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Baltimore, Maryland's harbor and downtown area.
STEVE WHITELEY
BALTIMORE
IN '9
Special to The Jewish News
n 1992, the Jewish
Community Centers —
North American Mac-
cabi Youth Games will be
held in Baltimore, Md. This
will be the first time since the
competition's 1982 inception
that the Games will be con-
tested on the East Coast of
the United States.
The Jewish athletic tradi-
tion was formalized in 1895,
a year before the modern
Olympics began, when the
I
Steve Whitely is a staff writer
at our sister paper, the
Baltimore Jewish Times.
The Maryland delegation will be
taking a close look at the
Games in Detroit
first Maccabi Club was es-
tablished in Constantinople.
Other Jewish athletic clubs
were formed throughout
Europe as an alternative to
athletic clubs which exclud-
ed Jews.
The first World Maccabi
Games, the model for the
North American Games,
were held in 1932, in
Jerusalem. World War II
forced the suspension of the
Games until 1950, when
Israel became the perma-
nent host of the quadrennial
World Maccabi Games.
The North American Mac-
cabi Youth Games, held
every two years, are open to
Jewish athletes between the
ages of 13 and 16.
Keith Ewing, director of
health and fitness at the
Jewish Community Center
of Baltimore, has been nam-
ed Baltimore's Maccabi
Games director, a position
which may become a full-
time job in itself in the corn-
ing months.
The first order of business
for Ewing was setting up the
network of professionals and
top level volunteers who will
essentially run the
Baltimore Games. Last
February, a committee was
formed to oversee the
Games' organization. Ew-
ing, who has hired one
fulltime staffer to help him
prepare for the 1992 Games,
said, "We have put key peo-
ple in key positions, and laid
the groundwork for organi-
zing the Games. That's the
first step."
Ewing noted the impor-
tance of the myriad vol-
unteers who will be needed
to handle the details of runn-
ing the Games. Besides the
subcommittee chairpersons,
Detroit has recruited 800
volunteers to work the 1990
Games, and most likely
Baltimore will need about
the same number.
Ewing has travelled to
Detroit twice to learn more
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
M-17