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Israelis On Ice
Local athlete helps Israel assemble an Olympic curling team.
Harry Kirsbaum I Contributing Writer
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been curling since high school. "We're
trying to build an international program
with national elements within the span of
a couple of months. I'm doing it remotely,
at three in the morning, looking at emails,
reaching out to people and coming up with
ideas:'
But to understand the possibilities for
this dream of his, one has to look at the
intersecting point of the 30-year history of
Israeli winter sports with the quirky world
of a 500-year-old Scottish sport that com-
bines ice, rocks (44-pound granite stones
with handles), brooms, sliding shoes and
throws good enough to land points in a tar-
get at the opposite end of the ice.
Israeli Winter Sports
In the 1990s in the Israeli border town
of Metulla — a city with the slogan, "No
more north of that" — then-Mayor Yosef
Goldberg saw an influx of Soviet Jews and
dreamed of building a complex dedicated to
the Winter Olympics.
With Canadian backing, the Canada
Center was built, along with the first real
hockey-sized rink in the country, Lutz said.
Goldberg wanted to promote ski jump-
ing, bobsledding and speed skating. The
Canadians also reached out to the World
Curling Federation (WCF) and said they
wanted to build up the sport, so they
included brooms and rocks along with the
other equipment.
When Goldberg died in 2002, curling
basically died with him and, by 2007, Israel
was disqualified as a WCF member due to
inactivity
Enter Simon Pack, current Israel Curling
Federation (ICF) director of development.
Armed with a doctorate in sports manage-
ment, he was examining Israel's Olympic
sports structure and wondered why certain
sports were missing, especially the winter
sports.
"I somehow came across curling and
discovered that it did actually exist at one
time," he said.
He discovered that Sharon Cohen, cur-
rent ICF secretary general, was using the
old equipment for wheelchair curling as a
way to get disabled veterans back on the
right road.
"Cohen had also been working already
for a few years on the bureaucratic part of
transferring the ICF to a different govern-
ing board, while at the same time trying to
get people on the ice to curl in Metulla and
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Jerusalem at a recreation skating facility
open for just three months a year," he said.
"My first goal was to get Israel reinstated to
the WCE'
After much persistence, they were rein-
stated in September 2013, with the help of
WCF president Kate Caithness, a champion
of Paralympic sports who noted Cohen's
work with soldiers.
Israel was back in the game. Now they
just needed a team.
Above: Israeli team
member Gabrielle Coleman
of San Francisco on the ice
North American Link
With Olympic dreams in his head, Jeff
Lutz became hooked on curling at 13 while
watching the 1998 Sapporo Olympics on the
CBC at ridiculous hours of the night.
"It appeared not to take a lot of physical
ability and it looked like a fun sport:' he
said. "I've never been the most physically
gifted individual and it seemed like the
easiest way to get into the Olympics:'
His first tournament was competing in
the 2000 U.S. Juniors while he was a student
at Bloomfield Hills Andover High School.
A year later he tried out, but lost at the
Olympic Trials.
When he entered Syracuse University in
2002, he decided to take a break from curl-
ing to study and become a typical student.
But he met freshman Andrew McClune, a
Lockerbie Scholar, (a program developed
after SU lost 35 students on Pan AM 103).
McClune was also Scotland's junior cham-
pionship curler, and Lutz was
back in action.
Unfortunately, McClune
died a few months later in an
accident.
"A month before he died we played in
a collegiate challenge against Cornell in
November 2002. Andrew and I, who had
experience, and two others with little
experience played Cornell, considered the
best curling team in the country, and beat
them:' he said. "We planned on playing in
the College Nationals in March, and I had
all these grand dreams, but when Andrew
passed away, it took the wind out of me. I've
never completely gotten over it.
"We made a memorial service in January.
His family came into town and his grand-
father willed us on:' he said. "In this deep
Scottish brogue, he told us, 'You have to do
it. Don't lean on the past; think about what's
to come.' And we did. We won our group,
Right: Jeff Lutz releases
a stone while his brother
Brad uses a broom to help
control its trajectory.
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beating Cornell again 12-2 and came in sec-
ond in the 2003 gold-medal match:'
They sent a silver medal to McClune's
grandfather.
Fast forward to September 2013. Now
married, living in Bloomfield Hills and
working as a marketing director at Troy-
based gloStream, a company that provides
software and services to independent medi-
cal practices, Lutz read about Pack's success
in getting Israel back into the WCF, and
wrote him a letter of congratulations.
"Jeff wrote more of his biography, without
asking me anything; Pack said. "I respond-
ed by saying 'Well, when are you going to
become a dual citizen and start taking this
Israelis On Ice on page 10