Lightning hit football player Schaffner Noel in the chest as crowds scrambled from the field during a Wednesday night junior varsity game between Monarch and Pompano Beach High. Several people were injured and two students were hospitalized. Cheerleader Kristy Plaut was released Thursday, while football player Malcolm Sylvester remained at Broward General Medical Center's pediatric intensive care unit.

At the school Thursday, students gathered at a makeshift shrine to remember Schaffner, a shy teen whose friendly nature had just started to surface. He planned to become a computer technician.

Everyone who knew the Noel brothers said they were like twins. They shared a room, excelled in class, played high school football and were regulars at the Emmaus Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale. They dreamed of playing college football together someday.

"I had two sons and now I lost one of them," said his father, Julio Noel, who works as a cook at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood. He wept softly at his home in the 3700 block of Pebble Brook Court on Thursday.

Julio Noel was at work when he got a phone call about the lightning strike. He rushed to his son's side at Broward General in Fort Lauderdale. His son was already dead.

Schaffner's mother, Jeanne, was too distraught to talk about her boy. Rocking back and forth in a living room chair, she repeated over and over: "I have lost a son, I have lost a son, I have lost a son." Meanwhile, Julio Noel wondered how he would pay for his son's funeral; he has no insurance.

Stunned relatives and friends streamed through the Noels' home on Thursday, offering comfort. Rev. Emmanuel Cesar of Emmaus Baptist Church said the brothers had shared their football dreams with him earlier that week. He said they had planned to attend a youth rally in Pompano Beach this weekend.

Monarch High School officials sent a letter home to parents Thursday, along with a photocopied picture of Noel. Grief counselors would be available at the school as long as students needed to talk, according to the letter.

Most students left the campus in silence. They hugged each other on the school's sidewalk. Minutes after the school bell rang, rain poured from a lead-gray sky. Tyler Lee, 15, a sophomore, found shelter with his friends at a nearby apartment complex.

"I wish he was here right now," said Lee, who met Schaffner in middle school band class where the boys played tuba together. "When I heard he was gone, I lost it."

In the school's cafeteria Thursday, students hung posters where they wrote messages to Schaffner's family. "We want them to know that everyone cares," Lee said.

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