This school year, CESJDS is attending more sports tournaments to give athletes exposure to new teams and to boost school spirit. Some of these include new soccer, volleyball and basketball tournaments.
On Sept. 22, the Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School in Pikesville, Md. hosted JDS, Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy and Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy to compete in girls and boys varsity soccer and girls varsity volleyball games. JDS plays Berman regularly, but the other schools that attended the tournament are not in the same league, so it allowed for them to play a new group teams. The tournament worked in round-robin style games, allowing each school to play one another.
Director of Athletics Becky Silberman started planning this tournament on a Zoom call last spring with the athletic directors from Beth Tfiloh and Barrack. Coincidentally, the JDS girls varsity volleyball team was scheduled to play Berman that same day, so the schools decided to do both events, soccer and volleyball, in one day.
“We’ve been playing Barrack, and some years we played Beth Tfiloh, and we were like, ‘Why don’t we just all do this together and kind of have a mini Jewish East Coast tournament,’” Silberman said.
Though the varsity boys soccer team went 1-2, Head Coach Gadi Vogel was proud of the playing he saw on the field.
“While we didn’t have our whole team there, I think we played some of the best within our style of play,” Vogel said. “… The way we played is exactly how I want to play, and it set a tone for the rest of the year of how our standard should be.”
The girls volleyball team won both of their games and the girls soccer team went 0-2. However, this is not the only tournament JDS will be attending this year.
For the past two years, the JDS varsity basketball teams have attended the Israel Becker International Invitational Basketball Tournament at the Tanenbaum Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto (CHAT) in Canada. Instead of going to CHAT, this year the varsity boys basketball team will attend the Cooper Invitational tournament in Memphis, Tennessee. The varsity girls basketball team will still be attending the CHAT tournament this year.
The boys team used to attend this tournament before COVID-19, when the tournament stopped running. JDS didn’t send the team last year because it falls at a difficult time for JDS, in mid November. This year, to accommodate the inconvenient timing, boys varsity basketball tryouts were held in early September so the team could prepare for the tournament.
“It’s cool that it’s at the beginning of the season, so it’ll prepare us for what’s to come; and, it’ll be a great bonding opportunity with our school and all the other schools,” junior and boys varsity basketball team member Cyrus Blumenthal said.