FEBRUARY 3 • 2022 | 43

I

t’s August 2019.
Detroit is hosting the 
annual JCC Maccabi 
Games & ArtsFest. Hundreds 
of teenage Jewish athletes 
and artists are in the area 
competing, creating and 
socializing.
Brennan Gesund and Lucas 
Hutten are playing for the 
Detroit “B” hockey team. 

They’re defensive partners 
and team leaders.
They’re having a great time 
even though their team isn’t 
winning because it’s facing 
teams with older and more 
experienced players.
Gesund and Hutten are 
looking forward to playing 
hockey for Detroit for as 
many as three more years 

before they become too old 
to participate in the Maccabi 
Games.
That opportunity was 
ripped away from them by a 
global pandemic.
Concerns about COVID-19 
caused the JCC Association 
of North America, which 
organizes and conducts the 
Maccabi Games, to cancel the 
event in 2020 and 2021.
Those decisions were 
historic. The Maccabi Games 
had never been canceled 
since they began in 1982.
It’s now 2022. The dead 
of winter. But here’s a warm 
thought. There will be a 
Maccabi Games this summer 
in San Diego.
It looks like 
Detroit will have 22 
athletes in California 
during the July 31 
through Aug. 5 
event.
Gesund and 
Hutten will be in 
San Diego for the 
Maccabi Games, 
playing hockey.
Detroit doesn’t 
have enough players 
for its own hockey 
team, so Gesend 
and Hutten will join 
players from other 
delegations to form 
a team.
That doesn’t matter.
“It’s my last year for the 
Maccabi Games. I want 
to go,” said Gesund, 15, a 
sophomore defenseman/
forward on the Walled Lake 
Western High School hockey 
team.
“I love hockey. I play it 
anytime I can. It was so cool 
to play with and against 
other Jewish kids when 
the Maccabi Games were 
in Detroit. I want to do it 
again,” he said.

Hutten, 16, a junior 
forward on the Novi High 
School hockey team, echoed 
those sentiments.
“I understand why 
it happened, but it was 
disappointing to have two 
years of playing hockey in the 
Maccabi Games taken away 
from me,” he said.
“My family hosted 
two hockey players from 
Cleveland when the Maccabi 
Games were held here. 
That was great. I’m looking 
forward to staying with a 
host family when I go to San 
Diego.
“Participating in the 
Maccabi Games was fun [in 
2019] because I 
got to meet a lot of 
other Jewish hockey 
players I otherwise 
would have never 
had the opportunity 
to meet,” he said.
Gesund and 
Hutten said they 
became friends 
through playing 
hockey for Detroit in 
the Maccabi Games 
three years ago.
Mark Berke was 
the coach of the 
Detroit “B” hockey 
team at the 2019 
Maccabi Games.
He remembers 
Gesund and Hutten. He 
named Gesund the team’s 
captain and Hutten an 
alternate captain along with 
forward Spencer Werner.
“It was very, very, very 
easy to name those three 
kids the captain and alternate 
captains,” Berke said. “I saw 
their leadership qualities 
immediately and I could tell 
they were talented hockey 
players.
“Our team didn’t win any 
games and I think we scored 

Three years after playing hockey 
in the JCC Maccabi Games, 
they’ll finally be back on the ice 
in San Diego.

Pucks and 
Patience

STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

LAURA HUTTEN

Lucas Hutten

Brennan Gesund

SARA YUNKER

Detroit hockey player Brennan Gesund, right) shares a moment with 
David Brandes and Josh McGuin from Toronto at Novi Ice Arena 
during the 2019 JCC Maccabi Games & ArtsFest hosted by Detroit.

TODD GESUND

continued on page 44

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