Shamila's goal: she survived the brutal rule of the Taliban to become a star of Afghanistan's women's soccer team. Now, 19-year-old Shamila Kohestani is a high school student in New Jersey, focused on going to college in the U.S.

• Author: Drape, Joe
• Position: NATIONAL

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Some of Shamila Kohestani's classmates at Blair Academy know that she's the captain of Afghanistan's national women's soccer team. Some students are aware that she is Muslim. But most know Shamila only as the young woman who is eager to stock her iPod with any music they recommend.

When you have been deprived of school and music from age 8 to 13, as Shamila was while growing up in Afghanistan under the harsh rule of the Taliban, this school in northwest New Jersey is as perfect a place as exists on earth.

Shamila, 19, became one of the 440 students at this boarding school last October. It was soccer that brought her here, but that has taken a backseat as she tries to expand her English and make up for five years without an education.

Shamila's list of words to look up grows exponentially by the hour. In a recent world religions class, the teacher writes "absolutist vs. liberal" on the blackboard and asks the students to name the traits of religions that span both spectrums. Shamila raises her hand and speaks from experience: "The Taliban were fundamentalists."

The Taliban, a radical Muslim group, ruled Afghanistan for five years with a brutally strict version of Islam. In November 2001, in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States and its allies ousted the Taliban, which had given refuge to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

BANNED FROM SCHOOL

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, Shamila and her six sisters were virtually confined to their small home in Kabul, the capital. Girls were not allowed to attend school or work, much less play sports. When they went outside, they had to be covered in a burqa (a tentlike head-to-toe cloak). Once, Shamila recalls, she was beaten by the authorities for not wearing her burqa correctly. But in defiance of the Taliban laws and at great risk to themselves, Shamila's family sought out underground schools and traded books among friends.

Shamila's first exposure to soccer came three years after the Taliban were removed from power. She was one of eight girls who came to the U.S. to learn soccer as part of a program started by an Afghan immigrant to the U.S. In the summer of 2006, Shamila came back to the U.S. to participate in a sports leadership program in New Jersey. There, Shamila's energy and love of the game caught the attention of a teacher at Blair, who asked the school to find scholarship money so Shamila could attend Blair for a year.

LOST TIME

As an athlete in...