L.A. WATTS SUMMER GAMES : Rebuilding Image Is Purpose Again

It was 1967. The Watts riots were two years passed but still fresh in everyone’s memories. You can rebuild a store, but the images of burning and looting and killing last long after commerce’s grand reopening.

That was on a lot of minds as Bill Sims sat around a table brainstorming with other members of the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce.

“He said he had an idea,” Wesley Greenwood, a chamber member, said. “It was a simple one, really: to let sports serve as a way to get young people of all ethnic backgrounds to come together on a common ground.”

Out of that was born the L.A. Watts Summer Games, which began in 1968 with 152 boys competing in basketball, volleyball and track and field at Locke High. The games have grown into 14 sports involving 12,000 boys and girls from high schools all over Southern California.

“He fought for it for a year,” said Mark Kendrick, chairman of this year’s games, of Sims’ idea. “They didn’t know if the white schools--the suburban schools--would come because they felt they had to have the competition at the schools in the riot-torn area.”

None of the kids who will compete in the 25th renewal of the games--Saturday through June 28--were born when the city was in flames in 1965. But this year’s riots are fresh in their memories. Ironically, the circumstances that led to the Watts Games almost ended them.

When rioting began in Los Angeles on April 28, “We considered the possibility of not having them,” Kendrick said. “We decided to wait a week or two to see what progress was being made. We watched through the Wednesday night, when the riots began, and through the weekend to see what sports was doing in the city.”

Organizers saw that the purpose of the games remains: to get students from schools in the suburbs to interact with those of the city. The theme of the games is “We are united by our differences.”

Among the 350 schools that generally participate, only Royal High of Simi Valley--where the Rodney King trial was held--and Thousand Oaks High declined this year.

An idea remains from the first L.A. Watts Summer Games: to rebuild the image of Los Angeles and to separate high school sports from the gangs.

“We’ve never had any incidents involving gangs or that sort of thing at all” at the games, Kendrick said. “The only problems we’ve ever had were things like a couple of parents taking things to the parking lot--the sort of thing you can have anywhere.”