Sabina Skolnick loves the sport of lacrosse and she loves Israel. She had the privilege of combining those loves over last winter break when she played on the Israel’s U-17 National Development Program Women’s Lacrosse Team. Late last month she learned she will be a member of the 38-player roster for the Israel women’s national team, which will compete at the 2015 Federation of International Lacrosse U-19 World Cup and International Festival of Lacrosse, held in Edinburgh, Scotland, from July 23-Aug. 1. Sabina will arrive in Scotland a week prior to the tournament to train with her team.
Sabina, the daughter of Lisa and David Skolnick and a member of Congregation Ohev Sholom, enjoyed her first experience as a member of an international team and is looking forward to her second.
“It was really amazing to represent Israel in a way that I’m really passionate about because I really love lacrosse and to be able to represent lacrosse when I am in Israel and then to represent Israel when I am out of the country was really amazing,” she said. {mprestriction ids="1,3"}“To have the word Israel across my chest in uniform was just really amazing and astonishing. I’m really proud and happy that I am able to be a part of the program and to develop the sport. … I really want this to become big in Israel.”
Lacrosse is a team sport played using a small rubber ball and a long-handled stick. There are 12 players for each team on the field at one time (including the goalie) and the object is to shoot the ball, using the stick, into the opposing team’s goal. Sabina is a defender, charged with keeping the other team from scoring. Now a 16-year-old sophomore at Shawnee Mission East High School, she was introduced to the sport as a sixth-grader at The Pembroke Hill School.
“It was something new to try for the spring.”
She excelled at the sport and now plays on three teams, one of which is the SME varsity girls’ lacrosse team. Her mother was the one who first learned about Israel Lacrosse, a brand new organization which is committed to developing the sport of lacrosse in Israel. It turned out the program had an opening for a defender and the spot was given to Sabina.
So she left for Israel on Dec. 24 for her second trip to Israel (she became a Bat Mitzvah there and has family living in the Jewish state). She did not know another soul on any of the women’s or men’s teams when she met up with the group at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The first leg of the trip was in Israel, where team members trained and did some sightseeing, visiting such places as the Dead Sea and Yad Vashem.
Team members also visited Israeli schools, introducing the children to lacrosse and recruiting young athletes to play the sport. All participants from the United States were strongly encouraged to collect lightly-used equipment to donate to new Israeli youth lacrosse players who otherwise would not be able to participate. The Stick Stop in Mission, Kansas, gave Sabina $800 of new equipment to donate to the program. The Pembroke Hill School Men’s Lacrosse team also donated some equipment to the cause.
In conjunction with the Israel Lacrosse Tzedakah Program, each player will be competing this summer in honor of a charity of their choosing. A portion of the national team’s general fundraising efforts has been committed to each charity. Sabina’s charity is the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.
Sabina said she really liked meeting her fellow program participants from all over the States and “it was really cool interacting with them.”
“I also loved all the programs and clinics we did and the ways we were able to teach these kids how to play,” she said.
Her favorite time in Israel was her last day and night there.
“It was New Year’s Eve and day and we spent the night in a Bedouin tent in the Negev. I just loved the area and how we were all one big community under one big tent,” she said, noting that the entire travel group, including some parents, coaches and officials, totaled about 80 people.
Between games in Belgium, she was able to see a little of the country.
“I also loved the architecture in Belgium. I found that really interesting.”
Sabina is excited to return to her team this summer in Scotland.
“We will be playing against the U.S. and Australia and so many different teams,” she explained.
Sabina, who is still in the development program, qualifies for Israel’s U-18 team because she is Jewish. Players must hold Israeli citizenship or be of Jewish ancestry to participate.
“Once you get to the level of the main national team you either have to make aliyah or have some kind of dual Israeli citizenship,” Lisa Skolnick explained. “Those teams right now (one men’s team and one women’s team) are primarily made of up graduates from Northeastern colleges who make aliyah prior to playing at that level. But the youth lacrosse is what Sabina still qualifies for and you do not have to make aliyah to qualify,” Lisa explained.
When Sabina was in Israel visiting schools, she learned that girls don’t typically play a lot of team sports in Israel.
“I wanted girls to see other women play a team sport and want to get involved in playing lacrosse,” she said.
While is Ashkelon, which is only a few miles from Gaza, Sabina and her teammates talked to girls about the war last summer. The Israeli girls explained their struggles to the lacrosse players and how they needed to keep calm. One way they did that was listening to a Israel Men’s World Cup Lacrosse game, which was played in Denver. The Skolnick family watched those same games on TV too.
“They said it was a helpful distraction to what was going on,” Sabina said.
As a parent, Lisa Skolnick did have some security concerns before her teenaged daughter made the trip.
“I was more worried about Belgium actually,” Lisa Skolnick said. “When she was in Israel I felt very good. I really had faith that they do this a lot and that they would keep her safe.”
Sabina said she was a little worried traveling overseas as well.
“You are proud to wear the uniform that says Israel across the chest but at the same time you want to stay safe,” the young athlete said, noting just two weeks after she returned home the terrorist bombings happened in Paris.{/mprestriction}
