BETHANY — Last week, Dr. John Cunningham and his group of coaches finished up this year’s Bethany Soccer Camps on the campus of Bethany College, where Cunningham’s camp got its namesake. Putting young soccer players, from elementary schoolers to high school seniors, through the wringer, it was one more successful outing for a camp that stretches back longer than any of its campers have been alive- longer than many of their parents’ lives, too.

Last week was the conclusion of the 51st Bethany Soccer Camps, an impressive distinction for the camp, which started in 1974, and an impressive accomplishment for Cunningham, now 82 years old. Make no mistake though- he remembers its beginnings like it was yesterday.

“1974, it started with a team from Annandale, Virginia, which got in touch with me through one of my alumni guys, and they wanted to do a pre-training kind of thing before they went on to Toronto, Canada for a major tournament,” Cunningham, who then had been the men’s soccer coach at Bethany since the 1967 season, said. “So we accomplished that, and they wound up winning their tournament, and decided they wanted to come back the next year, but they’d like to do more. So, that’s kind of how it started.

“A guy by the name of David ‘Fuzzy’ Williams, and Paul Denfeld, both from Annandale, were in the first group to do this. So on every shirt that we now give away, we have Fuzzy as both the founder of Bethany soccer and Bethany Soccer Camps, as well as our little logo that we put on there.”

Cunningham and Williams ran the camp annually in the summers, and over the years, they adapted it to different challenges, and opportunities, that presented themselves.

“In 1981 Dr. [Todd] Bullard, the new president of Bethany College, had at that time indicated that he didn’t want to have sport programs under the college name, because he was concerned at that point with sport injuries and things like that,” Cunningham said. “So I was basically forced into not running it from the college, but running it as a small corporation.

“In hindsight, it’s the best thing that ever happened, because over the years, presidents and policies changed at every college, but I have done camps in Toronto; I have done camps in Tampa, Florida; and Orlando. So not only do we have the residential camp at Bethany, we also have an extension where we take the camp and our coaches and go out to various locations.”

Bethany Soccer Camps, which continued its residential camp in Bethany while also organizing ‘day camps’ in local areas like St. Clairsville and Magnolia, as well as farther-reaching areas, has since grown to take in teams from near and far.

“From 1974 to about 1980 it was a lot of the local teams- Brooke High School, Wheeling Park, Central, and so on, and then over a period of time, it’s gone away from that more so to where now we’re servicing more Pittsburgh, Ohio, some in Maryland, some Virginia,” Cunningham said “It’s been all over. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all 51 years. It’s been a great experience and lots and lots of still wonderful contacts of people that are soccer-related through Bethany Soccer Camps. It’s been rewarding from that standpoint.”

Rewarding for Cunningham, certainly, and, according to former campers like Wheeling University men’s soccer coach Brandon Regan and West Liberty men’s soccer coach Sean Regan, rewarding for the game of soccer in turn.

“He’s been part of my life since, forever, to be honest with you,” Brandon Regan said. “My dad [Jim Regan] worked for him, played for him, so we were always around the Bethany soccer community and Dr. JC was the main man.”

“Those three weeks of camps were the most fun I’d had. My dad was working with him as a coach and he brought us kids along to participate. Have some really good memories from those camps, I remember some really good coaches from those camps, and I became a goalkeeper- JC had a really good friend in Fuzzy Williams who ran the goalkeeper camp for a long time. He was my mentor as a player, and again when I got into coaching. I learned a lot not just about being a goal keeper, but being a professional, now being a college coach, from people in those camps.”

Cunningham won the admiration of many of his former campers and coaches, a number of whom went on to help grow the sport in their own way, like the Regans.

“At this point there are probably, I’d say, no less than 50 to 60 people that are now coaching that have, in fact, gone through the Bethany Soccer Camps as campers or whatever,” Cunningham said. “And we’ve had I think probably close to 15,000 campers to have gone through Bethany over that period of time.”

“JC has been a cornerstone of American soccer for well over 50 years,” Sean Regan wrote via email to The Intelligencer. “A true legend in the soccer camp world. JC has been a mentor for hundreds of Ohio Valley youth soccer players and to this day is an advocate of the ‘beautiful game.'”

The roots that Cunningham put down in 1974 have, in the 51 years since, branched out all across the Ohio Valley.

“We had a youth group that was basically age 8 through probably 10 and 11, 12, and then we had the junior high group separate, and then we had the senior high school boys and the senior high school girls,” Cunningham said, recounting camps from years past. “So we actually ran four weeks of camp back-to-back. Now, as I look back about that, I don’t know how the heck we did it, time-wise and everything else, but they were wonderful experiences.

“We were the forerunners to local soccer, there was very little soccer, particularly in Brooke County, and just starting in Ohio County with Jim Regan, who was one of my players, actually my first Canadian player, who started it there over in St. Clairsville. So many of the icons of the local soccer scene now- Joe Pepe from Brooke, Steve Kopcha from Central- these were all people who were either campers or worked for me or went to Bethany. And so my original goal and Fuzzy’s and the other’s was to provide a place where soccer would be properly developed and have the opportunity to grow. And it has sure done that.”

Cunningham, who has traveled across the United States as well as Europe, did not know of another camp continuously organized by the same people for as long as Bethany Soccer Camps has. His 51-year run may well be the longest.

“An individual running a camp for over 50 years is amazing,” Randy Shah, a former player at Bethany for Cunningham, and a coach at Bethany Soccer Camps for nine years, said. “Especially with a more niche sport like soccer where, soccer has had tremendous growth in the US, but thinking back 50 years ago, how many soccer players were there? This camp has educated kids in the sport, given them an opportunity to play and to build relationships through sports.”

“We have a wonderful group of alumni and former campers that come back every year and work the camp,” Cunningham said.

“It created this really competitive environment that you couldn’t really get anywhere else,” Brandon Regan, who attended Bethany Soccer Camps in the 90’s, said. “You were playing against teams you wouldn’t play usually. It became really a Mecca for high school soccer in the area.”

Playing collegiately at Slippery Rock, beginning the soccer program at Bethany where he coached from 1967 to 2001, winning the soccer national championship in 1994, and Cunningham’s 51-year-old Bethany Soccer Camps have amounted to a life dedicated to soccer. After this year, though, Cunningham may be ready to hand over the reins.

“This is probably the last year that I want to be the lead of all of it,” Cunningham said, noting that there were alumni who expressed interest in taking over organizing the camps.

If Cunningham is indeed riding off into the sunset, he’s left a lasting legacy on the pitch.

“Legendary is absolutely the word to describe him as an individual and as a leader for soccer,” Shah said. “To this day, Bethany is still recognized as maybe the smallest school to ever win a national championship in soccer. I mean at the time, I think we had maybe 600 students and we won the championship in ’94.”

“It’s been a wonderful, wonderful life experience,” Cunningham said. “And being able to add these camps to that experience, it was just a blessing for me and for so many others.”

“Looking back, those 51 years have been super, all from 1974 forward.”