Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 1, 1994 TAG: 9402010050
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SCOTT BLANCHARD STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The deal between Del. Chip Woodrum, D-Roanoke, and Del. Glenn Croshaw, D-Virginia Beach, killed a bill that would have created a state board on physical fitness and allowed it to choose sites for the Virginia State Games, run by Richmond-based Sports Virginia and the Hampton Roads Sports Task Force.
The bill was passed by last year's General Assembly and signed into law by then-Gov. Douglas Wilder, but Woodrum had written in a clause that required the bill to be passed again this year.
The bill could have taken control of the Commonwealth Games from Virginia Amateur Sports, the Roanoke-based group that has put on the state's nationally sanctioned Games since 1990, and may have resulted in the event's departure from Roanoke. VAS also saw the bill as a state endorsement of its rival and lobbied against it.
Woodrum described his agreement with Croshaw as "kind of a non-aggression pact." Croshaw agreed to eliminate the bill if VAS-friendly legislators didn't oppose efforts by the Virginia State Games to secure state funding - as the Commonwealth Games have since 1989, the year before the first Games were held.
Each group has placed a $75,000 order with the state legislature. It would be the first time the Virginia State Games has received state funds. Woodrum said he's "reasonably optimistic" the request will be approved for both groups.
"If we have to, we'll vote for it," Woodrum said of the Virginia State Games' request. "We're not going out to be their lobbyist."
Woodrum was asked whether he thought the agreement amounted to the state financially endorsing the Virginia State Games, which VAS had tried to discredit for the past several years.
"The purpose was to make sure the bill did not go forward," he said. "Did we confer somehow a back-door legitimacy on the venture of these other games? I can't answer that.
"I'm interested in repelling their assaults. I'm not interested in doing them injury."
VAS and Sports Virginia, which last year joined with the Hampton Roads group to rotate its event between Richmond and Tidewater, have squabbled with each other for years over issues such as trademarks and who has the real state games in Virginia.
"It's a big relief," VAS executive director Pete Lampman said. "There's one less issue and concern out there to deal with."
Sports Virginia president Dick Hollander said Croshaw wasn't representing his group in the talks but said he has "no problem with the compromise."
"There is room for a Virginia State Games and a Commonwealth Games side by side," Hollander said.
Hollander wanted a state board to run one version of a state games that would rotate from site to site throughout the state. Lampman said that VAS, sanctioned by the National Congress of State Games, should not give up control of the Commonwealth Games. VAS favors keeping the event in Roanoke, perhaps with qualifying events at various sites in Virginia.
Lampman said he'll approach the Hampton Roads group - and by extension Hollander's group - with the latter scenario. Hollander said as long as VAS is running it, there will be no deal.
A packet VAS sent to legislators on Woodrum's subcommittee on general laws claimed that since 1990, 23,377 athletes have participated in the Games and that the event has brought $14.42 million into the Roanoke Valley economy.
Lampman said VAS hopes the Commonwealth Games' national sanction and its broader base of athletes helps it fend off any growth by the Virginia State Games. Whether it helps the Commonwealth Games shed its identity crisis as one of two events in the state remains to be seen.
"It's still going to be an issue," Lampman said. "It's not going to be as big an issue as it was in the past."
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB