38 | AUGUST 19 • 2021 

The Detroit Shul Basketball 
League has wrapped up its 
inaugural season.
Now it gives way to 
the Detroit Synagogue 
Basketball League for its 
debut season.
Shul League games were 
played at Farber Hebrew 
Day School in Southfield, 
which will be the site for 

Synagogue League games.
Playoffs in the weekly 
Shul League — a five-
team league put together 
by 20-year-old Daniel 
Shamayev of Keego Harbor 
over a couple weeks in July 
— were held Aug. 17 and 18, 
with third-place and cham-
pionship games played 
Aug. 18.

The Shul League 
was made up most-
ly of teams from 
area Orthodox 
shuls.
Going into the playoffs, 
the only two league teams 
with above .500 records 
in the regular season were 
Young Israel of Oak Park 
(4-1) and an unnamed team 

coached by Dylan 
Bressler (3-1).
“But the league 
was very com-
petitive,” said 
Farber graduate 
Shamayev, the 
league’s youngest 
player along with 
being its founder 
and commissioner.
Shamayev 
hopes the Synagogue 
League, also his idea, also 
will have teams from area 
Reform and Conservative 
synagogues, hence the 
name change from the Shul 

quick hits
BY STEVE STEIN 

J

osh Baker hit his tee 
shot on the third hole of 
the South course at the 
Links of Novi. He had no idea 
what was about to happen.
Using an old tee from 
another golfer he had just 
found on the ground, Baker 
launched a 9-iron shot on the 
133-yard par-3 hole that made 
history.
When his shot rolled into 
the cup, it was not only his 
first hole-in-one in his 23 
years of playing golf, but the 
first ace in the nine-year his-
tory of the B’nai B’rith Golf 
League.
Baker was so excited after 
his shot that he didn’t think 
about saving the golf ball he 
used for the ace.

“I played with that ball for 
the next couple holes until 
someone told me to put it 
away,” he said.
It was a good idea to put 
away the ball because Baker 
lost a different golf ball while 
playing the eighth hole.
Perhaps distracted by the 
aftermath of his hole-in-one, 
Baker shot double-bogey on 
the final two holes of the nine-
hole round and finished with 
7-over 41.
Baker normally plays more 
golf than he’s been able to 
squeeze in this summer.
The 48-year-old West 
Bloomfield resident is the 
owner of Baker Design + 
Build, a building and remod-
eling company, and he’s been 

NMLS#2289

DAVID SWIMMER

Golfer’s fi
 rst hole-in-one is the fi
 rst
ace in B’nai B’rith league history.

Baker Takes 
the Cake!

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

sports HIGHlights

brought to you in partnership with 

Longtime friends 
and B’nai B’rith Golf 
League teammates 
Josh Harvith (left) 
and Josh Baker 
stand by the pin 
where Baker shot a 
hole-in-one.
LEFT: Here’s Josh 
Baker’s hole-in-one 
scorecard.

Shul Basketball League Becomes
the Synagogue Basketball League

Daniel Shamayev

