By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Thirty men’s teams from around the world will compete from Wednesday, June 21 through Saturday, July 1 in the 2023 World Lacrosse Championship games to be played at Snapdragon Stadium and on athletic fields at San Diego State University and the University of San Diego.
The United States (1) and Canada (2) will face off in the initial competition that will be held following 5:30 p.m. opening ceremonies on Wednesday, June 21, at Snapdragon Stadium.
Following that game, the top five teams in international rankings – U.S.A, Canada, Haudenosaunee, Australia, and England – will play at the University of San Diego’s Torrero Stadium, while 25 teams in five other pools will play on fields at San Diego State University.
Haudenosaunee (3) is a team drawn from a confederation of six Native American tribal groups in the northern part of New York State –Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora. Australia and England are ranked 4 and 5 respectively.
Israel (7) will play the games in its pool on the SDSU campus on Thursday, June 22, at 10 a.m. against Sweden (25); Friday, June 23, against the Philippines (10); Sunday, June 25, at 1 p.m. against Puerto Rico (8) and Monday, June 26, against the Czech Republic (26). Day-of-game tickets are available at the SDSU Sports Deck box office.
Nations playing in other pools and their world rankings include Japan (6), Germany (9), Scotland (11), Ireland (12), Jamaica (13), Wales (14), Italy (16), Latvia (18), Switzerland (20), New Zealand (21), Netherlands (22), Austria (24), Hong Kong (27), Poland (32), France (33), Denmark (34), South Korea (35), Mexico (38), Peru (39) and Uganda (40).
The top 10 teams in world rankings received automatic invitations to compete this year in San Diego. Others had to compete in regional tournaments to earn invitations. Rankings were based on how 48 teams finished in the 2018 World Lacrosse Championship games that were held in Netanya, Israel. Usually, the championship games are played every four years, but the COVID-19 pandemic delayed this meeting by one year.
Ian Kadish, a midfielder with the Israeli team who also serves as the executive director of the overall Israel Lacrosse organization, which sponsors youth programs and regional teams throughout Israel, said following the four days of pool play, all the teams will be assigned to brackets in a tournament that will culminate with the July 1 championship game at Snapdragon Stadium.
Kadish said there are 23 players on the Israeli team, 19 of whom are Israeli citizens and four others who are American citizens with Jewish heritage. Two of the most exciting Israeli-born players to watch, he said, are Ronen Abramovich, 20, a forward, and Ori Bar-David, 22, a midfielder. “They both learned to play lacrosse in Israel, and they are now competing in what is really the pinnacle of our sport,” Kadish said. “Ronen is from Ashkelon and Ori is from Netanya. They both give back to our youth effort in an enormous way.”
The Israel Lacrosse organization is chaired by Dan Kraft, the son of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft. While Israel Lacrosse has teams all over the country, it is headquartered in Ashkelon at the Dan Kraft Family National Training Center which includes the Mack Family Field.
Kadish, 27, played lacrosse at Amherst College. When he was 20, he participated in a Birthright program sponsored by the Israel Lacrosse organization that changed his previous indifference to being Jewish and to Israel.
“I went in 2016 and I fell in love with the country,” Kadish told me. “I extended for the rest of that summer. I started one of our youth teams in the south of Israel—Beersheva—and I started going back. I would staff some of our service trips; go back in the summer and help our youth league; and play on the national team.”
After graduation from Amherst, he served that college as a strengthening and conditioning instructor and a men’s lacrosse coach. In 2019, “Israel Lacrosse was looking for a fundraiser,” Kadish related. “I was lucky enough to be chosen and offered the position by Dan Kraft. I started working as the head of development and since then I really began taking on more and more responsibility. I coached some of our younger national teams. I obviously play on the men’s national team, and as that transition kept going, I took on more responsibility. They asked me to be the executive director last fall, so now I play on the men’s national team and run our organization globally.”
Midfielder Kadish typically participates in the opening faceoff in which two opposing players using their netted sticks struggle for control of the ball. He also plays both offense and defense in the hour-long, hard running game.
To build up his and the team’s stamina, Kadish has developed a regimen involving “a lot of strengthening, working in the gym, a lot of preventative care to take care of injuries. There’s a lot of conditioning, running, playing wall ball (throwing the ball against the wall and getting it in the stick in your hand as much as possible). It’s a variety of things that you try to balance.”
While the international games are headliner events for Israel Lacrosse, Kadish said that “the two biggest things that Israel Lacrosse focuses on are 1) growing lacrosse in Israel – we have youth teams, youth coaches; kids with their own gear who come to practice all throughout Israel from the north to the south, and 2) we also run programming like that Birthright trip I spoke about designed to reinvigorate the Jewish diaspora, to give young Jews an innovative way to feel proud of their heritage, to feel proud of our heritage.”
Through his involvement with lacrosse, Kadish who once “could not have cared less about Israel,” decided in 2018 to make Aliyah. He now divides his time between the U.S. and Israel.
Israel Lacrosse, he commented, now is “the healthiest we have ever been. We have more players playing than we ever had. We are running more trips for American and worldwide Jews than we ever have. We are starting to see the first crop of Israeli-born talent really making strides at the under-21 level and at the Men’s and Women’s levels. The future is very bright.”
*
Donald H. Harrison is editor emeritus of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com