grammar - When is it okay to use あります with a living subject?

When learning Japanese everyone's taught いる is for a living thing and ある is for non-living things. However, I recently saw the following sentence ...

あと、サッカー選手でもあります。

... which ends in ある / あります for a living subject, assuming were not talking about a dead soccer player!

Now the following make uses of ある sense to me:

〜である
〜がある
〜にある

But in my mind these adhere to the living/dead rule learned in those first Nihongo classes all those years ago.

So where does もあります fit in? How should I think of this in English (equivalent phrase)?

Answer

で（は）あります is the expanded form of です. So when you say 「XはYです」, it is really 「XはYで（は）あります」. From this, you can easily see the negative form (ではありません). And also でもあります as in your example. でもあります means "is also".

あの人はサラリーマンです。あと、サッカー選手でもあります。　→　That guy is a business worker (salary man). He is also a soccer player.

That's the reasoning as to why it's あります in this situation. As to why です is a contraction of で（は）あります and not で（は）います, I'm not sure.