For nearly four months of Saturday mornings - most of them soggy - the Camden High School practice field as well as a community field at the Camden campus of Rutgers University - were taken over by the Camden Youth Soccer Club, the brainchild of Gloucester City resident Ed Bonnette and the result of six months of community effort.

On March 28 - opening day - more than 400 children ages 4 to 16 showed up, sifted through piles of pre-worn soccer shoes, and met their teammates. A Camden police officer and coach, Eddie Chapman, insisted his team, "Lil Angels," run past the review stand. The rest simply paraded past applauding parents.

As with any new phenomenon, the difficulties - and the diehards - were soon revealed. There were parents who assumed they could drop their children off as if the league were day care, or who couldn't be counted on to bring their children on time, if at all. Players from several different teams were cobbled together to form new ones to play games.

But there was also a coach named Christopher Pascall who suffered a stroke during the season and came back to chase his 6-year-old charges across the field. A hundred parents cleared the fields of trash, and 40 others underwent three to 10 hours of training to learn to coach. Soccer moms and grandmoms pushed paint machines on the dampest of days to lay down white lines on the wet grass, with umbrellas in their hands and toddlers clamped to their knees.

Bonnette tried to make sure everyone felt welcome by printing Spanish, Vietnamese and Chinese words on the T-shirts worn by the coaches. And true to plan, by today's season finale - delayed nearly a month because of the weather - there were children of all hues running, cheering and stumbling across the Camden fields.