While digging through the back of my sock drawer the other day, I came across my one and only Sunflower State Games medal.

Later, I found an old SSG T-shirt in the bottom of another drawer and promptly put it to good use. I wore it while I cut the grass. Meanwhile, in an office drawer, I still have an original SSG button from 1990, the Games’ inaugural year, and I’m saving it because you never know : it might become a treasured icon of sports memorabilia.

During the dozen years the Games were staged in Lawrence, our Journal-World slow-pitch softball team almost always participated, hence the T-shirt and the medal. (The button was dropped after the first couple of years.)

Most of the time we J-W slow-pitchers fell on our faces – one year we lost in the championship round to a team we had run-ruled in pool play the day before – but we did capture that medal once. And, as they say, they can’t take it away from us.

Even if Topeka did take the games away from Lawrence.

Gosh, has it really been five years since Topeka aggressively swooped in, ponied up big corporate dollars and swiped the Games from their original home right here in River City? Indeed, it has.

But how long will the Sunflower State Games remain in Topeka? The Capital City’s contract expires after the 2007 Games, and several cities, including Lawrence, are expected to bid on them.

To tell the truth, the Games haven’t been any more popular in Topeka than they were in Lawrence, attracting about 6,000 participants for the last decade or so.

In purpose, SSG is a statewide amateur sports festival that is supposed to provide quality amateur competition in a wide range of activities and promote physical fitness and personal health for people of all ages and skill levels. That’s the mantra, anyway.

In reality, SSG is a geographically specific event that is hardly regarded as a destination. People don’t drive from Wichita, for instance, to spend the night in Topeka in order to participate in the Games, and that makes SSG’s cost ratio questionable as compared to tourism dollars.

If you ask me, if they trumpet SSG as an event for all the people of Kansas, then it should bounce around the state, sort of like the Shrine Bowl football game, which hopscotches around every August.

I don’t think SSG should move every year, but it should revolve at least every three years. All SSG needs is a city with university sports facilities, meaning Wichita, Pittsburg, Hays, Emporia and Manhattan are other possible sites.

You can’t rule out Salina, either. Or even Hutchinson with all of its State Fair land and facilities.

And why shouldn’t the games be conducted in Johnson County? Heck, Olathe’s high school venues are better than you’ll find at some colleges. And I don’t think there’s any question that staging SSG in the Kansas City megaplex would result in a record number of participants.

At the same time, SSG must return to Lawrence someday. We did it before – 12 times, in fact – and we can do it again.