DOTTY 2024 Awardee Karen Feuer: Public school principal Leads Downtown Soccer League

Don’t ask Karen Feuer for help unless you really want it—she’ll likely say yes and perform the task so well, and so enthusiastically, that one’s own efforts might seem inadequate by comparison. Feuer’s jovial ability to excel in two distinct public roles, one as principal of P.S. 110 elementary school on Delancey Street, and the other as director of the Manhattan Kickers Soccer Club, can serve as an inspiration to all civic-minded New Yorkers.

Her story begins in the Bronx, where she attended P.S. 82 and then Junior High School 121. When her parents could afford to do so, the family moved to Roslyn, Long Island, where Feuer attended high school. While the move to had its advantages, “I couldn’t wait to actually leave suburbia. It was definitely not a milieu I was used to...I ended up going to Pratt Institute for a year and then NYU.”

Although Feuer always wanted to teach, graduating in the midst of New York’s 1970s fiscal crisis and hiring freezes kept her from doing so.

“I did look for jobs outside the city,” Feuer said, “but somehow I just couldn’t leave New York, I loved it. So I took a different career path for quite some time until I circled back to education and went back for my master’s in education 25 years after I graduated as an undergraduate, which was a lot of fun.”

Feuer’s first classroom positions were in a familiar, but also vastly different place than where she’d grown up, as her first teaching jobs were in the South Bronx. Subsequently, she landed an assistant principal position on the Upper East Side. Two years later, she got the principal job at P.S. 110 on the Lower East Side. “It turned out to be a match,” Feuer said proudly, “And I’ve been here 16 years.”

The same talents that distinguished her as an educator also made Feuer an attractive candidate her second job—one that is totally unpaid, volunteer work—as director of Manhattan Kickers, the soccer club founded in 1975. Today, the Kickers have a variety of programs, from recreational co-ed teams up to traveling teams.

Interestingly, Feuer herself didn’t play organized sports, although she was athletic, participating in camp both as a camper and counselor; playing tennis, baseball, and running. “It wasn’t a soccer generation,” she said. “The first time I came face-to-face with soccer was with my own kids,” who were growing up in her long-time home of Stuy Town.

Feuer got involved with Manhattan Kickers when her son started to play. The league’s leaders were looking to step back and “indentified me as someone that could probably do this,” she said.

“I also ran one of the divisions—an all-girls division that was just starting out—so they could see what I brought to the table. They were ready to exit and — I have hard time saying no, which is a problem,” Feuer laughed.

Twenty years later, Feuer’s kids have aged out of the league, “but it’s so much fun, and what keeps me hooked is the program has definitely improved and we’re much more focused on player development and improving the quality of the program.”

“A lot of good things have developed,” Feuer continued. “But that’s not just attributable to me, everyone is a volunteer there — the volunteers are better now than they’ve ever been, let’s put it that way.”