USA City Games channels the spirit of the Watts Summer Games

That first summer, only 150 or so kids showed up at Locke High for a weekend of running track and playing basketball and volleyball.

The 1968 Watts Summer Games represented an experiment by civic leaders who wondered if sports might heal some of the wounds lingering from the riots of 1965.

As an early program for the competition stated, the two-day event was “born out of chaos and strife, conceived by men who believe in the promise of youth. . . .”

Over the next four decades, the games would grow to feature more than 12,000 athletes in dozens of sports each June. Teams converged from across Southern California for what ranked among the largest high school competitions in the nation.

A sluggish economy brought the whole thing to an end after 2013 — the money ran out — but memories of the Watts Summer Games have remained vibrant enough to spark a potential comeback.

On Saturday, some 50 years after that inaugural weekend at Locke High, private organizers will stage a commemoration they hope can lead to something bigger.

“I’m an Angeleno and I care about the city a lot,” said Billy Frank, a marketing and advertising executive spearheading the effort. “I’ve found myself really compelled to be part of the Watts Summer Games because of the legacy.”

Frank and his partner, Don Janklow, who formerly marketed the L.A. Marathon, have rebranded the event as the USA City Games in hopes of creating a model that can be replicated across the country.

Much like in the beginning, this weekend’s kickoff will be modest, with a few hundred boys and girls expected to participate at the Coliseum. There will be track and field, basketball, soccer, volleyball, lacrosse and football.

“Their return is good news for everyone in our city,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said.

The former L.A. Junior Chamber of Commerce originally created the Games — they were called the Watts Junior Olympics at first — to “build bridges of understanding” in a city left fractured by six days of historic unrest.

“Three years later, nothing was being done to ease racial tensions,” said Rick Moos, a retired banker who was among the founders. “We wanted to start a program that would bring all the young people together.”

Local businesses donated seed money and referees offered to work for free. Athletes were told to line up and shake hands before each game.

After the first year, organizers started casting a wider net, inviting more and more athletes. The event quickly outgrew Locke High, finding a new home every few years at local junior colleges and universities.

Purcell Keeling, who owns a health food restaurant and store in Los Angeles, recalls competing as an Inglewood Morningside High middle-distance runner.

“It wasn’t just minority athletes from Watts,” Keeling said. “You had people from Orange County, from the Valley. . . . I didn’t see any type of discrimination.”

Former Lakers and UCLA guard Brad Holland had a similar experience while playing for Crescenta Valley High in La Crescenta during the mid-1970s.

“I went to an all-white high school and we always got paired up with black schools, which I thought was really good for us,” Holland said at the time. “There was always a sense of goodwill.”

By 1991, the Watts Summer Games were drawing entries from Santa Barbara south to San Diego. They rivaled the Olympics in size with a full roster of sports and 12,000 participants.

“Part of it was education,” said Nicholas Davidson, the Locke High athletic director who served as the event’s chairman in later years. “These kids needed to know the history of their community.”

The sheer size of the field produced a benefit beyond that initial mission.

City Section athletes got a chance to face the best from the Southern Section. Local high school coaches circled the date on their calendars, happy for quality competition at a time of year when school was out.

A young John Elway played in the games. So did Jamaal Wilkes, Lisa Leslie, Byron Scott and Florence Griffith Joyner.

Local television stations broadcast live from the event and more importantly, corporations such as Bank of America, Southern California Edison and PepsiCo supported what had transformed into a mammoth undertaking.

“It all comes down to money,” said Don LaMarr, the event’s chairman in the late 1970s. “We couldn’t have paid for everything. And back then, the schools donated their facilities for $1.”

The recession that began in the late 2000s changed all that. Sponsorships dried up and schools, hard-pressed for funding, began charging higher rental fees. Organizers walked away after 2013.

Four years later, Frank had no real intention of getting involved until Janklow approached him with the idea.

“It came from absolutely out of nowhere,” Frank recalled. “But I said I’d take them over.”

The partners negotiated a reduced rental from the Coliseum and raised enough money to pay for this weekend’s scaled-down production. They hope to woo corporate sponsors back into the fold for something larger and, perhaps, a sister event in Chicago next summer.

The name “USA City Games” — which reflects these national aspirations — might not sit well with everyone.

The Watts Summer Games tried a similar change once before, switching to the L.A. Games in the 1980s, before settling on the L.A. Watts Summer Games in the face of public pressure.

This time around, Keeling wondered: “Is it because Watts is in South L.A.? Are they trying to sugarcoat it a little bit?”

Still, the former track athlete is glad to see someone trying to revive a competition that remains dear to him.

“It was a really big deal when I was a kid,” he said. “I hope it works out.”

david.wharton@latimes.com

Follow @LAtimesWharton on Twitter