Rudy! Rudy! Who the hell's Brian?

Chances are you can't name the head coach of Penn men's soccer. Rudy Fuller? Wrong.

Don't worry, even the team's media guide can't get it right.

Born Brian Fuller, the Quakers' primary clipboard-wielder has carried the moniker 'Rudy' Fuller since eighth grade.

"Mom and Dad still call me Brian," he noted.

Around the time a junior-high-school Fuller was on the Maryland-D.C. club circuit, the German national team had a prolific striker by the name of Rudi V”ller.

"There were three Brians on our team," Fuller said. "My coach was right off the boat from Germany, so one day he just called me 'Rudy' - half jokingly. One of the wiseguys on the team picked up on it and it just stuck. all through high school and college."

Although Fuller more closely resembles Notre Dame legend Daniel E. 'Rudy' Ruettiger than the tall, mustachioed, blond-mulleted V”ller, appearance and nickname might be all that the two have in common; Fuller is an only child who never played football.

Instead, Fuller's early athletic pedigree had nothing to do with football - European or American.

"Baseball was very big in my family," Fuller said. "I kind of broke the mold."

But by the time Fuller landed at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Maryland, he was exclusively soccer and exclusively 'Rudy.'

He continued his play at the collegiate level as a Georgetown Hoya. After his eligibility ran out, he made an unusually quick shift to coaching.

"I graduated on a Saturday and walked into the office on a Monday as an assistant coach [for Georgetown]," he said.

Five years later, it was a "no-brainer" for Fuller to apply for the Penn head coaching position; both schools were academically strong, urban and, at the time, non-scholarship institutions.

Fuller won the job to lead the Quakers at age 26 and won an Ivy title in just his fifth season, in 2002, something he calls the biggest thrill of his career.

Now, he lives two blocks west of campus with his wife, Kate, and three children. He walks to work most of the time, but doesn't hesitate to hop on his Vespa if he's pressed for time.

His sons play soccer in the fall and baseball in the spring, and the family is a fixture at home soccer games, with the kids idolizing their favorite Quakers.

"There's a little bit of hero worship going on there," Fuller said. "When [my kids] see them walking around campus or West Philadelphia, they immediately know who's who."

Whatever his first name, when the season reaches its end, Fuller may get the full "Rudy" treatment, Fightin' Irish style, if the squad carries him off on its shoulders to celebrate a return to Ivy supremacy.

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