The Living Dead, a team of legends

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November 11, 2005

By Cindy Thompson

Kneeling (l–r) Harvey Helman, Andy Marion, Dave Kleinfelder, Val Stieglitz, Mike Huhns, Mac Bigby, Robbie McClam, Sammy Nasrollahi. Standing (l–r) Juan Roncancio, Fred Myhrer, Bourne Joye, Joe Kyle, Bob Olson, Tom Wallace, Dow Bailey, Dave Bannen. Missing: Dan Harrell
Kneeling (l–r) Harvey Helman, Andy Marion, Dave Kleinfelder, Val Stieglitz, Mike Huhns, Mac Bigby, Robbie McClam, Sammy Nasrollahi. Standing (l–r) Juan Roncancio, Fred Myhrer, Bourne Joye, Joe Kyle, Bob Olson, Tom Wallace, Dow Bailey, Dave Bannen. Missing: Dan Harrell
The Living Dead soccer team is gaining legendary status within the SC Amateur Soccer Association (SCASA). A few Living Dead members played a key role in bringing the sport to SC in the 1960s, and today members are leading the charge to create new teams for the 35 and older age group.

The SCASA, 1,000 players strong and growing, is rapidly gaining momentum in the 35 and older age group. Harvey Helman and Michael Huhns, members of The Living Dead 11v11 soccer team, are helping the SCASA set up new teams specifically for this segment.

“We’re bringing soccer players out of retirement with our over–35 group,” Helman said.

“With the average age above 45, The Living Dead ought to be sponsored by ibuprofen and a few local orthopedists,” Huhns joked, although he played with the Atlanta over–55 team, which won the national championship in their age division.

“The new over–35 league, for the first time, will enable the players from the The Living Dead to compete against players closer to their age,” Huhns said.

Helman, now 56, has been involved in the SC Amateur Soccer Association since its inception. As captain of The Living Dead, the team competed for the US National Championship in the over–50 division in 2005. In addition, he was one of the first athletes in the state to play on an official school soccer team.

Helman recalled first learning to play soccer in high school under coach Warner Montgomery in the mid–60s.

Montgomery learned about soccer as a member of the Peace Corps in the early 1960s. In 1964, while coaching at AC Flora, Montgomery taught Helman and other students the basics of soccer using a wicker ball he brought back from Thailand, where the game of Takrow is popular. The small group of soccer enthusiasts organized the Takrow Club.

A young exchange student from Turkey, Ismet Babaoglu, came on the scene at that time. Eighteen–year-old Babaoglu, who was an avid soccer player in Turkey, helped Montgomery teach Takrow Club members the basics of soccer. The Takrow Club soon morphed into SC’s first soccer club.

“There were no soccer teams in SC in 1964,” Montgomery underscored. “We had to look around for people to play on the first teams. And because there were no soccer teams at the time, we had to build the first soccer goals.”

“The Richland One Athletic Director during that time was Charlie Stuart,” Montgomery recalled. “Charlie got the dimensions of a soccer goal, and the first high school soccer goals were then welded. Then we attached hand-sewn nets to the goal.”

Stuart came out and watched the games and also talked to other schools in Richland School District One about starting up their own teams, he added.

“The soccer idea was spreading,” he said. During the first years of soccer in SC, teams were formed in Richland School District One, Columbia Bible College, as well as in private schools in Augusta, Savannah, Charleston, and Charlotte.

Montgomery led Helman and other young players during 1964 and 65, the state’s first official soccer season. By the second season, AC Flora played teams from Aiken High, Sumter High, Port–Gaud in Charleston, Charlotte Country Day, Augusta Prep, Ben Lippen in Asheville, a team from Jacksonville, Fl, Columbia Bible College, and a Lower Richland team, started by former teammate Jimmy Morgan.

“AC Flora didn’t win many games in the beginning, but we won our first trophy in 1966,” Montgomery said.

At the onset, football coaches opposed the idea of soccer teams in high schools, until they realized that soccer kickers were valuable to the football teams, Montgomery explained. AC Flora graduate, Billy DuPree, was the first person to play both football and soccer in a SC public school.

Following suit, the YMCA organized a soccer league as well.

After college, Helman remembers traveling across the state and the Southeast to play a handful of amateur soccer teams that existed during those years.

Today, participation in amateur soccer has dramatically increased in all age groups, especially in the women’s division.

Some of the athletes who first played organized soccer in the state are now resurfacing through teams like The Living Dead. In fact, The Living Dead has become a symbol of how soccer began in the state and is now escalating in popularity.

Helman, Huhns, Montgomery, and other soccer legends are now riding the waves of success as soccer continues to take hold across South Carolina.

SCASA representative Danielle Willis-St. Marie noted that about half of the 11v11 soccer team members are 35 and older, which set the stage for the new age division. Helman and Huhns continue to draft athletes in the division.

For more information, contact the Central League of the SCASA at columbiascsoccer.org. The Central League SCASA is a not-for-profit organization and member of the US Amateur Soccer Association.

Many thanks to Harvey Helman, Michael Huhns, and Warner Montgomery, who paved the way for soccer in SC and graciously contributed to this story.