trying to play a European style, while others are trying to play another style," Knight says, "Before, we were a lot faster and a lot more physical."

But the changes in Harvard's game alone do not present a full picture of Richard Knight's decision to give up a sport he loved. If this had happened at soccer temples such as Indiana and Hartwick, Knight's action would have been sacrilegious. Remember, however, that this is Harvard, where the athletic fields are isolated across the Charles River. Here, Knight found that he no longer had to cross Longfellow Bridge to find his center.

"This is like my third continent," says Knight. For a brief moment, you think he's kidding. Knight finds comfort in his sense of humor. And others find comfort in him.

"He's got a great sense of humor," says Sengal M. Selassie '90, Knight's friend and future Manhattan roommate. "That humor allows him to adjust really well to all types of situations."

No kidding. Knight has been adjusting and adapting all his life. This isn't like his third continent. It is his third continent. Born in Ugandan to an English father and an Ugandan mother, the young Knight left his birthplace in 1972 and moved to Northern England to live with his father. The environment was anything but familiar.

"I lived there for 12 years and I never saw a Black person in my county," Knight says.

Sports, however, became knight's way of adjusting. If he proved he could share some of the experiences prized by others, then maybe others would accept him. It was effective--so much so that by the time he turned 16, Knight had earned the respect of his teammates and a contract with the Carlisle club. Life for the teenager was set. Or so it appeared.