FEATURE: Remembering Soccer America founder Clay Berling

I think of Clay Berling, who passed away on Thursday at the age of 86, every morning when I look out the window of our house at the Albany Methodist Church across the street.

I don't exactly know if he worked there on the very first issues of Soccer America -- at first Soccer West -- published in 1971 but for a time he used the Sunday school classroom of the church to put out the magazine.

I can't imagine how Clay could have done it in the early 1970s. He was taking a sport no one knew anything about and bringing it to life. There was no Internet to look things up. And nothing to look up since no one covered soccer.