weightlifting, Robinson runs
two miles every day and
wrestles with friends from
his East Detroit team on
mats his father bought and
put behind their house. He
also works 20 hours a week
in an East Detroit restau-
rant.
While Robinson is looking
forward to competing
against other Jewish teens
in the Youth Games this
month, that's not his main
goal. "I want to take a gold
medal at the Maccabi,"

"I want to take a
gold medal at the
Maccabi. That's my
dream."
Steve
Robinson

Steve Robinson

As a sophomore at East
Detroit last year, he played
football and wrestled varsity
at 119 pounds, winning the
Eastern Michigan League
championship and then
finishing 12th in his first

state high school wrestling
tournament.
A knee injury kept him
from defending his AAU
title this summer, but not
from preparing for the Mac-
cabi Games. In addition to

Robinson said. "That's my
dream."
Net star Seth Hoffman, 15,
who has been in three
previous Youth Games —the
Cleveland regionals in 1987,
the Chicago North American
Games in 1988 and last
year's Pittsburgh regionals
— played his main sport,
tennis, only at Cleveland,
where he won a gold medal
as a 12-year-old.
Since then, he's played
basketball in the Maccabi —
"I get tired of tennis week
after week," he said. "It's
fun to play basketball."
Besides, he said, the
roundball sport helps with

SHIRA
DRISSMAN

Chess

AT

THE

TABLE

Seth Hoffman

his conditioning for tennis,
which he practices daily.
The Farmington North
sophomore has high school
basketball experience: he
played both freshman and
junior varsity last winter,
averaging 25 points per
game as a frosh for half a
season before moving up to
JV, where he worked more
on his passing game and
ball-handling.
Although tennis tour-
naments around the country
have made him miss a
number of basketball prac-
tices, Hoffman likes working
with coach Howard Golding
and tries to squeeze in prac-
tices as often as he can. He
also goes one-on-one with
another good basketball
player — older brother Matt,
the ace of the North Farm-
ington High School team
last season who earned a col-
legiate cage scholarship to
Lake Superior State Univer-
sity.
The younger Hoffman will
be corning into the Maccabi
after competing in the na-
tional 15-16 junior tennis
tournament at Kalamazoo
Aug. 7-11, but he'll be ready
to play basketball. CI

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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