Olympics Fund Grant Goes to Balboa Stadium

Nearly $1.8 million in grants from the 1984 Olympics surplus were approved Monday by the Amateur Athletic Foundation for youth sports projects in Southern California, including $116,667 to renovate the track at Balboa Stadium in San Diego and $500,000 for a Boy Scout program in San Pedro.

The San Diego grant was made on a “challenge basis,” to be distributed only when a local group, the Friends of Balboa Stadium, raises the rest of the $350,000 needed for the project. The City of San Diego owns the 4,000-seat stadium, which will used by professional and amateur track clubs, although local high schools and community colleges will have first priority.

The initial request submitted by the group and cleared by the San Diego City Council asked for $175,000 but there was no explanation from the foundation why the lower amount was authorized. George Loveland, director of the San Diego Park and Recreation Board, said that the city studied the request submitted by the Friends of Balboa Stadium and had recommended to the foundation two weeks ago that the money be granted.

Confident of Success

“Although this is only about one-third of the funds needed to renovate the track, I really feel that at this point the group has the ability to raise the rest of the money needed to rebuild the track,” Loveland said.

Ocean Beach attorney David Pain, spokesman for the Friends of Balboa Stadium, said that “as far as I’m concerned, I’ve raised the rest of the money” needed to repair the track. Pain said he has commitments for $78,000 each from the San Diego Unified School District and the Community College Board of Trustees.

Pain said that the City Council’s Public Facilities and Recreation Committee has already promised him $50,000 and has indicated a willingness to raise that figure to $78,000 to match the contributions from the two school agencies.

Scotty Harris, director of athletics at San Diego High School, said the money will be used to install a polyurethane track at the stadium. Harris said that the new track will be a “first-class Olympic track like the kind they have at the Los Angeles Olympic Coliseum.”

Similarly, the foundation board made a “challenge” grant of $250,000 to the Hollenbeck Police Business Council in East Los Angeles for expansion of the Hollenbeck Youth Center and establishment of a regional gymnastics center. The council must raise another $250,000 for the project before the foundation will award its grant.

The $500,000 for a waterfront youth sports program to operate in conjunction with the Boy Scouts camp and conference center at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro was conditioned only on final approval of the Scouts’ plans, at which time the foundation board said the grant could be as high as $550,000.

The rest of a total of 29 grants, many of which were quite small, were made unconditionally.

Foundation President Stanton Wheeler said the challenge grants are designed to encourage community groups to help themselves. He said that in the years ahead he expects many of the more sizable grants of the surplus Olympic funds to be made on that basis. The foundation expects to make about $5.5 million in grants in each of its first two years in existence.

$90-Million Total

The foundation eventually will control a capital sum of about $90 million, but, in a surprise announcement, Paul Ziffren, the board chairman, disclosed that, contrary to indications at the beginning of February, the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee has not yet made a new distribution of money and is holding more than $100 million in its own accounts.

This means that the foundation and the United States Olympic Committee--another major beneficiary of Olympic surplus--each has received as yet only a $50-million distribution. Ziffren ascribed the new delay to technicalities that he did not discuss in detail. Wheeler pointed out that Monday’s grants extend the foundation into other parts of Southern California, with some money going not only to Los Angeles and San Diego counties, but also to Ventura, Orange, Santa Barbara and Riverside counties. This trend will continue, the foundation president said.

These grants were also approved:

- $100,000 to the Constitutional Rights Foundation for a sports and law program in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Designed to be offered initially to about 420 students in two junior high schools, the course will examine such topics as sports contracts, recruiting violations and violence in sports. A similar program was given high ratings in St. Louis.

- $25,047 to the Volunteers of America of Los Angeles for a seminar on jobs having to do with sports. A three-day workshop, followed by meetings one Saturday a month for 10 months, will involve about 100 high school juniors and seniors.

- $46,308 for the establishment of a throwing center for hammer, discus, javelin and shot at West Los Angeles College. The center will be under the direction of former Olympic gold medalist Hal Connolly.

- $175,400 for the first year of a planned two-year pilot YMCA team sports program at Y facilities in the Crenshaw District, East Los Angeles, Hollywood and Montebello. Teams will be organized in basketball, volleyball, swimming and a minor sport yet to be designated.

- $51,000 to the Southern California Badminton Assn. for organization of five to seven badminton playing centers, including at least three in Los Angeles inner-city areas, one in the Riverside or Claremont area, one in Orange County and possibly others in Altadena and the San Fernando Valley.

- $201,200 to the Boys Club of America/Pacific Region for team handball, mini-handball and mini-soccer facilities at 30 different boys and girls clubs in Southern California. Mini-facilities are sports played on smaller fields with fewer players.

- $100,000 to the Long Beach Rowing Assn. for equipment and other support for an instructional and competitive program for high school-age youths from throughout the Los Angeles Basin.

- $20,500 to the Ventura Youth Sports Assn., to support baseball and soccer programs in the Saticoy area of Ventura.

- $12,346 to the Ventura Department of Parks and Recreation for a summer basketball camp and winter league play for 250 youngsters in a low-income area along Ventura Avenue.

- $15,000 to the Ladera Little League in the Inglewood area to develop a girls softball league involving 312 girls.

- $10,200 to the First Christian Church of Bell for development of community sports leagues in basketball and volleyball. The leagues will be open to all youngsters regardless of church membership.

- $14,758 to the Holy Cross Young Center, serving a South-Central Los Angeles area bounded by Martin Luther King Boulevard on the north, Central Avenue on the east, Slauson Avenue on the south and Hoover Avenue on the west, for creation of co-ed summer volleyball leagues for 275 to 300 youngsters.

- $33,865 to a group known as the Management Team to operate two one-day football skills clinics, including discussion sessions with Los Angeles Raider players, for 1,500 to 2,000 high school sophomores and juniors at Tom Bradley Field at Birmingham High School in the San Fernando Valley.

- $53,000 to the National Foundation of Wheelchair Tennis to create three new one-week sports camps for wheelchair-bound youths at the University of California, Santa Barbara; California State University, Northridge; and California State University, Dominguez Hills, and to continue existing programs at Santa Ana, Fountain Valley, Placentia and Dana Point in Orange County.

- $18,628 to the Opportunities Industrialization Center/CME churches for development of volleyball leagues involving 200 to 250 youngsters in Riverside.