thanks to Jeff Horwitz and Seth Green for the photos!   On Wednesday night I was able to get out of the house and witness what many wags would call a contradiction. Let’s get the ‘yucks’ out of the way first . . . Thinnest book in the world?  Great Jewish Athletes. As a tribe we ARE better known for our Comedians, Lawyers, Doctuh’s (in the proper NY dialect) and our general proclivity to having our mothers nag us about studying more and playing less . . . after all, how would we meet a nice girl? Interestingly, at least in our small and rapidly growing world of lacrosse, the book is starting to add pages.  

  When Israel announced it’s intentions a few years ago to start a competitive national lacrosse program the first thought that came to mind, besides ‘what took ya so long?’, was how smart a decision that was; because if there is one sport that Israel could make an impact in it was likely lacrosse. Think I’m kidding? Israel’s list of sports accomplishments is truly a thin resume: Soccer – qualified for one World Cup, and a few UEFA Club tournaments.  Highest FIFA ranking ever was 15th one time. Basketball – a couple of Euro Championship qualifiers and one Olympics appearance.  A few NBA players currently. Olympics – I believe Israel has one only one gold medal in its’ history, in Sailing of all things   But in America Jewish athletes, where the number of accomplished athletes is actually much higher than you would think (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jews_in_sports), there has been a notable group of accomplished lacrosse players that is only growing.  And when Team Israel was formed it certainly seemed like an enlightened idea.  A sport where you don’t have to be 7′ tall or weigh 300+ pounds and run a 4.9 40 (although Ali Marpet did that at the NFL Combine . . . didn’t think I could still work him into another article, did you?  Jewish too!  Finance degree from a great NY liberal arts school . . .) to succeed.  A sport where success is possible on the world stage. Jesse Schwartzman Max Seibald Jordan Levine Adam Ghitleman Casey Cittadino Bill Beroza Mark Greenberg Bruce Cohen Evan Blum, Lee Coppersmith and a host of SA talent (had to work some of the local connection into the list!) Doc Schneider and so on.   Growing any national program for a small country if full of ups and downs and Team Israel is no exception.  The trip to Florida was meant to gain experience, market the program to those in America who might like to donate money to the program and just generally continue the long process towards world competitiveness.  The game I watched on Wednesday was against the South Florida Maccabi team and neither side had their full compliment of players.  For those who aren’t Jewish, the Maccabi Games are basically the Jewish version of the Olympics and lacrosse has been a recent addition to the lineup (full disclosure – as a 20-something I almost qualified for the games in Volleyball . . . not that this fact is important to the story but I never seem to get to mention my volleyball skills from that day in any other column).  We covered that competition last year on the site if you want to search for it . . . just search for Connor McAdorey’s excellent blogs. Local fans would recognize some of the players on both sides (see the list from Neil McAdorey below) but the most important thing from the game wasn’t the score (for the record the Maccabi team scored the upset in overtime . . . after the game I suggested to Team Israel U-19 coach Seth Mahler that he channel his inner Herb Brooks and get a whistle but it wasn’t Norway they lost to) but the continued process of building the program.  

Neil McAdorey, Coach of the Florida Maccabi team, provided some data too:

Seth Mahler and Ian McAdorey were the coaches for the Team Israel Team. Seth brought 8 boys from Israel and 3 boys from the Northeast. Ian brought the following from South Florida:

Marc Wolff and David Tescher from Pine Crest Josh and Jake Bernstein from Spanish River Evan Schimek from St Thomas Jack Haimowitz from Stoneman Douglas Oliver Alpert, Jack Young, Danny Young from Saint Andrews Connor McAdorey from American Heritage Blake Israel from Stoneman Douglas

22 Players in total

Jim Gottlieb of Parkland Buzzards helped to arrange officials The City of Parkland was very much behind hosting Team Israel, with Mayor Michael Udine at the crux of it

Scott Neiss Runs the TEAM ISRAEL Lacrosse Program – Men and Women throughout Israel. He started the program 5 years ago and put the first Birthright Program together for NCAA athletes in 2014 – they went over to Israel and played the 2014 Team Israel World Games Team as their warm-up before the games in Denver. There were three SA Boys on that team including Ian.

It was a nice night out and good luck to Team Israel as they continue to build their national programs!