Tagged Sports

TEL AVIV (JTA) — A couple weeks ago, Adam Atkins didn’t know Israel had a baseball team. But since the squad started winning games last week in the World Baseball Classic, he has become a fan. Atkins and his friends wanted team caps, but were frustrated to discover they were… Read more »

Former Duke University basketball star Jon Scheyer, who will be playing pro ball for Maccabi Tel Aviv, at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel following his group aliyah flight, Aug. 30, 2011. (Sasson Tiram)

The night after the National Basketball Association season was scheduled to begin, Jon Scheyer, perhaps the best Jewish basketball player of his generation, was in his Tel Aviv apartment talking about Israeli cuisine and hoops in the United States and the Holy Land. “It’s nuts,” he said last week… Read more »

Alfred Schreier returned to Vienna in 2009 for the 100th anniversary of the Hakoah Sport Club (above), and again this summer for the first European Maccabi Games to be held in a German-speaking country since 1945.

Alfred Schreier was proud to be among the 2,000 athletes representing 37 nations at this year’s European Maccabi Games held July 5 to 13 in Vienna, Austria. A Sahuarita resident, Schreier, 82, was born in Vienna, where he returned after the Holocaust to become a successful teen athlete in… Read more »

The Tucson Jewish Community Center will send a delegation to the inaugural Junior Maccabi Games for ages 11-13, to be held in Chicago May 27-31. Tucson plans to take a boys basketball team, a girls basketball team and several swimmers, says Stu Epstein, head of the Tucson delegation. For… Read more »

The Tucson International Jewish Film Festival will present a sneak preview of “Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story” on Sunday, Nov. 28 from 4 to 7 p.m. at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. The festival runs Jan. 20-30, 2011. “Jews and Baseball” explores the contributions of Jewish major… Read more »

Noach Braun, left, and Gadi Yarkoni practice runningtied to each other in preparation for the New York Marathon, July 2010. (Courtesy of Michael J. Leventhal)

NEW YORK (JTA) — When Noach Braun and Gadi Yarkoni run this year’s New York City marathon on Nov. 7, they’ll be tied together at the hip — literally. Yarkoni, an Israeli who lost his sight during combat in Lebanon 15 years ago, will be tethered by a strap… Read more »

Ruben Amaro Jr., right, the general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, joins Mayor Michael Nutter and the team’s mascot at a pep rally in Philadelphia during the playoffs in 2009. (Darryl W. Moran)

PHILADELPHIA (JTA) — The son and grandson of professional baseball players, Ruben Amaro Jr. was as good a candidate as any to become a baseball lifer. Yet soccer was actually his “first love” as a kid, and he was good enough at the sport to qualify for a youth… Read more »

Kendall Karon cleans the headstone of a war veteran as part of the Maccabi Games Day of Caring and Sharing.

The Tucson Maccabi Delegation of 14 teen athletes attended the Maccabi Games in Omaha, Neb., Aug. 1-6, making this the 15th year the Tucson Jewish Community Center has fielded a team. The games attract thousands of Jewish youth each year from across the United States, Mexico, Canada, Israel and… Read more »

Just six months before the end of his Israeli army service, Elad Belachsan suffered a life-changing injury in a Palestinian attack. On a mission in the West Bank city of Nablus with his paratrooper unit, Belachsan, now 27, was near the front of the group when a bomb exploded,… Read more »

The Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona will take baseball fans out to the ballgame for the inaugural Jewish Heritage Day at Chase Field in Phoenix on Sunday, Aug. 22. The Colorado Rockies will play the Arizona Diamondbacks at 1:10 p.m. and fans will celebrate Arizona’s Jewish heritage with special… Read more »

Yeshurun Gavish, who will be participating in the July 18 New York City Triathlon, with two of his children. (Yeshurun Gavish/JTA Photo Service)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Just six months before the end of his Israeli army service, Elad Belachsan suffered a life-changing injury in a Palestinian attack. On a mission in the West Bank city of Nablus with his paratroopers unit, Belachsan, now 27, was near the front of the group… Read more »