RALEIGH, N.C. — There's a new link between Jim Valvano and North Carolina State.

Officials at the V Foundation for Cancer Research said Wednesday that the charity golf tournament that bears the late Wolfpack coach's nickname is moving to the new course at N.C. State.

"We missed the sense of community," said foundation CEO Nick Valvano, the coach's brother. Raleigh "was Jim's home, and it was very, very important for us after two years to say we have to go back to where it was created, where we got our identity."

The Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Classic comes to the school's new Lonnie Poole Golf Course this August after what Nick Valvano has called "the grandfather of all our events" was played for two years at Pinehurst Resort, located a 90-minute drive southwest of the Raleigh-Durham area where the foundation is based.

"Sometimes you don't realize what you have until you don't have it," Valvano said. "Pinehurst is a great venue, and although they couldn't have treated us any better ... my heart hurt that we weren't here."

It also reunites Valvano's name with the school with which he is most closely associated. Valvano led N.C. State to the 1983 national championship, and the images of the coach running across the court and searching for someone to hug are a yearly staple of NCAA tournament television coverage.

"Is it too much, knowing the strong feelings that everybody has about their colleges and universities?" Nick Valvano said, referring to the territorial nature of the three Atlantic Coast Conference schools in the Raleigh-Durham area. "But Jim coached here, it was his home for a very long time and after we thought about it, it made a lot of sense."

Before the move to Pinehurst, the tournament was held for 13 years at Prestonwood Country Club in the Raleigh suburb of Cary, before a move became necessary when the annual Champions Tour event was switched to mid-September and there wasn't enough time for the course to recover.

N.C. State's $11.8 million course, which was designed by Arnold Palmer, is scheduled to open this spring on the school's Centennial campus.

"We celebrate the return of the Valvano name and the V Foundation to N.C. State in a very significant way," Chancellor James Oblinger said.

Foundation officials said the tournament has raised $13 million for cancer research since it was first held in 1994.

The foundation, established by Valvano before he died of cancer 15 years ago, has raised more than $80 million and by the end of the year will have given more than $55 million to cancer research, Nick Valvano said. Earlier this year, it awarded a $1 million grant to fund a cancer therapeutics training program at N.C. State.