St. Bernard's Keidoe Pour during a game against Saint Paul Academy in Saint Paul, Minn. Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007. (Brandi Jade Thomas,Pioneer Press) (Brandi Jade Thomas)

Keido Pour watches his carefree St. Bernard's High School teammates run around the soccer field and marvels at how they relish playing a sport that means everything to him.

Soccer offers the opportunity of a college education and the promise of a better life for him and his relatives, who settled in the Twin Cities after being driven from their war-torn homeland of Liberia.

That inner drive and fierce competitiveness, along with superior vision and dribbling, are what make Pour the best in the metro area and among the elite high school soccer players in Minnesota.

Make no mistake, the senior striker loves to play. His charismatic leadership has transformed the Bulldogs from a soccer afterthought to postseason contenders. Yet there is much more at stake whenever Pour takes the field.

"To me, soccer is life. It's what I want to do," he said last week, sitting at the rickety kitchen table in his grandparents' house in Brooklyn Park. "Soccer is where I can do things that can help me go to school and make something for myself.

"I have fun playing. But I want to win. And I need to get better."

Pour is pondering scholarship offers from several midlevel Division I colleges and dreams of playing professionally in the United States.

He already is on the path to greatness, having won a Class AA state championship as an eighth-grader at Robbinsdale Armstrong before transferring to St. Bernard's. He earned all-state honors last year after leading the Bulldogs to the Section 3A semifinals.

Pour is having a monster senior season as the Bulldogs prepare to open the playoffs on Saturday. He had three goals and two assists in St. Bernard's regular-season finale Monday, a 6-2 victory over Concordia Academy of Roseville, giving him 37 goals and 18 assists in 14 games and leading the Bulldogs to a school-record 14-4 record.

"He's having one of those years where you look back on it and say, 'Wow, do you remember when?,' " Bulldogs coach Rob Carpentier said.

Pour lives with his maternal grandparents, Abdoulaye and Esther Bruce Touré, who have raised Keido and his two siblings.

The family has lived in four countries in the past 17 years because civil war ravaged Liberia from 1990-2003. The violence left their native city of Monrovia, the capital on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, without running water and electricity, and rife with disease and corruption.

Twice, the Tourés fled Liberia for safe havens in neighboring African countries, first to a refugee camp in Guinea and later to Ghana.

Fleeing your homeland with only handfuls of possessions is impossible to reconcile unless the alternative is rebel soldiers pillaging your home, executing your neighbors and conscripting your children for military duty.

"If you're living somewhere, not in peace, you have to leave that area," Esther Touré said. "In Ghana, we could sleep in peace. There was no harassment, no attacks every day. No suffering."

Pour's father, Roland, works in information technology for Northwest Airlines, having immigrated to Minnesota about 10 years ago. He helped the family settle in the Twin Cities in 1998, when Pour was 7. His mother remains in Liberia.

The chaos meant he couldn't attend school until fifth grade. He grew up speaking English, albeit a rougher Liberian version, and Pour struggled to catch up with his American peers while adjusting to life in a new country.

"I didn't get that much of a chance to go to school when I was young. It's still hard sometimes. But I have to keep working at it," he said.

Carpentier, a social studies teacher at St. Bernard's, spends three or four days a week tutoring Pour, trying to get his grades to comply with NCAA standards. Pour has scholarship offers from Marquette, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Drexel University in Philadelphia and the University of Vermont.

"My family can't afford to send me to college, so a soccer scholarship is an opportunity I can't afford to lose," Pour said.

Keido has a younger sister, Patience, 15, a sophomore at Robbinsdale Armstrong, and brother, Handful, 14. The family lives modestly in a three-bedroom rambler, which has housed up to 12 relatives at once as other cousins, aunts and uncles have immigrated to the United States.

Keido and his siblings are U.S. citizens because their father was naturalized. Abdoulaye, 54, and Esther, 49, have green cards allowing them to work and live in the country.

She works part time at a nursing home after being laid off last year from her full-time job at a mattress factory. Abdoulaye, a former immigration officer at the Monrovia airport, is a laborer for a Minneapolis pallet supplier.

"In America, it all depends on having a good job," Esther said. "It's all about working, making sure you get something to rely on."

She also knows having a strong work ethic is only half the battle without an education.

"In America, without an education, you won't really get what you want. You have to go to college when the opportunity comes. You have to learn something to better you and your family tomorrow."

Pour started playing soccer when he was 7 years old, though his athletic destiny seemed tied to basketball, where he also thrived at Robbinsdale Armstrong as a shifty point guard. But he broke his ankle playing soccer as a sophomore in the fall of 2005, an injury that derailed his basketball career and changed his life.

At the time, his grandparents did not have medical insurance. Pour's medical expenses ended up totaling $34,000, according to Esther Touré.

Because Abdoulaye had signed a waiver absolving Robbinsdale Armstrong of liability for medical expenses, the school was not obligated to help the family pay for Pour's medical bills, said activities director Patty Weldon.

The dispute further soured Pour's feelings about Robbinsdale Armstrong. He already believed students there recognized him as an African immigrant and soccer player rather than a classmate. He also found it difficult in large classes to receive one-on-one instruction he craved from teachers.

A cousin attending St. Bernard's invited him to visit the 200-student private school in January 2006. Pour jumped at the chance to transfer even though it meant leaving a strong soccer program and required him to sit out half of his junior season with the Bulldogs last fall.

He has no regrets.

"It's been wonderful. Great people. Great teachers. The kids, it's just awesome. That's always what I wanted to be a part of," he said. "Somewhere I could be accepted for who I am. Not just looking at me as a soccer player. At St. Bernard's, I get that."

Brian Murphy can be reached at brianmurphy@pioneerpress.com.