This is a first in a series of blogs that will be submitted by Connor McAdorey, a 16-year old Rising Junior at American Heritage in Delray Beach as he competes in the upcoming Maccabi Games.  For those who are not familiar the Maccabi Games are an annual gathering of Jewish athletes in Olympic-style action.  We thank Connor and his family, which are very involved in local lacrosse community, for agreeing to produce this for us and giving our readers at FLN another insight into how the sport of lacrosse continues to grow.  For those who missed the results of the World Championships a week ago Team Israel, in their inaugural effort, finished in 7th place overall, missing out on a Final Four appearance by one goal in a quarterfinal loss to Australia.  Don’t be surprised if 8 years from now someone from this year’s Maccabi event doesn’t show up on Team Israel for that tournament.   Connor’s First Blog: Today we are two weeks out from our departure to Cherry Hill, NJ for the 32nd Annual Maccabi games. As a delegation we sit in the David Posnack Jewish center where we receive our uniforms and Adidas Bags along with a travel briefing and what to expect in this year’s host city, Cherry Hill, NJ. The JCC Maccabi Games® are an Olympic-style sporting competition held each summer in North America, and is one of the largest organized sports program for Jewish teenagers in the world. In 2014, over 6,000 teens, ranging from 13 to 16 years of age, will participate in the JCC Maccabi Games which will take place in three different United States venues: Detroit, Cherry Hill, and Boca Raton. While this is the 32^nd games it is only the third year that boys and girls lacrosse has been offered as a sport.  At the Maccabi games, lacrosse is played a little different than it is normally played. It’s a 7 v 7 style tournament on a field that is roughly ¾ the size of a regulation field.  We face off after every goal and we only need to have one player back on defense. Essentially making it a modified box game with it being 5v5 on offense/defense. As we prepare for the 2014 games, I thought it would be fun to look back over the last two years to see where we have been as we prepare for where we are going…   Memphis 2012: I have been fortunate enough to represent South Florida as a part of Team Fort Lauderdale in the two previous years of Maccabi Lacrosse.  The first year of lacrosse, 2012, was in Memphis, TN and we were not sure there was going to be a second year of lacrosse at the Maccabi Games. We thought this because in the first quarter of the first game a fight broke out between two players on the Long Island team and two on the Philadelphia team. The inaugural year consisted of 6 teams from Arizona, Chicago, Long Island, Philadelphia, Memphis and Fort Lauderdale. We went on to go undefeated in pool play beating Memphis, Arizona and we went on to surprise Long Island with an overtime victory. In 2012 Team Fort Lauderdale finished as Silver Medalists after losing a hard fought game to Long Island in the finals.     Orange County 2013: In 2013 we traveled to Orange County, California where we played on the same fields as the MCLA championships at UC Irvine. 2013 saw an expanded list of teams and now included teams from Orange County, California and Baltimore, MD. We did well in pool play beating teams from Long Island, Philadelphia, Detroit and Orange County before losing in the semi-finals to Baltimore who went on to win the tournament. This left us in the unusual position of playing team Long Island for the bronze medal. We had already beat Long Island in pool play; but our relationship with the players from Long Island had grown from adversarial, in our first game in Memphis, to collaborative in Orange County. In a very unusual move our coach suggested that we mix the teams and play for fun. Both teams won bronze medals but what was more important is that we exhibited great Rachmanus, or sportsmanship and compassion for the games.     So as we are two weeks out I am excited to be able to write about my experiences at my third and final Maccabi Games.