Mandel JCC prepares for Maccabi Games in Detroit, Houston (2025)

With rachmones sportsmanship at its center, the Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland is once again sending athletes to the JCC Maccabi Games from July 28 to Aug. 2 and Aug. 4 to Aug. 9 in Detroit and Houston, respectively.

The Mandel JCC is considered to be in the “top 10” teams for the games and in the large tier of JCCs in North America, Cleveland delegation head Kelly Millstone told the Cleveland Jewish News.

“We have a great reputation of being present, being helpful, giving back,” she said. “And they always know if they need ... coaches’ help or me as the delegation head, they know that they can rely on Cleveland to be there.”

The Mandel JCC delegation consists of 31 athletes going to the Detroit games and two to the Houston games, Millstone said. The team also has one competitor from Louisiana. To participate in the games, teen athletes should be between 12 to 16 years old and have at least one Jewish parent.

“The kids that are chosen to be on our delegation are kids who will positively represent the Mandel JCC and the Cleveland delegation with 100% the utmost respect and positivity,” Millstone said.

One of these students is Morgyn Zucker, 15, a forward on the soccer team at Orange High School in Pepper Pike, who will be a sophomore in the fall.

“This is my third year,” Morgyn told the CJN. “My first year, was really cool and last year, it was important and also a really cool experience.”

Morgyn said she previously played in the San Diego and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Maccabi Games and will play in Detroit this year.

“I really like meeting new people and I like playing on a mixed team, people who aren’t from where I live,” she said. “The whole host family experience was really cool, that you get to meet someone and they let you in their house.”

The opening and closing ceremonies are also a highlight for Morgyn, who said she’s looking forward to meeting more new people.

Millstone said the opening ceremonies will honor the 11 Israeli athletes who died in Munich during the 1972 Summer Olympics and “you can see everyone come together.” The athletes who died were taken hostage and killed by the Palestinian group Black September in what is known as the “Munich massacre.” One of the Israeli hostages killed was former Shaker Heights resident David Berger, a weightlifter on the Israeli Olympic Team.

As a Jewish teenager who has played soccer since she was a child, Morgyn said the Maccabi Games are special to her.

“It’s cool that even though we don’t live together or know each other that well, we can connect on similar levels,” she said of the other young participating athletes.

Jaxon Sherwin, 13, will be a first-timer at the Maccabi Games and will play baseball in both Detroit and Houston. Jaxon, a student at Solon Middle School, told the CJN he’s played on travel teams before. He just returned from Nashville, so he is looking forward to both trips, he said.

“I’m excited to play a sport I love with kids that love it too,” he said. “The fact that we’re all Jewish is really cool.”

Having visited Detroit before, this will be Jaxon’s first time in Houston. He’s played baseball since he was 4 years old.

“I learned about (the games) from my cousins who competed last year in Fort Lauderdale,” Jaxon said. “I love to play baseball all summer, so I thought ‘traveling to play baseball is my thing,’ so I went to sign up for the Maccabi Games.”

The Mandel JCC is considered a “leader in the JCC movements,” Millstone said, so its good for it to be part of Jewish Community Centers of America-led organizations.

Before the games, Millstone said her work starts in September the year before, producing marketing tools and speaking to interested student-athletes.

“With the (Mandel JCC’s) youth programming team, we decide – if there are two or three cities that are hosting – where Cleveland as a group would like to attend and how many athletes we are going to request for the upcoming year,” she said.

The JCCA Maccabi team then sends an “allotment” of how many athletes the JCCs can send to the games.

Millstone said she wants to stress the Maccabi games are the only organization allowing kids from any sect of Judaism, whether its Reform, Conservative, Orthodox or non-religious, to play in the games.

The host family experience is also an important part of the games, she said.

“Staying with a host family allows them to make that connection more with the city that we’re in,” Millstone said. “These host families take them on for those five days that we’re there and they feed them, they have ‘host family night’ ... that’s a really special bond that they get to create with their host families.”

Read the CJN’s special section about former Shaker Heights athlete David Mark Berger, 50 years after the Munich massacre, here.

Mandel JCC Cleveland Maccabi Team

NameAgeCity Sport
Miriam Ascheknasy15BeachwoodVolleyball
Sofia Lazzaro13Moreland HillsVolleyball
Kaylee Newman15ClevelandVolleyball
Sophia Newman15ClevelandVolleyball
Mya Ritt14Chagrin FallsVolleyball
Ariella Rosky13BeachwoodVolleyball
Andrew Behrens13SolonSoccer
Wyatt Federer14Moreland Hills Soccer
Sydney Green13SolonSoccer
Michael Kalir15Pepper PikeSoccer
Shoshana Lerman15SolonSoccer
Marissa Lockman14SolonSoccer
Jonah Marderstein15ClevelandSoccer
Saige Mirman13SolonSoccer
Charlie Newman15ClevelandSoccer
Evan Novak14Pepper PikeSoccer
Matthew Scipione15SolonSoccer
Benjamin Sulzer13SolonSoccer
Joshua Sulzer13SolonSoccer
Ari Synenberg16BeachwoodSoccer
Morgyn Zucker15Chagrin FallsSoccer
Liam Burke13SolonIce Hockey
Max Faiman14Highland HeightsIce Hockey
Noah Mayan14Shaker HeightsIce Hockey
Noah Dunn (Playing with Cleveland delegation)16Metairie, La.Bowling (Houston)
Tyler Ettkin14SolonBaseball
Brayden Gerrard14SolonBaseball
Justin Kornspan16BeachwoodBaseball
Hayden Reiss13SolonBaseball
Jaxon Sherwin13SolonBaseball(Detroit and Houston)
Nathan Greenberg15Highland HeightsSwimming
Noah Synenberg14Beachwood3v3 Basketball
Mandel JCC prepares for Maccabi Games in Detroit, Houston (2025)

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