On the volleyball court, it’s not just about the game
Maccabiah USA players talk about the Jewish connections and relationships forged during the sporting event
Sarah Susson, 27, stood on the far right corner of the volleyball court, the space reserved for those sitting out the match between the USA and Brazil teams. It was the fourth time her team was playing during the 2013 Maccabiah games and the first of two matches that would determine which team would take home the bronze medal.
A second-time Maccabiah participant, Susson didn’t get much playing time, but didn’t seem to care.
“I was very up front with the girls,” she said of her teammates. “I told them, ‘I want to play, I’m hungry and eager to be on the court, but if I’m not, I’ll be the one cheering the loudest and pushing my team to medal.’”
Susson graduated from University of California at Santa Barbara five years ago, and, admittedly, hasn’t trained professionally since college — unlike the rest of her team, ranging in age from 18-26, many of them still in college and in the prime of their volleyball playing career. Still, she made it a point to teach her teammates that the Maccabiah is often not about sports.
“For some girls, they went into it thinking they made a volleyball team and they’re in Israel to play,” Susson said. “I see now people have a greater appreciation for the event as a whole, and part of that really is meeting Jewish athletes and bonding with them.”
A stated goal of the Maccabiah games is to help Jewish athletes find a deeper connection to their heritage and Israel. Susson said the games served a different purpose for her when she first played in the 2009 games.
While sitting in JFK airport in New York, waiting to jet off for her first Maccabiah journey, she met a fellow first-timer, USA rugby player Max Levine. They’ve been together ever since, and when it came time for the 2013 games, she said, the decision to represent her country in Israel for the second time was a no-brainer.
“I’m certainly one of the older ones on the team so I wasn’t really sure at the age of 27 I’d be able to come back,” said Susson, who now works for a children’s literacy nonprofit in San Francisco, where she lives with her boyfriend. “But once he made the team, I thought what a great way to come back four years later. We really trained together and pushed each other to make it.”
Susson added that the games are just another way to bridge the gap between her traditional Jewish upbringing and her boyfriend’s slightly more Reform views on Jewish observance.
“We definitely have merged traditions,” she said. “We’re still working that out.”
All the volleyball players met one another a week before the games officially started on July 18, taking a Birthright-type tour to Israel’s most popular destinations, including Masada and the Western Wall. For player Jillian Berkman, 25, a native of Tennessee, having an “all-Jews-all-the-time” experience was very new for her.
“You don’t see a lot of Jewish people in Tennessee,” said Berkman, who was visiting Israel for the first time to be part of the Maccabiah. “It’s really nice to talk to Jewish people and learn more about the country.”
Unfortunately, the team’s experience on the court was not as successful as its adventures off-court. Despite the fervent “USA! USA!” chants from both Susson and the crowds in the bleachers of the Modiin municipal gym, filled mostly with parents of the players who had come to experience Israel along with their children, Brazil won 3-1 in the preliminaries and again that evening for the bronze medal match.
The team ended up ranked at number four out of five teams.
The Times of Israel Community.