Easing Off the Bridge: Finding something good from a disappointment

It would be no exaggeration to say that I have spent more hours watching basketball games during the past few months than during the previous sixty plus years of my life. But when could I have ever felt as engaged in the game as I do now, watching our oldest grandchild, Joshua, playing as the sole freshman on the Maimonides High School basketball team, the MCats?

This past weekend was the annual Red Sarachek basketball tournament, the country’s most prestigious tournament for Jewish high school basketball teams. Each year, hundreds of high school basketball players and their fans from schools across the United States and Canada gather at Yeshiva University for four days of top-level competition.

By way of background on this tournament, I found this on Wikipedia:

Bernard "Red" Sarachek (born October 19, 1912, Bronx, New York; died November 14, 2005, Deerfield Beach, Florida) was a basketball coach at Yeshiva University in New York City from 1940 to 1969 and a mentor of such famous coaches as Red Holzman of the New York Knicks and Lou Carnesecca of St. John's University. Yeshiva, under Sarachek, has been called "the birthplace of modern basketball" due to Sarachek's innovative ball-handling schemes.

Sarachek designed and implemented motion offenses, trapping defenses, plays to beat zone defenses and creative in-bound plays. His schemes were admired and copied by coaches around the country.

The selection of schools to participate in the annual tournament is rather complicated, but the main point is that Maimonides School, where Joshua is on the team, was one of the schools selected to participate for this year. Dina and Aaron and Joshua’s siblings came to New York along with many of their friends from Massachusetts. Having them (minus Joshua, who stayed with the team) with us over Sabbath was an added treat to the tournament.

Each of the teams plays four games. The MCats got off to a strong start, winning their first game against a school from Illinois. Friday’s game was rather painful, as the score switched back and forth throughout the four quarters but the school from Brooklyn managed to score the final two points to put them ahead by one point just seconds before the final buzzer.

As we milled around after the game, we tried to emphasize to the players we know that they had really done amazingly well, which they had. The players and coaches spent Sabbath at a hotel in Westchester, but we later heard that the team was understandably quite bummed out by that Friday game. Joshua seems to have taken it all in stride.

On Sunday morning the MCats lost to a very strong team from a high school from New Jersey. But there was a bit of a silver lining in that game from our perspective. Because Joshua is the only freshman and newest member of the team, he does not get a lot of time on the court. But on Sunday, when it was clear that the MCats could not pull off a win, the coach put Joshua in the game. Even though he was on the court for less than a minute, he had a nice lay-up to score two points! His personal rooting section was jubilant!

This morning was the final game. We were Joshua’s entire fan section, because his family had to return to Sharon after the Sunday game for the annual synagogue dinner, at which his father was one of the honorees. We were thrilled to be there to see the MCats beat their opponents and Joshua had at least a couple of minutes on the court.

Here are the results of the four games that the Maimonides MCats played:

		Final Score
Date	Maimonides School (Brookline, MA) vs.	Maimonides	Competitor
Thursday 14 March	Fasman Yeshiva High School (Skokie, IL)	47	43
Friday 15 March	Magen David Yeshiva High School (Broooklyn, NY)	51	52
Sunday 17 March	The Frisch School (Paramus, NJ)	48	57
Monday 18 March	Torah Academy of Bergen County (Teaneck, NJ)	57	46