Game On! UNLV’s Oral History Research Center tackles the history of sports in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — UNLV’S Oral History Research Center is embarking on a project tracking the history of sports in Las Vegas.

“It’s kind of hard not to think about sports when you think about Las Vegas right now,” said Oral History Research Center Project Manager Stefani Evans.

Fresh off of the second year of the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix, Evans says it’s been years to get sports to the forefront in Las Vegas.

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“A lot of this was work behind the scenes by people at MGM, people at Caesars, people who worked and worked,” she said.

She says they worked with a number of different major sports leagues to make it happen, and it came to fruition in 2017 with the Vegas Golden Knights starting their first season.

From there, it was the Las Vegas Aces and the Las Vegas Raiders with the Oakland Athletics set to begin play on the Las Vegas Strip in a couple of years.

Evans says this project isn’t just about the major professional sports though.

“Everyone we talk to has a different story, so you probably have a story from when you were young about playing sports,” she said. “Everybody does, so it’s our job to find those stories and talk about what happened when, because a lot of people think their stories don’t matter.”

One person who stood out was Peter Bernhard.

He shared his youth sports journey in Las Vegas from the late 1950s to the early 1960s.

“So we had summer baseball and fall football under the Donna Kutzen Youth Foundation banner and the DKYF teams played in the city leagues, so my Pee Wee and Midget was different sponsors around the city, but by the time I got to the junior level, we were playing for the Donna Kutzen organization,” he told researchers.

“He actually brought some annual reports that his parents saved because his name was in them,” Evans said. “So he gave us this small collection that is really vital to the idea of youth sports in Las Vegas.”

Evans says the project is in its early stages so the team is still looking for people to interview.

Click here if you’d like more information on the project or know someone with a sports story in Las Vegas the team should interview.

The goal is to have the project rolled out by the end of 2025.