48 | NOVEMBER 28 • 2024 J N A dd Rick Loewenstein’s name to the roster of another hall of fame. After being inducted into the Detroit Men’s Senior Baseball League Hall of Fame in 2008 and Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2009, the 64-year-old West Bloomfield resident joined the Babson College Athletics Hall of Fame in September. It took a long time — more than 40 years after his 1982 graduation from Babson — for Loewenstein to be inducted into the Babson Athletics Hall of Fame, which was founded in 1991, but he wasn’t sweating it. “Let me put it this way. I wasn’t wait- ing by the phone, but I always knew when the time came, it would be an honor. I’m just glad I wasn’t inducted posthumously, ” he said, laughing. “Some former Babson teammates I spoke with at the Hall of Fame induc- tion thought I was already in the Hall of Fame, ” he said. Looking back, Loewenstein said, he made a great decision to attend Babson because he thrived at the Massachusetts school. He said he sharpened his leadership skills through being a team captain there, and he laid the foundation for a business career that has included being the CEO of the Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan and JARC, and chief advancement officer for the Cranbrook Educational Community. “There’s no greater experience than being a student-athlete in college, whether it’s Division I, II or III, ” he said. “You’re forced to become disciplined and focused to juggle your studies, practices and games and, because I played two sports, I was never out of season. “On top of all that, I got to share that experience playing the sports I loved with friends for life. ” Loewenstein was a star in baseball and men’s hockey at Babson from 1978- 82. A catcher for the Babson baseball team, he batted .431 with five triples in 1981, both school single-season records at the time. His 14 career triples are still a school record, and his .374 career batting average stood as the best in pro- gram history for nearly three decades. A three-time captain of the baseball team, he was a First Team All-Eastern College Athletic Conference selection in 1982. On the ice, the defenseman led the Beavers to their first NCAA Division III tournament appearance in program history when he was a senior. Loewenstein was named Babson’s Athlete of the Year — male or female — when he was a freshman and senior. Eighty-four individuals and five teams are in the Babson Athletics Hall of Fame. Individual accomplishments aren’t the only criteria for induction, accord- ing to a news release from the school. Entry into the Hall of Fame also requires leadership, dedication to the athlete’s sport and to the college, good sportsmanship and a willingness to sacrifice personal glory for the good of the team. “Each Hall of Fame inductee rep- resented Babson with dignity, grace, and pride in and out of competition, ” according to the news release. Babson is a private business school located in Wellesley, Mass., near Boston. It had an enrollment of about 4,000 undergraduate and graduate stu- dents in 2022. It’s been ranked the No. 1 undergrad- uate school for entrepreneurship for 27 years and was recently ranked No. 2 in the Wall Street Journal/College Pulse 2025 Best Colleges in the U.S. report. Among its famous alumni is Jewish Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman. Why did Loewenstein decide to attend Babson back in the late 1970s? He said he was looking for a small school where he could play baseball and hockey and study business, and he had some family connections to the Boston area. His brother Mark attended Boston University and his mother, Phyllis, now 88, was from the Boston area. Loewenstein and his wife, Dana, a former trial attorney and former direc- tor of leadership giving at the Hillel Jewish Student Center at Michigan State University, have been married for 42 years. They work together at TeamGameAdvisors, a consulting firm founded in 2019 that focuses on behav- ioral health and assistive technology. They have two sons, Alex, 32, and Jeremy, 29, who each played base- ball and hockey at Bloomfield Hills Cranbrook-Kingswood High School. Alex was a baseball team captain, Jeremy was a baseball team and hock- ey team captain, and each was a state champion hockey player. Alex was a member of the U.S. men’s fastpitch softball team that participated in the 2022 Maccabiah Games in Israel. Rick was a three-sport star at Cranbrook-Kingswood. He played baseball, boys hockey and boys soccer there, and served as a baseball team and boys soccer team captain. He remains active in sports. He’s still playing in the Detroit Men’s Senior Baseball League, and he’s been a high school hockey official for more than a decade. Send sports news to stevestein502004@ yahoo.com. The Wait Was Worth It Rick Loewenstein, a 2009 inductee into the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, joins the Babson College Athletics Hall of Fame. STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER SPORTS HIGHLIGHTS LEFT: The Loewenstein family attended Rick’s induction into the Babson College Athletics Hall of Fame. From left are Alex, Rick, Dana and Jeremy Loewenstein. RIGHT: Rick Loewenstein returns to the Babson College baseball diamond where he was a star from 1978-82. PHOTOS HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED