Maccabi Games Detroit

Soviet Emigre
ol i t m m sa O cn cabi
Det S rw

Team

KIMBERLY LIFTON

Staff Writer

F

or the past few months,
Ruslan Yakubov, 14,
matter of factly packed
his swim suit and towel into
a plastic shopping bag for his
twice weekly trip to the pool
at the Maple-Drake Jewish
Community Center.
There, he met young chi-
ropractor Ron Freed, whose
job was to coach the recent
Soviet immigrant for the
Maccabi Games. It was a
hard job for Dr. Freed,
himself a former competitive
swimmer.
Dr. Freed started coaching
Ruslan at the urging of Mac-

Jay watched me
swim and said,
'You swim all right,
but you need
practice.

cabi Games general chair-
man Jay Robinson, his
former neighbor, who want-
ed to help make some of the
new Americans feel at home
in Detroit.
"Jay just called me and
asked if I could volunteer a
few hours a week," Dr.
Freed said. "We worked
together for 10 weeks.
Ruslan is an extremely nice,
sensitive guy.
"He couldn't swim much
when we started," Dr. Freed
added. "Yet he improved
drastically in just a few
months. For a swimmer who
had limited abilities in the
beginning, he showed great
progress to the point where
he was able to positively
compete in the Maccabi
games."
After Ruslan finished his
training with Dr. Freed, he
spent a few weeks at a spe-
cial training camp at Camp
Maas, where he practiced
swimming before this week's
games.

"I learned how to swim
five years ago," Ruslan said.
"But swimming in Russia
seemed different. American
people swim better."
His sister, 17-year-old
Samira, grimaced when she
heard Ruslan's statement.
"I don't think so," she told
her brother. "There are
many Russian champions."
The son of Shura and
Svetlana Yakubov of
Southfield, Ruslan came to
this country with his family
11 months ago. They left the
Soviet Union a little over a
year ago, and spent a few
months in Vienna and Italy
before settling in Detroit.
They come from Baku in
the Soviet Union, a city
Ruslan described as nice but
not as pleasant as
Southfield.
"I like it better here," he
said.
Ruslan and Samira attend
Southfield High School,
where both are tackling the
English language. Neither
youngster spoke English in
the Soviet Union, but both
are nearly fluent in their
speaking.
Ruslan spends his days
swimming at his apartment
complex pool and watching
television, which he said
helps teach him the lang-
uage. He also works as a
dishwasher on Sundays at
Sara's Glatt Kosher Deli.
Samira is not interested in
sports, but Ruslan's curiosi-
ty sparked the attention of
his American host family,
the Baers, who contacted
Mr. Robinson.
"My American family
called Jay Robinson and he
called me and said to come
see him," Ruslan recalled.
"Jay watched me swim and
said, 'You swim all right,
but you need practice.'
"I don't know if I am faster
now," he said. "I don't know
if I can win.
"I have to swim a lot be-
cause Maccabi is very hard,"
he said. "I want to work
hard to win." ❑

Gymnasts Heidi Feldman (left) and Julie Gottesman stretch out before their competition.

Young Gymnast
Weighs Pros, Cons
Of Competing

RICHARD PEARL

Staff Writer

eremy Hertza, the only
boy on the Detroit
Maccabi Club's gym-
nastics squad, wanted to
compete so badly in the Jew-
ish Community Centers
North American Youth
Games that it hurt.
In fact, "hurt" — as in
knee injury — was the
operative word this week for
the slightly built, blond-
haired 13-year-old son of team
coaches Ron and Diane
Hertza.
He had injured his right
knee earlier in the year and
had tried resting it in hope of
competing in the Youth
Games. As of Monday after-
noon, when he and the other
39 competitors were becom-
ing accustomed to the newly
installed gymnastics equip-
ment in the JCC's
Rosenberg Recreational
Complex, he was still plann-
ing on competing.
He would have to enter all
the events — floor exercises,
pommel horse, rings,

j

sidehorse vault, parallel
bars and high bar — to score
points in the all-around,
which is his goal.
The knee, wrapped in
heavy bandages Monday,
was still very tender. And
the new landing mats, ac-
cording to Jeremy, were
stiff. But even though some
tried to talk the youngster
out of competing, he felt that
not participating would hurt
more than the discomfort in
his right knee.
Two of Detroit's four
female entrants, Michelle
Wolfe and Meryl Bender,
both in the 15-16 age group,
said they tried to ease the
butterflies of their younger
teammates, Heidi Feldman
and Julie Gottesman, both
13, "but they were still pret-
ty nervous."
Both Wolfe, 15, and
Bender, 16, represented
Detroit in the 1988 Chicago
Youth Games and placed
among the top five, and
Bender also competed in the
1986 Toronto Games.
Their attitude, they said,
was "to have fun and meet
people from other places" —

an attitude they are pro-
moting to their younger
teammates.
The field of 39 gymnasts,
25 of whom are girls, was de-
scribed by one coach, Mark
Weber of Baltimore, as being
only about half the size of
the Chicago Games' field.
Most of the teams had so few
entrants that the rules were
changed so that a minimum
of two athletes in the same
age group, instead of three,
would be considered a team.
Even with the rules
changes, only Detroit,
Philadelphia and St. Louis
among the girls and
Chicago, Philadelphia and
Toronto among the boys had
enough entrants in either
the 13-14 or 15-16 age group-
ings to qualify for the team
competition. The other cities
— Denver, Detroit and Mex-
ico for the boys and
Baltimore, Chicago, Edmon-
ton, Kansas City, Northern
California, Ottawa, Rich-
mond, Va., San Antonio,
Toronto and Wayne, N.J.,
among the girls — had en-
trants in individual competi-
tion only. ❑

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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