A.C. Flora High School to Celebrate 50 Years of Soccer
April 20, 2015
COLUMBIA, SC – The history of soccer in Columbia — and at A.C. Flora High School — began with an unlikely trio: Dr. Warner Montgomery, A.C. Flora High School’s first soccer coach, a Turkish foreign exchange student and takraw, a game similar to soccer that is played in Thailand.
Flora will celebrate 50 years of soccer April 20 with a halftime ceremony during the boys game to honor Dr. Montgomery and his history-making players. The girls game against Heathwood starts at 5:30 p.m. and the boys soccer match with Cardinal Newman begins at 7 p.m. at Bolden Stadium.
Dr. Montgomery, co-owner of The Columbia Star, world traveler, and a long-time educator in Columbia, introduced soccer to the Columbia community in 1965. While working with the Peace Corps in Thailand in 1962, he learned takraw, a game the Thais use to warm-up for soccer matches. Takraw balls, which are made of dried reeds, are hit by players with their heads, shoulders, knees and feet to keep the ball in the air or to hit over a net. When Montgomery returned home, he resumed his teaching/coaching career at Flora and started Montgomery’s Takraw Club. Students’ excitement about the club and the relatively unknown sport of soccer persuaded the athletic director to create the school’s and Columbia’s very first soccer team. By chance, a foreign exchange student from Turkey arrived at Flora that year and became the unofficial player/coach. Since there were no other nearby high schools playing soccer, Montgomery’s team played an intermural team at Columbia Bible College and schools in North Carolina and Aiken. Soccer was born in Columbia.
Flora’s first soccer team had 26 players including Billy DuPre the first soccer-style kicker on the University of South Carolina’s football team. In the 1969 Peach Bowl, DuPre kicked a 37-yard field goal for USC’s only score against West Virginia. Former Flora player Harvey Helman has been active in soccer for over 40 years and is founder and past-president of the S. C. Adult Amateur Soccer Association. Don Belt, another member of the inaugural team, played on the early University of South Carolina soccer team and later became an award-winning National Geographic writer and editor. And the rest…as they say…is history with Flora enjoying 50 years of soccer and thereby paving the way for countless other teams in our district, city and state.
Media inquiries should be directed to the Richland One Office of Communications at 231-7504 or 231-7510.
