Sportswriter hoping for Native olympic team

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It could happen in Atlanta in 1996: Native athletes from across America competing in the world's largest sporting event as their own team.

That's the dream of Matt Spencer, a former sportswriter from Bedford, Mass., who set up an organization called Union with Native Athletes from across the U.S. to achieve the goal.

"A symbolic Olympic nation would be a great inspiration to many American Indians," said Spencer, who plans to start lobbying the International Olympic Committee at the end of the summer.

"The Olympics is the ultimate media event to wake up the world to issues that deeply affect American Indians."

Spencer's vision of a Native Olympic team started after reading an old issue of Sports Illustrated. The issue featured two articles: one on the difficulties top-ranked basketball players from Crow, Mont., had adjusting to playing off the reserve, the other

on a U.S. Olympic basketball dream team.

"It just hit me," Spencer says "What a positive way to make a statement....To give all American Indians a tremendous positive image."

Spencer formed the union last June. Since then he has been recruiting supporters and preparing to make his application to the Olympic committee.

One of his chief co-workers is Steve Lopez, from the Fort Mojave tribe in California. Lopez, 33, was preparing for a career in professional sports in the mid-70s when a tragic car accident left him paralyzed. He is now a wheelchair athlete and a journalist.

Spencer has not had any preliminary reaction from Olympic organizers about entering a Native team in the '96 Atlanta games. But he expects a good hearing and said there are other examples of teams from places that are not technically their own country.

"This year, seven republics form the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia have been admitted as separate nations," he said, adding that the U.S. territories like Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands have fielded their own teams.

If the Olympics admit a Native team, Spencer hopes it will include athletes from North and South America.

"As it is now, we would probably consider any registered number of an American tribe. And we would probably welcome Pacific Islanders and the Inuit."

Union is now starting to work on publicity and fund-raising campaigns. Spencer hopes to raise enough money to establish a national training centre for Indian athletes and wants to have athletes training for Atlanta when the '92 games start in Barcelona, Spain.