Hard
Luck
Stories
his third soccer-related head injury,
although only two were professional-
ly diagnosed. "It'll keep me from
playing in the pre-season for high
school," he said. "It was a bad con-
cussion, but also the fact that it was-
n't my first didn't help."
Jackie Sefferman of Bloomfield
Hills, Altman's host mother, stayed
with him at the hospital until his
release. "She and [Mid-Westchester
injuries were foot or ankle problems
and muscle pulls. There were also
two concussions.
The team that earned the
"M*A*S*H*" unit award was
Hartford, with two ankle injuries
and a broken nose during the week.
One star athlete wasn't able to
come to Detroit. Philadelphia's Eric
Cohen is a 16-year-old who would
have taken part in his final Maccabi
as a swimmer for the Philadelphia
delegation. He injured his knee play-
ing basketball this spring.
"The Magnetic Resonance
Imaging test showed a ligament and
cartilage tear," said his mother,
Carole. "He couldn't kick hard or
dive."
Cohen was a terror in the
Maccabi pool in 1996 at Metro
West, N.J., winning eight gold
medals and one silver. At the
Maccabiah Games in Israel last sum-
mer, he won a silver in the 200-
meter freestyle and two gold medals
in relays.
"He's had a fabulous time in the
past," Carole said. "It's too bad he
couldn't make it."
One Detroit athlete helped her
team gain a gold medal in gymnas-
tics depite the injury bug. Deborah
Rose, a I3-year-old gymnast, injured
her left ankle during her 25 hours
per week of training. She aggrevated
her right knee compensating for the
ankle injury.
"The left ankle has small tears in
the ligaments and the muscles in my
right knee don't support me real
well," she said. But she competed on
the bars for her team, despite not
doing well in the individual events.
Sari Placona and Sari Levi, both
15, were on crutches as they watched
their team fall out of the tournament
against South Jersey.
Placona stretched ligaments in her
ankle as she got caught in a tackle
during an earlier game against
Detroit White. Levi bruised her
ankle against Chicago, but played
through that game as well as the
next two before Abramson made her
Some athletes
had their Maccabi
week cut short.
LONNY GOLDSMITH
Staff Writer
A
mere 90 seconds into the
boys' I 5-to-16-year-old
soccer tournament, Mid-
Westchester, N.Y., striker
Alex Altman skied through the air
with a Los Angeles midfielder, trying
to head a ball.
It was a soccer move he had
repeated countless times, but it had
never before ended like this.
"I remember going up for a head-
er, and then I was out," Altman said.
"I walked off the field disoriented
and then blacked out again."
Altman suffered a concussion
caused by an inadvertent elbow from
the Los Angeles player, and it ended
the 16-year-old's final Maccabi
Games.
"It was an illegal play, but unin-
tentional," he said.
Altman's injury was among the
many that kept athletes on the side-
lines for some or all of the week.
Altman said the concussion was
,
Alex Altman, with coach Greg Papadopoulos, watches his Mid-Westchester team fro
the sidelines.
delegation head] Betsy Abramson
were great," Altman said.
"The worst part is not being able
to play," he lamented. "I don't even
like being subbed out."
The Mid-Westchester girls' team
also ran into a stretch of bad luck.
The team was seeded 12th and upset
Detroit's White team en route to the
quarterfinals, but did it severely
shorthanded.
see a doctor.
"I thought I was fine to play," she
said.
According to Steve Robinson,
who organized the soccer tourna-
ment, injuries are part of the game.
"The officials commented on the
rough and physical play of the
games, although it wasn't dirty," he
said.
Robinson said most of the soccer
El
,
Striking A Balance
Detroit's in-line hockey team had their hearts set on the gold.
MIKE ROSENBAUM
Special to The Jewish News
here are two parts to every Maccabi
Games: the competitive aspect and
the social/cultural part.
As the 1998 JCC Maccabi
Games competition began on Aug. 17, Detroit
in-line hockey coach Steve Friedman and assis-
tant Rick Zussman tried to get their team to
strike a balance.
"The good thing about Maccabi is, it's not
just centered around the competition,"
Friedman says. "It's cultural, its meeting peo-
ple and you try to teach that to the kids."
But in-line hOckej , has its intense side. The
teams play five men per side. With is no off-
side rule, no icing and no checking, it's a fast-
paced, wide-open game.
Detroit finished second in the 1997 regional
Maccabi Games in Pittsburgh, losing to Los
BALANCE on page 30
Brent and Brian
Bortman check
out the action.
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