Rockland JCC Baseball Team Wins Gold in Junior Maccabi Games

by Brian Smith

On Sunday May 4, 2014, the Rockland JCC sent a delegation of over 40 children, aged 10-12 to participate in the Junior Maccabi Games, held in Baltimore MD, at the JCC in Owings Mills. Over 700 boys and girls participated in baseball, basketball, soccer, and tennis.

The Rockland JCC Junior Maccabi Baseball team won the Gold Medal in stunning fashion.  In 23 innings (spanning 4 games), the boys allowed only 1 run (in the first inning of the first game) and 3 walks for the day, with the following outcomes:

• Game 1 - vs Bucks County 4-1 
• Game 2 - vs Philadelphia 4-0
• Semi Finals vs. South Jersey 3-0
• Finals vs Metro West (Livingston NJ) 1-0 in 11 innings.  

The winning run was scored by Joss Hindin, who was knocked in on a single by Paxton Meyers in the 11th inning.

All games prior to the final were 4 innings in length, the final was scheduled to be 6 innings, but ran to 11 with many clutch plays on both sides extending the game.  The Rockland team was seeded 2nd after the preliminaries, and received a bye in to the semi finals.

The team roster from left to right (as in the attached picture of the boys with their gold medals), starting with the back row:

Paxton Meyers
James Spiegel
Corey Savedoff
Frank Ross
Bob Karcher (Coach)
Brian Smith (Co-Manager)
Glenn Meyers (Co-Manager)
Spencer Smith
Yoni Stewart
Ryan Parks
Brendan Rosenblum
Cary Karcher
Matt Savedoff
Jacob Barrett
Dylan Hausner
Joss Hindin

8 of the 13 pictured play in New City Little League, the rest play in the West Nyack, Valley Cottage and Suffern Little Leagues.