Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame honors Flint Olympian and CANUSA Games

(This story is one in a series profiling the 2024 inductees into the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame. The profiles are provided by the GFASHOF. This year’s induction banquet will be held at the Ascension Genesys Banquet Center in Grand Blanc Township on Saturday, Dec. 7. Doors open at 3:15 pm.)

FLINT, MI – The Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame broke new ground in its selections this year.

After 43 years of enshrining 318 individuals and 89 teams, the Hall is honoring an entire organization with its induction of the Flint Olympian and CANUSA Games in the Class of 2024.

The Flint Olympian and CANUSA Games is being inducted as a Distinguished Service Award winner, which seems appropriate given its 67 years of service to not only Flint and Genesee County, but also to the city and citizens of Hamilton, Ontario, the Canadian counterpart of the CANUSA Games.

“A lot of inductees, if not a very significant percentage of them, have played in the Flint Olympian and CANUSA Games through their youth to reach the heights they reached in high school, collegiate or professional careers,” said Tony Sitko, current president of the Greater Flint Olympian and CANUSA Association. “The existence of these games were rooted in community education that grew from the local school level to community level to international games.”

“It goes way back in time to the Community School district years, which provided sports from archery to wrestling,” echoed Dan Berezny, a longtime community school director who later helped run the Games. “That was the highlight of the summer back in the ‘60s and ’70s. In 1979 we had over 20,000 Flint and Genesee County participants in the Olympian Games, the highest number at that time.”

The Flint Olympian Games were born out of the Flint Community Schools Program, which was another pioneering move that focused on Flint and Genesee County children becoming active in sports and other activities. Opening the schools, gyms and athletic facilities in the evening and summer kept the kids busy and paved the way for athletes to go on to greater success in college and professional sports. A community school director was in place at every school.

The brainchild of Frank Manley Sr., backed by the strong support of Charles Stewart Mott, the community schools philosophy became a model for cities around the country. Both gentlemen were inducted into the inaugural class of the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1980 as the then-named Special Service Award winners.

The Flint Olympian Games started in 1957, with two-time Olympic pole-vault champion Rev. Bob Richards helping to get the games off the ground with a pole-vaulting exhibition. The games were actually named the Flint Junior Olympics that year, and because the name indicated competition only for juniors, many adults did not enter. There were 1,300 participants.

The name was changed to the Flint Olympian Games in 1958, and 2,452 people entered.

That was also the year Manley tabbed Joe Wargo to find a sister city in Canada for an annual international competition. Hamilton was chosen because of its similar size to Flint and because both were blue-collar towns, Hamilton in steel and Flint in auto plants. Wargo was the founder of the CANUSA Games.

“I tried Sarnia and London, then found some people from Hamilton who were in Lansing at a track meet,” Wargo said before his induction into the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2003 as the Special Service Award winner. “We talked about the possibilities and tried it out with a few sports in the first CANUSA Games. It took off from there.”

The first CANUSA Games took place Aug. 8-10, 1958, in Flint. After Friday’s first day of competition, Hamilton controller Leslie Parker officially invited Flint to send a team to his city the next summer for the second annual CANUSA Games. He thanked Flint Mayor George M. Algoe for his hospitality shown the more than 400 contestants who arrived Friday afternoon. More than 100 Flint families had volunteered the hospitality of their homes to Canadian youngsters and their parents who would be there for the three-day affair.

“We have found in Flint really nice people who have made us feel right at home,” Parker said. “We hope you will give us the opportunity next year to show you we can be pretty nice people too.”

A year later, some 400 Flint athletes traveled to Canada’s fifth largest city for the second annual CANUSA Games Aug. 21-23, 1959. The 225-mile torch run from Flint to Hamilton started at 11 a.m. Friday and was expected at 1:05 p.m. Saturday at the opening ceremonies. Some of the runners were slowed by the first rain in Hamilton in six weeks.

“It wasn’t just the sports,” noted Berezny. “The games were so unique, it was about understanding each other’s cities and people. The underlying thing was, before we can understand one another, you have to learn from one another. We’d play a few games and still spend 48 hours together.”

Chris “Rooster” Daly grew up in a volleyball family and played the sport often in the CANUSA Games. He made so many friends with the Hamilton guys that they were standing up for each other at weddings, including his.

The Flint Olympian and CANUSA Games started running into trouble in 1990, when the Flint schools did away with the community school directors.

“Dick Daly came to us and said I want you guys (Berezny, Jim Whitinger and Jim Bracy) to run the games in 1991,” Berezny said.

They soon brought Mike Maienbrook into the fold, and with the help of paraprofessionals, along with some community directors who came back, they were able to keep the games going a good 20 years. The district helped by not charging for facilities, gym usage and Northwestern’s field for opening ceremonies.

Along the way, they recruited a younger crew of Sitko, Rooster, Sean Croudy and Mark Coron to “take over the front seat,” as Berezny put it.

“In 2015 the Flint school board stopped providing financial support for the games,” said Sitko, president of the Greater Flint Olympian and CANUSA Association. “The past chairmen of the games and past community school directors took financial responsibility for three years.

“Then in 2018 it shifted to the Crim Fitness Organization, which became the operating organization. We still help them run the games, but they’re really in charge, with Crim Sports Director Traci Pigott and Crim Sports Coordinator Terence Greene Jr.”

“Gerry Myers, CEO/President of the Crim Fitness Foundation, stepped up and said we can help out,” said Berezny. “The Crim now is the official sponsor of the games.”

The Crim estimates that, since 1957, more than 700,000 athletes from ages 5-85 have participated in the Greater Flint Olympian and CANUSA Games.

“And the games are still going on,” said Berenzy. “This past summer Hamilton brought 250-260 some students. We plan on going there next year, and hope to bring another 250 or more.”