Local Maccabiah athletes will bring home medals

Kansas City natives will bring home several medals from the 18th Maccabiah Games in Israel.

Wrestler Jacob Tanenbaum won two gold medals — one in the 60-kilogram freestyle wrestling event and the other in the 55-kilogram Greco-Roman wrestling competition.

Tanenbaum will be a sophomore at Cal-Poly University in the fall.

Even though, as of press time, the scores of his gold-medal matches were not posted in the results section of the Maccabiah Web site (it has not been completely updated in a timely fashion during the competition), Tanenbaum confirmed to The Chronicle that he beat Israeli Pavel Siniavsky in the finals of the freestyle event. He beat another Israeli, Artum Roitman, in the Greco-Roman final.

Maccabiah officials provided this quote from Dr. Rob Tanenbaum, Jake’s father, who attended the games with his son:
“It’s a fantastic experience to be able to compete in this international environment and allow these tremendous athletes to be exposed to an event unlike anything else. It really shows that top athletes can come and be on the world stage while highlighting their Jewish identities.”

Winning women
Meanwhile, KC native point guard Leslie Berger, age 26, will bring a silver medal home after her USA women’s basketball team fell to Israel in the finals Tuesday. The American women had beaten Canada (48-33; 68-48) and Israel (65-62; 79-49) twice each before falling to the home team 81-74 in the final round.

Berger, a former player at Pembroke Hill School and Washington University, also participated in the 2005 Maccabiah, winning a gold medal that year. She finished up her master’s degree in May at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and will now look to embark on a coaching career.

Recent Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy graduate Jackie Cutler won a bronze medal in women’s Tae Kwan Do, in the up-to-57-kilograms category.
And women’s sprint swimmer Michelle Heidgerken, a native of Canada who will be a sophomore on the Pembroke Hill team, swam for the Canucks at the Maccabiah, but did not medal as of press time this week. The final events of the women’s swimming competition, including the 50-meter freestyle race, were to have taken place Thursday, July 22.

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