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"The Basketball Game" is a graphic novel adaptation of the award-winning National Film Board of Canada animated short of the same name – intended for audiences aged 12 years and up. It's a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry. In the end, as is recognized by the kids playing the basketball game, we're all in this together.

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Tag: sports

Maccabi sports camp

Maccabi sports camp

The Maccabi Sports Experience at Ontario’s Camp Northland offers a traditional overnight camp with outdoor activities, blended with multi-sports instruction. (photo from Maccabi Canada)

Maccabi Canada and Camp Northland have partnered to create a unique program for children wanting to stay involved with sports over the summer. A first of its kind, the Maccabi Sports Experience at Ontario’s Camp Northland offers a traditional overnight camp with outdoor activities, blended with multi-sports instruction over a period of three weeks. The program will debut this summer July 27-Aug. 16, during the camp’s second session.

“A lot of kids found that, at camp, they don’t get to the opportunity to really focus in on the sports that they love to play as much as they’d like,” said Simon Wolle, director of Camp Northland. “But they don’t want to give up camp either, despite that strong interest, so they end up coming to camp but kind of missing sport.… Why not try to find a way to marry the two?”

The new offering features two weeks of rotating skill development clinics in four different sports – basketball, beach volleyball, soccer and tennis – followed by a specialty week, where participants can choose one sport to focus on. Parts of each day will be dedicated to the Maccabi sports program, while also giving the group the opportunity to integrate with other campers. The program will be run by a combination of Maccabi coaches and Camp Northland staff.

Tommy Bacher, president of Maccabi Canada, called the new endeavor a natural progression of the organization’s ongoing community sports initiatives. Bacher believes launching a summer camp experience under the Maccabi banner is the perfect way to build on the weekly sports programming offered in basketball and volleyball over the past year. The eight-week programs feature grassroots learning in 90-minute sessions, where the focus is on honing skills and having fun. The camp is the next step in those growing efforts.

“It allows us to touch a lot more kids. For every kid that goes to camp, 500 [others] hear about it,” said Bacher. “For us, it’s an opportunity to bring more kids into a quality program that revolves around sport and them being Jewish. The more things we can do with that, the better. My whole goal is connecting the next generation to their past, to their heritage and to the state of Israel. And we’re using sport as a way of doing that.”

Bacher said the camp will also provide a parallel overnight setting to the Maccabiah Games in Israel, allowing participants to form bonds with each other through a shared three-week experience. Wolle is excited to provide that outlet.

“We want to create a home for every Jewish kid to find their place and make connections and stay connected to the Jewish community,” said Wolle, echoing Bacher’s sentiments. “There are kids using the medium of sport to feel more connected to the Jewish community and we wanted to create that pipeline … between sport and camp, and say you don’t have to give it up. You can have your cake and eat it, too.”

For more information, visit maccabicanada.com.

Format ImagePosted on May 13, 2016May 11, 2016Author Maccabi CanadaCategories NationalTags camp, Maccabi, Northland, sports
More than physical strength

More than physical strength

Leah Goldstein shares her life story in No Limits. (photo from Leah Goldstein)

Leah Goldstein put the “severe” into persevere. The physical demands and rigors she has experienced in her life include being a kickboxing champion, a Taekwondo champion, a professional road-racing cyclist, an officer in the Israeli commando and elite police unit, and a participant on the Race Across America, a 3,000-mile bike trek. The B.C. local recently published her memoir, No Limits, outlining the triumphs and the tragedies of her athletic life.

Lessons in fortitude and grit began with her grandparents – survivors of the Shoah – trickling down to her parents, who arrived in Canada from Israel with very little English and a hundred dollars to their name. To make ends meet, her parents worked opposite shifts.

“It’s just the determination of somebody wanting something that bad, and would do anything to get there,” Goldstein told the Independent.

That would be something of a mantra throughout her life, beginning with Taekwondo lessons at age 9. By 16, she achieved a black belt as National Junior Champion. She then moved on to kickboxing. While jugging high school classes, she became World Bantamweight Kickboxing Champion.

As a teenager, her coach had her follow a strict regimen of “no smoking, no drinking, no friends, no phone, no junk food, and seven days a week of training. I did exactly what he said and I didn’t have a teenage life,” recalled Goldstein, now 47.

She went on to win a slew of championships provincially, nationally and in the United States. “Those sacrifices were worth the payoff at the end,” she conceded.

That distilled willpower carried into her Israeli military service. She became one of a handful of women instructors of the elite commando division and, later, a krav maga self-defence trainer for special unit soldiers.

Goldstein was one of only two women to successfully complete the harsh commando training of Course Madaseem, and the only woman out of about 30 recruits to graduate from a then newly established special program at the Israeli Police Academy. She went on to work in the undercover narcotics division, the intelligence services, anti-terrorism department, violent crime investigations, and was an instructor for officials and field workers.

In one 20-hour long grueling military training session that she describes, recruits subsisted on 30 minutes of sleep, then had to repeat the exercise. While many “dropped like flies,” she learned that survival depended largely on what “happens in our mind.”

That was a lesson that went back to her tournament days as a youth. As a second-degree black-belt kickboxer, she had won virtually every bout, but an admitted inflated ego led her to be distracted, and badly defeated, in one match in particular.

“Refocus, and be humble,” she recalled her coach insisting. “And, with every opponent that I had, or any challenges, treat it like it’s your biggest threat.”

When she left policing, she shifted to professional cycling. While her law enforcement career left her emotionally tattered, it was cycling that left her the most battered and bruised physically.

In a Pennsylvania race just prior to the 2004 Olympics, she fell off the bike, breaking her hand. And then, in 2005, after winning nine of her first 11 races, she was involved in what she calls “the mother of all crashes” during the Cascade Classic – she landed on her face at 80 kilometres an hour, “breaking practically every bone in my body, ripping my face right off.”

Doctors were astounded she survived at all, she said.

More astounding was her outlook on the situation: “I actually came back out of that stronger than I was prior.”

book cover - No Limits by Leah GoldsteinIt was in 2007 approximately when she started to consider taking David Spanner’s advice – he wrote a feature on her for the Province newspaper – to write a book for the purpose of inspiring others.

“I didn’t understand that at the time because, when you’re an athlete, you’re very self-absorbed and everything is about you,” she said.

The decision to write a book solidified as she did more public speaking engagements. Attendees were quite moved by her stories of resilience.

“I said, ‘Woah, if my story is really that powerful, and I can potentially change lives and help inspire, motivate people, then this book has to be written,’” she explained. “For many of us, it’s easy to be safe. We’re so afraid to fail. But part of succeeding is facing failure. I think it’s just having movement in life, and not watching great things that other people do, but starting to do great things and wowing yourself.”

Goldstein walked her talk or, rather, pedaled her talk, returning to the racing circuit in 2011, winning the women’s solo category of Race Across America, breaking the previous record by 12 hours.

“It’s really using your mind,” she said of perseverance. “When you feel every element of pain, and you’re exhausted and tired, and you just don’t want to be there – and then it starts raining and it’s minus-two degrees – it’s just all about being able to keep it together.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work can be found in more than 100 publications globally. His is managing editor of landmarkreport.com.

Format ImagePosted on February 26, 2016February 25, 2016Author Dave GordonCategories BooksTags Leah Goldstein, sports
Local athletes have lots of fun

Local athletes have lots of fun

The silver-medal-winning volleyball team at the JCC Maccabi Games in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (photo by Kyle Berger)

They weren’t the largest delegation at the JCC Maccabi Games in Fort Lauderdale this past August, but Team Vancouver’s 13 athletes certainly made their presence felt.

photo - Jada Wilson, left, and Sydney Cristall at the opening ceremonies of the games in Fort Lauderdale, Aug 7
Jada Wilson, left, and Sydney Cristall at the opening ceremonies of the games in Fort Lauderdale, Aug 7. (photo by Kyle Berger)

No moment stood out greater than when the six local girls joined with four others from around North America – meeting for the first time at the games – to make up a volleyball team. They ended up taking the silver medal, beating out more experienced teams from New York, Massachusetts and California. Leah Serlin, Leah Schwartz, Jada Wilson, Julia Tregobov, Sydney Cristall and Simone Killas, aged 13-16, formed the core of the team coached by Jack Serlin. Despite not practising as a full squad until arriving at the games, the group came together and lost only to the host city’s team of all 16-year-old club players in the finals.

“For a new team facing several challenges, to be able to beat out teams who train and play together all season, such as Bensonhurst (Brooklyn) and Orange County, is quite an achievement,” said Jack Serlin. “It was such an overall feeling of pride and satisfaction seeing the girls come together as a unit, genuinely grow to like and play for each other, and perform so well on the court and have so much fun off of it.”

Serlin said he is already considering plans to battle for the gold medal next summer. “The fact that all the eligible girls can’t wait to come back next year is truly a testament to how successful we were and what an incredible experience the JCC Maccabi Games are regardless of your background or from where you come,” he said.

photo - Rachel Bugis, left, and Magalee Blumenkrans celebrate after a big soccer victory
Rachel Bugis, left, and Magalee Blumenkrans celebrate after a big soccer victory. (photo by Kyle Berger)

The Team Vancouver delegation was also made up of soccer players Josh Bugis, Rachel Bugis, Magalee Blumenkrans and Saul Kalvari. Zach Moldowan joined a baseball team from North Miami Beach while Jackson March won a couple of bronze medals in table tennis and Sydney Swick from Winnipeg joined the Vancouver delegation and took home a couple of medals herself.

“The JCC Maccabi Games is awesome every time I go,” said Kalvari, who attended his second set of games this summer. “The people you meet are amazing, from all over the world, and everyone is there for the same reasons. It’s great to be surrounded by so many Jewish teens just there to have fun.”

The JCC Maccabi Games are an annual multi-sport event hosted in different North American cities each summer. Jewish teens from around the globe compete in the Olympic-style event. The JCC Maccabi Arts Fest runs parallel to the games, engaging teen artists, who participate in workshops with a final performance or show at the end of the week. The games and arts fest attracts more than 3,000 Jewish teens each summer.

For more information on the JCC Maccabi Games and next year’s events, contact me at [email protected].

Kyle Berger is Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver sports coordinator, and a freelance writer living in Richmond.

Format ImagePosted on September 11, 2015September 9, 2015Author Kyle BergerCategories LocalTags Jack Sirlin, JCC Maccabi Games, Saul Kalvari, sports

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