Saturday, November 8, 2025
For the South Side High School soccer and football teams, the Tunnel to Towers 5K Run & Walk in New York City is more than just a race — it’s a tradition rooted in remembrance, community, and service.
Each year, dozens of student-athletes from South Side take part in the event, which honors fallen Rockville Centre firefighter Stephen Siller and the 342 other FDNY members who died on September 11, 2001. The 5K, which started in 2002, traces Siller’s final footsteps from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel to the World Trade Center, where he lost his life trying to save others, according to the Tunnels to Towers website.
The South Side boys’ soccer team has participated in the event for years, and soccer coach Patrick Corvetti, who is now in his fifth season at South Side, said the tradition has grown to include the girls soccer team and, more recently, the football team. What began as a boys soccer initiative has evolved into a full-team community effort.
“Last year, a couple of the moms on the football team got organized, and then they got some of the boys from the football team, and now they’re with us,” Corvetti said. “We all have lunch together, and we take the buses and follow each other together.”
The day begins early, with teams gathering before 6 a.m. at the Rockville Centre train station to board buses to Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood. From there, they walk to the start line, wait for their designated wave, and begin the 3.1-mile race through the tunnel and into Manhattan. Corvetti said most of the athletes run the 5k, but some will walk.
For senior soccer player Karter Kasschau, who has participated for three years, the day is about much more than physical endurance.
“It’s kind of surreal, because you’re seeing all these firefighters dressed up, and it just shows how hard-working they are,” Kasschau said. “It just reminds us of how we are as a soccer team, how we’re hard-working and how we are a team just like how they are.”
Kasschau said the experience has had a lasting impact on him, both as an athlete and as a person.
“I think it’s important for us to participate in because the Twin Towers and 9/11 (happened in) New York, and we’re a South Side soccer team based on Long Island,” he said. “So being so close to this experience, even though we weren’t born at the time, it explains the impact so much more and makes it so much more important for (us) to realize how big the day was for New Yorkers.”
The Tunnel to Towers 5K has grown from 1,500 participants in 2002 to become one of the most prominent runs in the country, with nearly 30,000 partcipants this year. Proceeds support the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’s programs, which benefit first responders and catastrophically injured veterans.
For Corvetti and his assistant coach, Chuck Phelan, the event continues to be one of the most meaningful parts of the season.
“We love doing it,” he said. “And at the end of it, when we’re getting off the train, (me and the assistant coach) just kind of hug each other and say, ‘What a great day.’ You see a lot of smiling faces. I think it really leaves an imprint with the kids.”
As the team tradition continues, South Side athletes say they hope the run remains part of their culture for years to come.
“Our chemistry as one, and how we all get up in the morning, it’s just very important for us,” said Kasschau. “It’s been a great thing I’ve done for the past three years.”
To learn more about the Tunnels to Towers Foundation, visit T2T.org.
