Sports

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Earning a medal is different than being awarded a medal at JCC Maccabi Games.

LONNY GOLDSMITH
Special to the Jewish News

Photo by Daniel Lippin

D

Above:
Talia Selitsky, 14,
won a silver
medal in track
and field in New
Jersey.

Left:
Joel Kashdan was
the Detroit teams
track and field
coach.

9/10
1999

172 Detroit Jewish News

etroit's Talia Selitsky finished
first in the 55-meter hurdles at
the JCC Maccabi Games but
refused the gold medal because
she won it on a technicality.
Her story illustrates that while winning
a medal is nice, it's not something all ath-
letes want at any cost.
Selitsky, 14, of Berkley, competed in
track and field in Cherry Hill, N.J.
"The girl that won couldn't actually do
so because she was running in her fifth
event," said Selitsky's coach, Joel Kashdan.
Selitsky wanted no part of being handed
a gold medal. "That doesn't count, so I gave
it back to the girl," Selitsky said, noting that
her British opponent, 13-year-old Samantha
Bloch, told her to keep the medal.
"I'm more proud of my silver than hav-
ing been given a gold," Selitsky said.
This year's JCC Maccabi Games drew
almost 5,000 athletes to four venues:
Columbus, Houston, Cherry Hill and
Rochester, N.Y. Detroit's 169 athletes, com-
peting in a variety of disciplines and accom-
panied by 36 coaches and delegation lead-
ers, were divided between the first three
cities over a two-week period in August.
These games, the first since Detroit
hosted 3,200 athletes last year, marks the
Jewish Community Centers of North
America's new way of holding the games,
which began in 1982. Instead of having
all the 13- to 16-year-old athletes in one
location during the even-numbered years
and regional events in the odd-numbered
years at multiple sites, the Maccabi now
will be hosted at several sites each year to
maximize participation.

The games allow teenagers to compete,
make friends and deepen their Jewish
identity.
"It's nice from a coaching perspective if
we can go to one site to increase the level
of competition," said Maccabi Club of
Metropolitan Detroit Chairman Alan
Horowitz. But I don't see that happening
in the foreseeable future."
Maximizing participation is important,
Horowitz said, but athletics are still an
integral part of the event.
"You can't lose sight of the fact that
you don't want to take away from the
quality of the athletics," he said. "The
kids are going to meet 100 teenagers if
there are 300, 800 or 5,000 others there.
"The smaller the games, the less diffi-
culty you have with logistics, but I think
the smaller games lose something."
Next year, the event will offer five
games at five sites — in Cincinnati,
Ohio; Richmond, Va.; Staten Island,
N.Y.; Boca Raton, Fla., and Tucson, Ariz.
Karen Sklar Gordon, a longtime
Detroit basketball coach turned delega-
tion head this year in Columbus, corn-
mented, "Hosting [smaller gatherings]
isn't better or worse, just different. At the
bigger games, the camaraderie of the
coaches is great, but at the smaller games
you can be closer with more people."
Detroit's delegation in Houston flew
south on Friday morning, Aug. 6, giving
participants three frill days in Texas to bond
with their hosts before the games kicked off
Sunday night.
"By Sunday night, it seemed like the
team had been together for a week," said
Jill Spokojny, delegation head in
Houston. "We got to be with our host
families and just our team. It was a nice