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Matt Broder
University of Michigan
sophomore Matt Broder
picked off seven runners
this past season, tying
for second place among
Big 10 Conference
pitchers. The 6-foot-5,
/ 200-pound southpaw
from Bloomfield Hills
appeared in 14 games (five starts) and had a
4.82 ERA and 23 strikeouts in 37% innings. He
earned his first collegiate victory when he beat
Massachusetts on March 5.
Matt Fenster
Matt Fenster was Mr.
Versatile this past season
for the Lafayette College
baseball team. The senior
from Bloomfield Hills
started 33 games at first
base, eight games at
third base, five games
as the designated hitter,
and one game at second base. He batted
.269, knocked in 23 runs, hit a team-best five
sacrifice flies and had a pair of nine-game hit-
ting streaks. He was a career .320 hitter for the
Easton, Pa., school.
Billy Slobin
Senior Vice President
NMLS # 131197
As a Senior Vice President at Capital Mortgage Funding Billy is entering his 24th year in
residential lending. During 12 of these years he was ranked by Mortgage Originator Mag-
azine as one of the nations top 200 Loan Originators. Billy has been married for 17 years
to Tracy and is the proud father of Stephen and Jake. Community service minded, he has
been avolunteer high school and youth coach for over twenty years. His influence over area
youth is legendary. He has former players in the NFL, NCAA and also spread throughout
the country in numerous business capacities. Many of these young men mention Billy's
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You can reach Billy at 1-800-LOW-RATE or by email at wbslobin@lowrateonline.com .
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Good As Gold!
Ten-goal effort leads Maccabi in Austria.
Steve Stein
Contributing Writer
I
f Stephanie Crawford's soccer
career is indeed over, she sure went
out in a blaze of glory in the most
unusual of venues.
The former Novi High School star
scored 10 goals in four games, the
most of any player in the women's
soccer open division, in leading the
U.S. team to a gold medal last week at
the 13th European Maccabi Games in
Vienna, Austria.
The venue was significant because
this was the first time Jewish athletes
from across the world gathered for
a Jewish competition on territory
formerly under the control of Nazi
Germany.
Some 2,000 athletes ages 12 to plus-
80 from 37 countries participated in
the Games' opening ceremonies in
front of Vienna City Hall.
That's only a few hundred yards from
the Heldenplatz (Heroes' Square), where
Adolf Hitler announced in 1938 Nazi
Germany's annexation of Austria to the
cheers of a quarter-million people.
About 10,000 Jews live in Vienna
today, a far cry from the 250,000 who
called the city home before World War II.
Some 65,000 Viennese Jews were
murdered by the Germans. They were
remembered and honored by the
Maccabi athletes and their family and
friends who came to Vienna to cheer
them on.
Soccer and other sports in the com-
petition were played at Hakoah, a sports
club shut down by the Nazis in 1938
because it had so many Jewish mem-
bers. The club reopened in 1945.
The U'S. women's soccer team beat
Great Britain 7-0 and 3-0 and Germany
11-1 and 12-0. Crawford scored at least
two goals in each game and four times
in the second game against Germany.
Not bad for someone who hadn't
played competitive soccer for two years.
Crawford, 22, is a senior at the
University of Michigan. She's two
classes away from earning a bachelor's
degree in actuarial math.
She played soccer for the Wolverines
as a freshman, but endured an injury-
plagued sophomore season and decided
to become a full-time student.
Crawford came out of soccer "retire-
ment" briefly in the summer of 2009,
when she was a member of the open
division gold-medal winning U.S. team
at the 18th Maccabiah Games in Israel.
An invitation earlier this year from
Soccer star Stephanie Crawford
Maccabi USA to join the U.S. team for
the European Maccabi Games came out
of the blue.
"I thought that was it for soccer for me
two years ago',' the 5-foot-3 forward said.
"Who knows? Maybe I'll go back to Israel
(for the Maccabiah Games) in two years."
Crawford and her teammates had an
easy time of it on the pitch in Austria.
"A lot of players on the other teams
hadn't played a lot of soccer;' Crawford
said. "Most of us have been playing
since we were 4 or 5!'
The U.S. fielded a roster filled with
top-notch high school players, Division
I recruits and former Division I players.
One of the Division I recruits
was goalie Rachel Bergman from
West Bloomfield, who is headed to
Northwestern University.
"Rachel is really
good': said Crawford,
a three-time state
champion and
two-time member
of the Michigan
High School Soccer
Coaches Association
Rachel
Dream Team when
Bergman
she played at Novi.
Libby Crawford,
Stephanie's mother, admits she didn't
know what to expect in Austria. She
came home feeling she'd had the experi-
ence of a lifetime.
"I wondered how we would be
received there, but the people were very
welcoming and pleasant',' she said. "One
of the highlights for me was a wonder-
ful Shabbat service and dinner in the
city's main synagogue, the only one that
survived the Nazis."
Send sports news to sports@
thejewishnews.com .
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