800 nominations received for next year’s Maccabiah Game
Momentum is building towards Australia’s 2017 Maccabiah Games campaign, with over 800 nominations received by Maccabi Australia from athletes and officials hoping to be on the plane to Israel next year.Delegation leader Tom York writes: “It was an overwhelming response, which means Australia is set to send its most formidable group ever for the 20th edition of the Games.
Tom York
The outstanding interest in being part of Australia’s delegation was the culmination of 18 months of work headed by General Manager Nikki Burger, Teams Operations Coordinator Karen Holloway, along with the regional managers for 2017 – Laurent Ehrlich (Haifa/North), Sam Gamsu (Juniors), Michael America (Jerusalem) and Justin Lipson (Tel Aviv), who were in charge of recruiting team managers and assembling the top group of coaches our players will be working under over the next year.
Now, the focus is action on the field, and the process of selecting teams is already in full swing. A number of trials have already been held in either Sydney or Melbourne, and we have already ratified the final team lists for the junior girls basketball as well as junior and youth boys football. We have 47 very happy young athletes already confirmed for our team in 2017!
Our decision to appoint ‘regional managers’ instead of opens/masters/juniors managers as we have done in the past is based on a decision by the Maccabiah organising committee in Israel to make the games more regional focused, with Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa the three areas where the Games will revolve around. The Junior Maccabiah will be based out of Haifa. It is hoped that this will minimise transport and logistical problems.
While the process of picking the teams to represent Australia on the park is going on in earnest, we are putting the final touches on a very professional delegation to support our team off the park too.
I am pleased to announce that David Weiner will return as Media Manager, a role he held in 2013, and has assembled a six-person team headlined by Senior Journalist Daniel Garb. We have expanded the team from four to six to incorporate the growing size of the team, as well as the dynamic and evolving nature of coverage across a number of different platforms, sometimes in real time. It will be a very exciting, professional part of our set-up and a mix between established professionals and up and coming talent.
The media team is just one part of a very thorough set-up and support network we want to provide for our athletes.
One of our major objectives is to provide our athletes with the best available support in terms of coaching, technical and scientific services, which will be facilitated by their managers over the preparation phase until the end of their Maccabiah journey, with the aim of making a meaningful and helpful contribution to our athletes’ performances.
This will include two Leadership Development workshops we will hold in the next month, which will be open to all athletes, coaches and managers. The focus of the first workshops will be topics like sports nutrition, athletes’ load management, concussion, supplements in sport and goal setting for athletes. The next workshop will be in April 2017.
After so much work since the upper management has been put in place it is wonderful to see it coming to fruition and extremely exciting for us all to see the excitement amongst the community now that the actual sporting process has got underway.”
