Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 9, 1992 TAG: 9202090103
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
STATE GAMES FACE CLOUDY FUTURE
It has been nine days since Virginia Amateur Sports came to an unfortunate bottom-line decision on the immediate future of the Commonwealth Games of Virginia.Since then, Doug Fonder and the board chairman of his former employer have traded opinions in print, while those who enjoyed the Olympic-style festival have tried to figure out what was so wrong that Fonder was dumped by an organization he created.
Fonder was more than VAS' executive director. He was its heart and soul. The swimming coach, who arrived in Roanoke in 1987, said he was going to produce a sports festival in the Roanoke Valley that would rival other state games. He raised the money, built a staff, coaxed oodles of volunteers into working hundreds of hours. It has been a great variety show.
Fonder did what he said he was going to do, although he and VAS seemed to be running the high hurdles. There was the Richmond-based Sports Virginia, running its own state games, with which to duel. There was the feds' takeover of title sponsor CorEast Savings Bank. There were state budget cuts that diminished VAS' funding.
On Jan. 31, Roanoke lawyer and board chairman Ken King, citing budget restraints, announced that VAS was switching to an all-volunteer management team. Fonder was the only VAS management. King knows the event won't work without a paid Games director. So, when a new one is hired, the VAS won't be run by all-volunteer management, will it?
The board was looking for a way to dump Fonder, and he gave it to them. In a Dec. 10 memo to King and the VAS executive board, Fonder reported the financial shortfall and presented five options to alleviate the dollar woes. The board took one of them, but not the one Fonder recommended, which was to cut his $48,000 salary to $39,000 and keep two other full-time staffers.
Fonder was effectively canned in an executive board meeting in King's office on Dec. 20, attended by King, Fonder, Virginia Foster, Bern Ewert and David Snyder. The executive committee apparently had plans to let Games director Bob Hartman become the VAS boss.
Fonder, who said he was out of the room during the executive session while personnel was being discussed, got wind of the board decision to remove him that day.
Then, a worried Hartman left VAS in early January for a sales job. King said he was told by Hartman that Fonder had recommended Hartman and VAS events director Gina Dunnavant "go find work elsewhere" because of the tight financial situation.
Fonder said that conversation took place Nov. 29. "They were loyal employees and I explained where we were, and I told them I'd understand if they looked for something else," he said.
King said he communicated the executive committee's recommendation for a volunteer management team on Jan. 2 to the entire board.
"What we did was not done in any back-door way," King said. "The decision was made from his own Dec. 10 memorandum. . . . It's a question of when an organization finds itself with a shortfall of funds - a serious shortfall - should it act?"
Fonder, who was president of the board then, said he received no notification of the executive committee's recommendation on Jan. 2. He said it wasn't until an early Jan. 31 meeting with King, before the board meeting in Charlottesville, that he was told of the change in his status.
Already, Hartman, who has been instrumental in acquiring sanctions for Commonwealth Games events from national governing bodies tied to the U.S. Olympic Committee, has resurfaced as a consultant to VAS, which certainly needs someone with local and national contacts simply to stage the Games.
Fonder put his personal stamp on the Commonwealth Games. His ideas were fresh, and his contacts will be what VAS misses most. Fonder knew whom to call for what, and when. While it's true that most of the VAS sports coordinators are superb and many ran their own shows, Fonder and his staff brought cohesiveness to the event. His openness with the media also grated on some board members.
Fonder's two years of success cast a huge shadow on future Games, the largest sports event in the state in terms of participants. History can't be changed, so the immediate concern is whether the Games will remain here, or will VAS either fail in its restructured state or sell out and combine forces with Richmond's Virginia State Games.
Having extensively covered two years of Games, the memories include discussions with more than a few athletes who were making their first visits to the Roanoke Valley. They wouldn't have driven down I-81 had it not been for the Games. "I never knew Roanoke was this nice a place," was the general tenor of their remarks.
Roanoke City contributed $30,000 to the 1990 and '91 Games. Before providing another cent, City Manager Bob Herbert should make sure the Games are going to stay here. If the decision is between Richmond and Roanoke, the matter usually becomes a capital idea.
King and the Richmond group talked about the future less than 48 hours after Fonder's demise. Millie West, vice chairman of the Governor's Commission on Fitness and Sports, which sanctions the "official" State Games, said VAS' post-Fonder performance will be watched closely. "If we could get Sports Virginia and VAS together, that would be wonderful," West said.
It also could be bad news for Roanoke.
VAS needs money, hard work and luck. The organization should fight to retain the Games here, to keep the National Congress of State Games sanction, to get more state funding and to run the event with the quality displayed in its short history.
Fonder wants to stay in Roanoke. The larger question is whether VAS does, and will.