Let the games end

SYRACUSE, N.Y. —  Mike Tyson boxed. Christian Laettner and Chris Mullin played hoops. So did Sue Bird. And Blaise Bryant won a gold medal.

Back in 2000, when he was just 8 years old, Bryant and his older sister Joy won their bobsled division -- a victory made even sweeter by the fact that Blaise is blind.

“He was glowing,” his father, Daniel Bryant, remembers. “It gave him a big push.”

It all happened at New York’s Empire State Games, founded in 1978 as the first Olympic-style state sports festival and now one of 38 across the country.

Now, however, New York’s summer games have been suspended for a year because of the state’s dire financial situation.

Gov. David Paterson said there wasn’t any room in the new $131-billion state budget -- up 8.7% from last year -- to continue funding the games.

“It’s ridiculous,” Blaise Bryant said. “It makes no sense.”

The cut for the sports program came at the same time the governor was proposing an obesity tax on sugary drinks. The state legislature killed that idea -- Paterson said it served the purpose of raising awareness of childhood obesity -- and never restored funding for the games.

The Empire State Games operate on an annual budget of around $3 million, with $1.7 million coming from the state, according to executive director Fred Smith.

“The economic gain for the host communities far outweighs the state investment, not to mention the positive lifestyle message,” said Barclay Kruse, president of the National Congress of State Games. “Sports tourism has gotten very big. The thing a lot of people don’t realize is, at the Empire State Games and all state games around the country, the majority of our athletes are youth. The culture is youth-oriented. It’s an important investment a state makes in a future generation. It’s a psychological investment in the youth of your state.”

The state parks department, which oversees the Empire State Games, originally tried a different approach in an attempt to keep the event going. It announced in January that participation fees would be charged for the first time -- $285 for the summer games and up to $100 for the winter games. But that didn’t work out.

“I think it’s a disaster,” said Ray Nash, a longtime coach and now president of Bishop Ford High School in Brooklyn. “The Empire State Games were the most exciting amateur events in my 45-year athletic career. It’s such a little amount of money. The state is being penny-wise and pound-foolish. It’s helped thousands and thousands of kids. There is incredible history.”

The games were started by former New York Gov. Hugh Carey. The idea was to emulate the Olympics, complete with tryouts. The all-amateur event featured six competing regions, and athletes within each region were broken down into three separate divisions -- scholastic, open and masters. The summer games had 28 events, including track and field, basketball, baseball, cycling, swimming and volleyball.

Athletes who qualified to participate in the summer games were housed for free and fed on a college campus, a setting similar to an Olympic village. Each competitor received a uniform, and medals were distributed to the top three finishers in each event.

In the inaugural year, 4,500 athletes paraded into old Archbold Stadium on the Syracuse University campus and ignited the torch for the first competition. It was a spark to the amateur sports movement in the United States.

Typically for New York, its version was among the most extravagant of the state games.

“No other state does it quite like that,” Kruse said. “States didn’t want tryouts, uniforms, housing and meals. They debated whether it was OK to run it a different way. Eventually, states needed to do it the way they could. Most are run by pay.”

Kruse said only a handful of programs receive a direct state contribution and most require a minimal registration fee. For example, the fee in Minnesota for track and field is $25.

According to Kruse, the majority of programs nationwide are feeling financial stress from a loss of sponsorships and potentially fewer athletes. Yet he remained optimistic.

“Games boards and organizers are masters of creative programming and planning, and they’re extremely dedicated,” Kruse said. “Everybody’s working hard to ride this out and come out stronger when it’s done.”

Despite the current economic distress, there’s been a glimmer of hope -- Kruse said Massachusetts reported record participation in its winter program.

“It’ll be interesting to see how it comes out,” he said. “Usually, the games are a close-to-home event and are very, very affordable. We might be able to ride this out even better and get a bump in athlete participation.”

That won’t happen this summer in New York state.

Originally the summer games, which hopscotch around the state, were to be held in late July at venues throughout the Hudson Valley, to be linked to celebrations marking the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s voyage to America. But the organizing committee pulled out after the fee was announced.

“The Hudson River Valley Local Organizing Committee arrived at this regrettable decision based on an overwhelming feeling that the participation fee violates the spirit of the games,” Steven Lant, the group’s chairman, wrote in a statement to the parks department.

With time running out, the parks department last week suspended the summer games when an alternate host couldn’t be found.

“It’s disappointing to see,” said longtime Syracuse basketball Coach Jim Boeheim, who watched Dwayne “Pearl” Washington, one of the Orange’s best-known stars, compete more than two decades ago. “We’ve always gone to the Empire State Games. It’s a great, great event.”

Kruse said the Empire State Games are in a difficult situation because the model has been so successful.

“It’s a marquee program. It’s been well-run, has quality programming for the participants,” he said. “Now that model puts them at risk. The event was very, very successful and was a big deal for the host cities. When Syracuse was hosting, local politicians were dead-set against making those changes (charging fees). They feared those changes.”

New York will hold scaled-back versions of the Empire State Senior Games -- which already charge a small fee -- and the Games for the Physically Challenged. Games director Smith said he was optimistic the 2010 summer games would be held as planned in Buffalo.

“Nobody likes the situation, but continuing the senior games and the Games for the Physically Challenged will keep the name out there,” Smith said, adding that he wanted to get away from the $285 fee. “How it (the cancellation) will affect it in the long run, I don’t know.”

It’s the short run that worries Louis Vazquez the most.

“I think it’s a major effect,” said Vazquez, the games’ regional director for New York City. “It’s going to take a lot of work to get coaches back into it. To cancel the whole program is kind of shocking. The kids suffer.”