Camden to celebrate undefeated 1964 state champions

If you want to see one of the best high school football teams ever assembled in South Carolina, head to Zemp Stadium in Camden on Friday night.

The 1964 state championship Camden Bulldogs team will celebrate its 50-year reunion of a magical season. More than 20 formers players are expected to gather for a pregame barbeque and social before being recognized at halftime of the contest with Dreher.

“We’ve had a good time tracking everybody down and are expecting a good turnout as far as guys coming back,” star quarterback on that team and former Camden coach Billy Ammons said. “Fifty years is a pretty big milestone. We’re all looking forward to it, and it’s going to be fun.”

The stories being told might get embelished with each gathering but one thing is for certain – this group can stake a claim to being the greatest South Carolina high school team of all time.

Expectations were high coming into the 1964 season despite the fact Camden stumbled to a 3-8 record in coach Wallace “Red” Lynch’s first season in 1963. Six of the eight losses were by a touchdown or less and the most lopsided score was a 22-7 loss to Orangeburg in the final game.

But the 1964 team steamrolled nearly everyone. The closest victory was a 7-0 win against Eau Claire in week nine. They finished with a 13-0 record that culminated in a 26-0 state championship victory against highly touted Easley on Thanksgiving Day. The most impressive statistic about the group of 28 players – they allowed six points all season en route to the school’s sixth state championship.

The 1963 team had three or four seniors, so the core of 18 or 19 juniors were returning in 1964. Lynch was the first coach to introduce weight training, and that seemed to pay huge dividends.

Buster Beckham, an offensive and defensive end on that team and later long-time radio host of Camden football, said the coaching and regimen, along with the returning players, were the foundation of the success.

“The nucleus of the previous team was returning, and you added the weight training to everything else we were doing,” he said. “It was a challenging weight class that I feel, for certain, made us better.”

Everything wasn’t smooth sailing. The rigors of practice proved too intense for some. Lynch took nearly 50 players to camp in the preseason, and about 30 remained when the team returned to Camden.

“Red believed in physical practices,” Beckham said. “The practices were tougher than the games. We did head-on tackling and all that stuff.”

In addition to the physical nature of practices and weight training, Ammons – who coached Camden from 1972-1997 and won a state championship in 1990 – said Lynch introduced a stunting, slanting style of play on defense. Teams had a hard time adjusting to what Camden was doing.

“Our coaches might have been a little bit ahead of the game,” Ammons said. “Instead of sitting in a base defense, we were doing a lot of slanting with the linemen upfront, which at that time wasn’t seen that much. We weren’t a big, physical team but used our quickness to our advantage. We confused the offenses with our slants and stunts upfront.”

But the long, physical practices are what everyone remembers the most.

“It was a hard-nosed, tough practice,” Ammons said. “If you’ve seen the movie the Junction Boys, that was us in a high school version. It was brutal but we turned into a very good team and, obviously, a very good defensive team in particular. Our average practice was probably two and half hours and there was hitting the whole time.”

Bob Clyburn was an underclassman reserve on that team. He later served in Vietnam and received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. He said what he learned during that summer and fall was more intense that what he faced in basic training or in Vietnam.

“I can honestly tell you what that man instilled in me then saved my life,” Clyburn said. “When I went to Parris Island, anything they did to us paled in comparison to what we had to go through.”

The team that remained for the start of the season was about to begin a journey they will remember a lifetime.

The run started with a 25-0 win against Winnsboro. In the second game, Sumter scored twice but both were called back by penalties in the 12-0 win. As the wins mounted – and the shutout streak reached into the playoffs – the players began to realize they were a part of something special.

The shutout streak ended in the Lower State final against Stall, but the Bulldogs won 30-6 to advance to the state title game.

“The emphasis was more on winning than having a shutout streak,” Beckham said. “Nobody said that was a goal, and it was almost a relief when it ended. I think that got us refocused on the following week.”

When the season ended with the win against Easley, Camden had outscored the opposition 314-6. Looking back on that feat 50 years later, Ammons said it’s almost surreal he lived through that special season.

“At the time, you really don’t think about it,” Ammons said. “It was almost like that is what we were expected to do. But as time goes on and you can reflect back on what happened, it’s an unbelievable achievement that I don’t think you’ll ever see anybody duplicate.”

This story was originally published October 16, 2014 at 10:28 PM with the headline "Camden to celebrate undefeated 1964 state champions."