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By Helen Ross
PGATOUR.com Chief of Correspondents

RANDLEMAN, N.C. -- Monday nights are reserved for food fights, complete with colored mashed potatoes and rice. The youngsters can ride in hot air balloons on Tuesday.

Tim Petrovic (left) with Pattie Petty

No matter what day it is, the kids can fish in the lake or swim at the water park and play bumper bowling, baseball or video games. There's a stage where they can work out their inner drama queen or king. The more adventurous can climb rock walls and ride horses, too.

The Goody's Body Shop brings the mission of Victory Junction Gang Camp into focus, though. That's the hospital where the campers, aged 7 to 15, get their treatments -- everything from dialysis to chemotherapy to IV drips.

Kyle and Pattie Petty created Victory Junction, a year-round camp for chronically or seriously ill children, in honor of their son Adam, who crashed and was killed during a practice lap at New Hampshire International Speedway in 2000.

And thanks to a donation of $50,000 from the Wyndham Championship, even more youngsters will now get to attend Victory Junction.

Wyndham Worldwide CEO Steve Holmes and Bobby Long, chairman of the board of the Wyndham Championship, announced that the camp was the official charity of this week's tournament during a tour of the facility on Tuesday.

In addition to the grant to Victory Junction, a $20,000 donation was given to the PGA TOUR Wives Association to help continue its work with children's charities.

Tim Petrovic had come to see Victory Junction first hand with his wife Julie, who accepted the donation on behalf of the TOUR Wives, and their two young daughters. He was clearly impressed.

Two-time NASCAR Nextel Cup champion Terry Labonte poses with one of the campers.

"The PGA TOUR does a lot of charity work," he said. "You can read about it, but when you actually come out and see the facilities, it's night and day. Talk to the kids and see the looks on the kids faces when they get to bowl or go swimming or do all these activities. It's amazing.

"It makes you feel good. In a way, we're all blessed and I'm just glad I'm in a position where I can do something."

Petrovic helped entertain some of the campers and other visitors in a speed putting competition -- "The Mini-Wyndham" -- with NASCAR veteran Terry Labonte. He took the place of Davis Love III, who is having lithotripsy to remove kidney stones on Friday.

Labonte was subbing for Kyle Petty, who had surgery Tuesday morning to repair what his wife jokingly called a "self-inflicted wound that was the result of an accident not during the race" at Watkins Glen on Sunday. The broken hand will also keep him out of Wednesday's pro-am.

"I have never seen him so remorseful," Pattie Petty said. "He loves to play golf and he loves Davis. He lives by the GOLF CHANNEL, he's practiced every day just for Wednesday and now he can't play. He's just sick about it."

Kyle Petty, cradling his arm in a sling, was there to welcome the group, though.

"Here's what happened," he said as he looked down at his arm, which was swaddled in a cast. "I went to the driving range three days and I was so bad, I said, I have to get out of this game somehow."

After the laughter died down, Kyle Petty turned serious.

"What Wyndham does, not only nationally, but in the communities where there is a Wyndham resort, charity-wise, is phenomenal," he said. "We've been blessed to be associated with them through my father and Petty Enterprises for a few years now. When they partnered with the golf tournament in Greensboro and the PGA (TOUR), for me, that's a win-win.

"As she said I got hooked on golf probably a few years ago. To watch what the PGA (TOUR) does, and what each individual player does nationwide in each community, it's a phenomenal group of athletes and a phenomenal organization that not only goes into a community, but gives back to the community they're in."

The same could be said of the iconic Petty family and Victory Junction. Each summer, the camp offers disease-specific, week-long sessions for up to 125 children. As many as 32 families come for special weekend sessions during the rest of the year.

The children have a variety of conditions -- from hemophilia to heart disease and sickle cell anemia to liver disease to autism to spina bifida. A full-time medical staff lives on the property, along with the counselors and campers, in brightly colored blue, red, yellow and green cabins.

Tim Petrovic (pictured) lost the putt-putt tournament to Labonte, who entered the event as a heavy underdog.

The campers are assigned different colors based on "where they are in their disease," Pattie Petty said. And the medical staff never wears scrubs like doctors or nurses do at most other hospitals. Not at Victory Junction.

"When its Super Hero Week, they dress like super heroes and when its Cowboy Week, they dress like cowboys and cowgirls," Pattie Petty explained.

Not surprisingly, there is a racing theme throughout the camp -- from the giant motorcycle in the middle of the water park to the Harris-Teeter Pit Stop. The water park is a zero-entry facility so children in wheelchairs can experience what it feels like to swim. It's specially equipped for youngsters on ventilators, too.

Across the campus, an average of 300 campers and counselors are served three, and sometimes four or five, meals a day. After dinner, the campers are asked to talk about what they did for the first time that day.

"It might be that they caught a fish or rode a horse," Pattie Petty said. "But sometimes, they'll say, 'I made a friend today.' That's pretty powerful stuff."

Over at the Michael Waltrip Sports Center, the kids can climb the rock wall, play basketball or shinny up rope ladders.

"These are the children who don't get picked for the dodgeball team or the softball team." Pattie Petty said. "We make sure they are a part of everything here and we make sure they succeed."

The putting contest took place on the miniature golf course beside the bowling alley. Instead of "Hush Ya'll" signs that marshals will hold at Forest Oaks Country Club this week, campers had "Make Some Noise" placards.

In keeping with the NASCAR theme, the emphasis was speed, not the final tally on the scorecard. The only rule was to wait until the ball stopped before hitting it again.

"Score doesn't count?" Petrovic asked incredulously. "No, and I know that confuses a professional golfer like yourself," said emcee John Maginnes, a Greensboro resident and analyst for the PGA TOUR Network on XM Satellite Radio.

The competition began when one of the campers said, "Gentlemen, start your putters." And it ended several minutes later when Labonte finished and Petrovic still had two holes remaining. Of course, the TOUR veteran had a little problem on lap, er, hole seven when his ball got stuck in a tailpipe.

"Kyle, eat your heart out," Pattie Petty said. "Terry won, and I'm going to rub it in."