SoCalHoops Tournament News

Maccabi Games: More Than
Just Basketball--(Aug. 20, 1999)

The Maccabi Games were held at four sites this year, among them Cherry Hill, New Jersey, Rochester, NY, Houston and Columbus, Ohio.  The Los Angeles delegation, one of the largest (other than the host communities which had about double the number of LA's total of 190 athletes), split into two delegations, sending a group of 95 athletes (including a younger boys' basketball team which took the silver medal) to Rochester, NY.  A similar contingent of 95 athletes, including an older boys' team and a girls 16-U team went to Cherry Hill, which is located just east of Camden, New Jersey.  For those who don't know, Camden is just a two minute drive from Philadelphia, just across the Delaware river, which is spanned by the Ben Franklin Bridge.   Camden and Cherry Hill are usually thought of as suburbs of Philly, even though they are in different States.

The Cherry Hill Maccabi Games site (which, coincidentally is also where the 8th Annual Gym Rat Midnite Madness sponsored by adidas will be held on Saturday, September 25, 1999, featuring Gerald Wallace, Mario Austin, Julian Sensley, Taliek Brown, Ernest Turner, Imari Sawyer, Chris Duhon, Terrence Ford, Travon Bryant, Deshawn Stevenson, Daniel Ewing, Solomon Brown, A.J. Moye, Demetrius Smith,  Jermaine Harper,  Derek Colvin, and many other top recruits from this year's senior and junior classes, some of the top prospects in the country) was one of the largest sites, hosting more than 1300 athletes from all over the world.   The competition attracted many of the well-known local area athletes as both participants, and as spectators (Josh Moore (7'-0" Fr. C) who will attend Rutgers this year was in attendance watching all of LA's championship playoff games, as were several prominent pro basketball players from the Philly-New Jersey area).

But beyond basketball and the other sports competitions, there were a lot of other activities in which the athletes participated, and there was also a lot of media attention, particularly on the players from Los Angeles.  Here's a sampling of some of the New Jersey-Philadelphia media coverage:

Putting faith in teamwork
In the morning, they play games; in the afternoon, life takes over.

By David Lee Preston
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

CAMDEN -- The big Habitat for Humanity sign tacked onto the wall of the two-story rowhouse at South Seventh and Clinton Streets says: This House is being renovated by Christians in partnership with God's people in need . . . using the economics of Jesus: NO PROFIT. NO INTEREST.

But the 40 teenagers working on that house and others in the 600 block of Clinton Street yesterday were Jews from Los Angeles, Miami, New York and New Jersey, members of boys' and girls' basketball teams competing in the JCC Maccabi Games in Cherry Hill. They were in Camden as part of a Day of Caring and Sharing, a day of volunteerism that has been a component of the annual international Jewish athletic competition since 1997. Yesterday, they were supervised by volunteers from Congregation M'kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, who have been working on the block once a month. Others among the 1,300 Jewish athletes yesterday cleaned sections of the Cooper River, prepared meal-tray favors for hospital patients, assembled boxes of personal-care items for homeless shelters, and helped renovate Croft Farm in Cherry Hill.

Before taking up brushes, rollers, shovels and hoes, the basketball players in Camden held hands in a circle on South Seventh Street and sang a psalm in Hebrew: Hinei ma tov u'ma naim shevet achim gam yachad. "Behold how good and how beautiful it is to dwell together as brothers." Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz of M'kor Shalom told the athletes that they were fulfilling the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world -- "to help people literally, not figuratively, to be able to dwell together in peace and security."

Before boarding a bus to Camden, the Los Angeles boys had played two basketball games in the morning. They lost to a team from New York's 92d Street Y, 73-62, then defeated a team from Hartford, Conn., 79-38. Today they will play a team from Atlantic City at Eastern Regional High School. The boys said they were excited to be clearing away bricks in Camden, which they knew only as the home city Dajuan Wagner, a 6-foot-2 Camden High School guard. Wagner, one of the nation's top high school basketball players, was the subject of a recent profile in Sports Illustrated.

Under the watchful gaze of New Jersey state troopers and Camden police, the girls painted the interior of the house while the boys laid bricks on the sidewalk and cleared growth and bricks from a rear courtyard. Those bricks in the courtyard date to a time when it had been a brick building -- a tailor shop, then a barber shop, and then, finally, an illegal storefront selling guns and drugs, according to Joe Mannion, 40, of Audubon, construction manager for Metropolitan Camden Habitat for Humanity. "We took possession of it four or five years ago, and last year we knocked it to the ground," he said. "This time last year, it was a hole in the ground." Afterward, the boys said they appreciated the experience. "It helped me realize that I'm grateful that I'm not in this situation," said Robbie Wizenberg, 15, of Westwood, Calif. "It's good knowing that you helped someone." "It's definitely good to help other people," added Matthew Bendik, 16, of Santa Monica, Calif., cocaptain of the Los Angeles squad. "It makes me respect and realize what I have. You see good things in your life and you don't realize that it's good."

Habitat for Humanity, which has projects in more than 1,000 U.S. cities, obtains its houses through donation or foreclosure, Mannion said. "Our biggest problem right now is that there are 3,000 abandoned houses in the city of Camden, and we can't get them," said Mannion, whose office is next door to the corner rowhouse. "There are liens against properties in excess of $20,000 we can't take on, absentee owners we can't find, and once they're found it takes the city a year to two years to foreclose on a property." Stewart Abrams, an M'kor Shalom member who organized the work in Camden yesterday, said he was not bothered by the sign on the wall. "People of faith have more in common with each other than people without faith," he said. In any case, he said, a smaller sign had been tacked onto a wall facing Clinton Street: "Built with the help of volunteers from Congregation M'kor Shalom, Cherry Hill, N.J., in the spirit of Tikkun Olam (Repairing the World)"

Spirit triumphs over fear at games
08/16/99

By Rebecca Goldsmith
STAFF WRITER
New Jersey Star News Ledger

The games must go on. 

A week after a neo-Nazi sprayed gunfire into a Jewish community center in Los Angeles -- injuring five people, including three young children -- the biggest annual competition of Jewish athletes kicked off yesterday in Cherry Hill.   The Maccabi Games, a four-day sporting event modeled after the Junior Olympics, will be played this month in four host cities, the others being Rochester, N.Y., Columbus, Ohio, and Houston. South Jersey drew 1,400 athletes from around the country and the world.   ''We need to make a statement that we will control our own destiny," said Jeffrey Harris of Cherry Hill, whose son Josh is a ping pong player.  His wife, Marilyn, added, "Things have to go on as planned. You can't let crazy people interfere to that extent." 

Security is always top-notch at the games, whose organizers remembered at last night's opening ceremonies the Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics and those who died in a bridge collapse at the last International Maccabiah in Tel Aviv in 1997.  But last week's tragedy gave Cherry Hill organizers added reason to meet Friday morning to review the security plan from start to finish, according to Cherry Hill Mayor Susan Bass Levin.  She said about 50 law enforcement officials from federal, state and local levels reviewed their game plan point by point, but she would not elaborate on the details.  ''We've had this plan in place. . . . It's a very intense plan," she said, adding, "What people need to know is that they will be protected." 

The Cherry Hill festivities got started with the usual hoopla. Busload after busload of giddy teenagers filed into high school auditoriums yesterday to pose for group photos, pick up orientation packets and meet with host families. Balloons and Israeli flags festooned the entrance and hallways, and signs translated words like "bathroom" and "water fountain" into Hebrew.  But athletes, volunteers and host families also sensed they were walking into a high-security situation. One of the first items they got were laminated photo-identification tags as big as compact disc covers.  ''You can't get on a bus, eat lunch, or anything without having credentials," said David Kirschner, 16, an East Brunswick basketball player who has played at the event for the past two years. Officers blocked traffic from driveways near the check-in center at Cherry Hill East High School and around the Jewish community center across the street.  Police wearing bright yellow shirts and baggy black pants stopped every driver on their way into the high school parking lot.  ''We were very impressed by the show of security," said chaperone Barry Ackerman, who said a police car escorted his Orange County, Calif., group's buses from their hotel in Cherry Hill to the high school.

The first Maccabiah Games were held in 1932 in Tel Aviv with delegations from 23 countries. The games were brought to North America for the first time in 1982 with a competition at the Memphis Jewish Community Center that attracteed 300 athletes. Now the games are the largest sporting competition for 13- to 16-year-olds. During opening ceremonies last night [last Sunday night] at the Apollo of Temple University in Philadelphia, an audience of about 5,000 people -- grandparents, parents and children -- rocked to a laser-light, techno dance show. Athletes from 34 delegations marched through a phalanx of cheerleaders and around the floor of the Apollo to blaring early '90s dance music carrying bright banners of their hometowns and native countries.

The song, "Everybody Dance Now," and the applause pumped up a few notches for the Los Angeles delegation, which brought one of the largest group of athletes.  Jerry Gale, one of three basketball coaches from the Los Angeles delegation, helped escort 95 athletes from his city to Cherry Hill. He said the Los Angeles community is hoping that its players will to try to learn something positive from last week's violent outburst to the fullest extent possible. ''We're treating the Games as a life-lesson that good will triumph over evil," he said, adding, "We're hoping the athletes will see that despite adversity, life must go on."  Players from all over the country have picked up on Los Angeles' lesson. David Katz, a 16-year-old basketball player from West Orange, said the unexpected show of hate last week will stick in his mind all week.  ''We all play in their honor," he said, "What happened is a tragedy. . . . We won't forget that, but we gotta get past that."

Heart of the matter: Games mix sports, flirting By KIM HABAN Courier-Post staff Brian Porco, Courier-Post David Gale of Los Angeles, Calif., spends some time with Sarah Spitzer of Orange County, Calif., on Tuesday at Cherry Hill High School East CHERRY HILL - Finished with her day's competition at the Maccabi Games, 16-year-old swimmer Anne Heigh decided to check out the action at the in-line hockey competition, where she and three girlfriends staked out the best seats in the house … right near the boy's locker room. "We're in the spot where they all eventually have to pass us," said one of the girls. Heigh already had her eye on No. 10 on the Staten Island, N.Y., team, and when he tapped the glass in front of her seat with his hockey stick, the pony-tailed girl was all giggles and smiles. At venues throughout Cherry Hill and Voorhees, relationships between Jewish boys and girls have blossomed … making flirting the unofficial sport of the Maccabi Games, which end Thursday. Parents, who in some cases were encouraged by their children to stay away, seemed unaware of the playful interaction between the male and female athletes, but approved nonetheless. "All us Jewish mothers want our Jewish boys to marry a nice Jewish girl," said Francie Bernstein, whose son plays baseball for the Los Angeles delegation. For the girls, the boys from L.A. have become the delegation to watch, and watch, and watch. The boys, meanwhile, have set their sights on the Orange County, Calif., delegation. "If there were no guys here, there's no way I would come," said 15-year-old Sarah Spitzer, a blond, green-eyed Orange County soccer player who was surrounded by seven boys from the Los Angeles basketball team as she ate her lunch. "That's the whole fun of it." "We met 50 guys last night," Spitzer said, referring to the athletes' trip to Clementon Park. "We just walk by and make eye contact, and they come over." Trading pins also helps to break the ice. "You start with the pins and you say, 'Do you guys have any pins?' " said Jen Bakst, 15, of Newtown, Bucks County, Pa., and a member of the Greater Philadelphia delegation. "Then it's like, `Where are you from? What sports do you play?' " After that, the girls invite the boys to watch their games the next day. "We want L.A. guys to come," Bakst said. "I've never seen so many cute L.A. guys in my life." Citing a 52 percent interfaith marriage rate, Rabbi Bernard Rothman of Congregation Sons of Israel in Cherry Hill said the relationships formed at the Games are important building blocks for relations between Jews in the future. "Meeting each other will strengthen their commitment to being together and socializing with Jews. When it comes time to marry, they will think, `I want to be with my people.' It's a wonderful thing," said Rothman, an Orthodox rabbi overseeing food preparation for the Games. To 15-year-old Elliot Grodstein, the wonderful thing was the girls walking around in bathing suits at Clementon Park on Monday night. "Naturally I went up to them and talked to them," said Grodstein, of the North Jersey delegation. "It's a great way to meet girls, and my parents like it when I meet Jewish girls." Orange County soccer player Daniel Rosenberg, 16, summed up the Maccabi Games like this: "It's all about having fun, and girls are definitely fun."

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