WORLD SPORTS SCENE / RANDY HARVEY : ’84 Olympic Flame Still Burns

Six days after the fires began burning in Los Angeles, our city’s legacy from the 1984 Summer Olympics was back at work.

It would have been sooner but Mayor Bradley had other priorities the day he was supposed to announce the start of the Amateur Athletic Foundation’s “Learn and Play Olympic Sports Program.”

Established with $93 million of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee’s surplus after the 1984 Games, the AAF has invested more than $40 million in community sports. That includes $400,000 for the new program involving 400,000 third, fourth and fifth graders in the L.A. Unified School District’s 420 elementary schools.

The “Play” portion of the program began last Tuesday at Hughes Junior High in Woodland Hills, where students from 13 schools gathered. Upon leaving their buses, most ran toward the tent that promised videos.

When they discovered, however, that the videos were not games but rather films of Olympians in action, they headed for the playground, where they received instruction in basketball, gymnastics, team handball and volleyball.

It was a scene that no doubt will be repeated each school day this month at Hughes with students from different schools.

Anita DeFrantz, AAF president, expressed concern that people in the neighborhood might complain about the noise. But after the riots, how could anyone complain about the sound of children playing?

In a commentary last week for USA Today, Harry Edwards, a sociologist at California, wrote that sports cannot play a role in healing the particular maladies from which our society suffers today.

Perhaps he is correct when referring to our dollar-dominated, big-time professional leagues and athletes. But sports at the “Learn and Play” level, or any other endeavor that brings people together from different communities in a positive manner, can serve to attack the root of the problem, which is the lack of respect we seem to have for each other.

“I’m not naive enough to believe that if you bring people together, they’ll stay together forever,” DeFrantz said. “But it’s a start.”

The AAF, with its priceless Olympic memorabilia and research library, is located in a restored mansion on Adams Boulevard, between Western and Crenshaw, an area that only a week ago resembled a war zone. Two security guards armed only with reason protected the building during the disturbances, informing crowds in the streets of the AAF’s function in the community and requesting that they keep moving.

“During the destruction of our neighborhood, it seemed as if healing was impossible,” DeFrantz said. “But when I look at these kids, the future, I know I have to work hard because it’s a bright future for them. I have the best job in the world.”

The “Learn” component of the AAF’s program also began last week in elementary classrooms, where teachers used Olympic-related curriculum to teach children geography, language arts, mathematics, physical education and social studies.

“We initially asked ourselves what we could do with the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona,” DeFrantz said. “There’s a whole group of kids who were born in ’84 or thereafter who didn’t experience the Olympics in Los Angeles.”

Judith Kieffer, the AAF’s program and grants director, said she would like to see the program continued at least through the 1996 Summer Olympics at Atlanta.

“With the Olympics coming back to the United States, we can reach a lot of students,” she said.

In Track & Field News’ cover story this month about the sudden dearth of young sprinters in the United States, this sad commentary is offered by Kye Courtney, coach at Hawthorne High:

“You want to know where our sprinters are? They’re in jail or they’re dead. If you don’t believe that, you’re naive.”

The article points out that the incarceration rate for black males is 3,370 per 100,000, compared to 455 per 100,000 for all Americans.

USA Basketball is expected to name the two remaining members of the men’s basketball team today at Springfield, Mass. The favorites are Clyde Drexler and Christian Laettner. Others who played last season in college, such as Shaquille O’Neal and Jim Jackson, might become late additions if injuries keep David Robinson and Larry Bird on the sidelines. NBA players who have been mentioned as potential alternates are Tim Hardaway and Joe Dumars.

USA Basketball wanted to replace retiring executive director Bill Wall with Tom Jernstedt, the NCAA’s associate executive director. He turned it down in favor of an NCAA promotion.

In making its recommendations for the replacement of Robert Helmick as one of the United States’ two International Olympic Committee members, the U.S. Olympic Committee sent an all- male, all-white list to IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch. Perhaps the nominating committee felt that it did not need to consider a minority since a black woman, DeFrantz, already sits on the IOC. But isn’t it true that the United States was represented for decades by two white men? According to a USOC press release, the nominating committee worked closely with DeFrantz. Not true. That is not to say the candidates on the USOC’s list are unworthy. Michael Lenard, an L.A. lawyer who serves as a USOC vice president, would be an excellent choice. Samaranch, of course, might have his own ideas. Former United Nations Ambassador Andrew Young of Atlanta is one of his personal favorites.

Notes

With the return of four members of the 1988 gold medal team--Steve Timmons, Bob Ctvrtlik, Jeff Stork and Craig Buck--the U.S. volleyball team opens World League play against Japan Saturday at the San Diego Sports Arena and Sunday at UC Irvine’s Bren Center. Japan will be the United States’ first-round opponent in the Summer Olympics. . . . The U.S. Water Polo team plays in the Alamo Cup June 5-7 against Canada, Italy and the Commonwealth of Independent States at El Toro High School, Corona Del Mar High and an as yet unnamed site in San Diego.

One of the annual highlights of figure skating’s off-season, the tour of Olympic and world champions, returns Sunday to the Forum. The only top names from Albertville who are missing are Midori Ito of Japan and Kurt Browning of Canada. Tickets went in a hurry. . . . Erika von Heiland of Anaheim and Joy Kitzmiller of Manhattan Beach earned Olympic berths for the U.S. badminton team in women’s singles. . . . Marjorie Gestring, 69, died on April 20 after an accident in her Hillsborough home. She was the youngest gold medalist in Olympic history, winning in springboard diving in 1936 at Berlin when she was 13. The family requested donations in her memory be sent to the U.S. Olympic Committee or Stanford University.