32 | OCTOBER 24 • 2024 J
N
R
ob Whelan played baseball
for Detroit at the 2018 and
2019 JCC Maccabi Games
in Orange County, Calif., and the
Motor City.
The COVID-19 pandemic robbed
him of two more opportunities to
do that in 2020 and 2021, when the
Maccabi Games were cancelled.
When the Commerce resident
spotted a notice on Facebook that
volunteer coaches were needed
for the 2024 Maccabi Games this
summer in Detroit, he sprang into
action.
He applied and was given the
assignment of coaching a multi-
delegation, 11-member U14 baseball
team made up of players from
Arizona, Kentucky, Massachusetts,
New Jersey, New York and South
Carolina.
“Even if I had never played in the
Maccabi Games, I still wanted to be
involved, to coach,” he said.
Whelan, 20, recruited Kevin
Whelan, his father, to be his team’s
assistant coach. Kevin was a coach
for one of Detroit’s two volleyball
teams in the 2019 Maccabi Games.
Rob was a member of the Detroit
U14 baseball team when he played
in the Maccabi Games.
He ended up facing his former
team in the semifinals of this year’s
competition and losing.
But the team led by the father-
and-son Whelans beat Team Ohio
in the bronze medal game.
How did players who didn’t know
each other until they arrived in
Detroit and didn’t practice as a team
win a medal and go 4-2 in their six
games?
“The guys came together and
had fun,” Rob said. “I started out by
asking them, ‘Where does everyone
want to play this week?’ The guys
were a little too honest. Only three
said they were pitchers.
“But we ended up having more
pitchers than we needed. Everyone
who wanted to pitch got a chance to
do it.”
Kevin said the team was made up
of talented baseball players who love
the sport.
“They didn’t come to Detroit just
to be on a team with their buddies,”
he said. “They were here on their
own to play baseball.”
Kevin said he loved watching
his son coach. Those roles were
reversed when Rob was a youngster
in house and travel baseball.
“Rob bounced ideas off me, like if
was a good time to go out and talk
to his pitcher,” Kevin said. “That was
my job.”
Rob said the hardest part of
coaching was making decisions
involving playing time because of
the nature of the Maccabi Games.
“We wanted to win, of course, but
I also wanted everybody to have a
good experience in Detroit, to have
fun,” he said.
The semifinal game vs. Detroit
had a special meaning for the
Whelans.
One of Detroit’s assistant coaches
was Jonah Farabi. The Whelan and
Farabi families are close friends.
Rob and Jonah were teammates
on the U14 Detroit baseball team in
the 2018 and 2019 Maccabi Games,
and on the Walled Lake Northern
High School baseball team.
Now they both attend the
University of Michigan. Rob is a
junior and Jonah is a sophomore.
Rob is a pitcher on the U-M club
baseball team. He was a star pitcher
for WL Northern, going 9-0 during
his junior season in 2021.
A biology major at U-M, his
career goal is to be a veterinarian.
“I like biology, I like animals, and
I don’t like desk jobs,” he said.
Send sports news to stevestein502004@
yahoo.com.
CORRECTION: in last week’s story, “Silver
Linings’” the coach of this year’s Detroit
Maccabi hockey team should have been
identified as Mark Weiss.
A baseball team made up of players from six states coached by a
local father and son won a bronze medal at the JCC Maccabi Games.
Strangers No More
STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
SPORTS
Rob and Kevin
Whelan take a
bite out of a JCC
Maccabi Games
bronze medal.
SUBMITTED PHOTO