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Nov. 30, 2007
Football is taking off
Israeli interest in American sports is increasing.
EVA COHEN
With the number of North American olim (immigrants) coming to Israel each year, the customs and traditions they bring with them become shared by a larger and larger demographic. And what better represents a society than the sports they play? Recently, Israel got its own baseball league. It's also playing American football now.
There is a flag football league in Israel, called American Football in Israel. There are both men's and women's national teams, with the women's team competing last summer in France. At home, in league play, they face off on Fridays and Saturdays at Kraft Stadium in Jerusalem. The field was donated by Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots, and is Jerusalem's only American-style football field. However, there were some guys who were itching for more of a contact sport. So, six years ago, they started getting together on weekends in Tel-Aviv to butt heads in tackle football scrimmages.They soon began to have aspirations of a league of their own.
Two years ago, the AFI was recognized by Israel as the official football league in the country. This recognition made it difficult for those interested in tackle football to pursue any sort of professional league but, in June of this year, the two sides began talking and a partnership was struck. The AFI would become the parent organization for the Israel Football League.
After years of dreaming, and months of planning, the IFL came into being with its inaugural opening weekend on Nov. 16 and 17. It is a four-team league, represented by the Mike's Place Tel-Aviv Sabres, the Dancing Camel Hasharon Pioneers, the Big Blue Jerusalem and the Real Housing Haifa Underdogs.
On Friday, at noon, Jerusalem and Hasharon met for the first time at Kraft Stadium. About 200 fans came out to cheer on the sides and, for many, it was the first time they had been able to watch American-style football in years.
Eric Amkraut, IFL commissioner, said he is extremely happy with how things have turned out so far.
"You can feel the electricity in the air," said Amkraut. "We have some young players who are 17 and 18, but then we have other guys who are 35 and have been in Israel for 20 or more years. For them, to have a league was just a dream until now."
On the scoreboard, Jerusalem clobbered Hasharon, 46-18, but to Steve Leibowitz, AFI president, there were no losers, and the league can only grow from here.
"There was great sportsmanship in the game," said Leibowitz. "Even the losing team is coming out of the game feeling good. The play was at a decent level.... We definitely have things to work on, but this was a good starting point. Football in Israel is now on the map."
The other two teams took the field the next day, at the Baptists Village in Petah Tikvah. Haifa narrowly defeated Tel-Aviv by one touchdown, with a final score of 27-20.
The season will comprise nine games and a postseason, with weekly matches. The league is gearing up for a Chanukah Bowl, to be held the first night of Chanukah, at Kraft Stadium.
As for the "true" American game, baseball was first introduced to Israel in 1924, when the governess of the Sephardic Orphanage in Jerusalem handed out baseball equipment. However, because the only game with a ball in this part of the world was soccer, the children dropped the balls on the ground and started kicking them around. Baseball got off with a rough start and it wasn't until the last few years that the game really started to take off.
In July 2005, a Boston-based group formed the Israel Baseball League. Until then, there had been a paucity of fields, equipment and training in the country but, in March 2006, the IBL teamed up with the Jewish National Fund in a project called Project Baseball. The goal: to "dot the landscape of Israel with community baseball fields." These efforts were successful and the IBL opened as a competitive professional league this past June.
Softball has also risen up, attracting teams of predominantly North American background from across the country. There are native Israeli players involved in baseball and softball, but the language on the diamond is almost always English. This is the case in all American sports in Israel, including the IFL, which has English play-by-play over the sound system at Kraft Stadium.
For North American olim, or visitors to Israel, if one is looking for a way to feel like they're back at home, sports offer a venue.
Eva Cohen is a freelance writer living in Haifa.
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