The Hardest Gold Medal to Say Goodbye To

There are some teams you coach.

And then there are teams you know, almost from the beginning, that you will remember for the rest of your life.

The 2026 Sid Jacobson JCC Maccabi baseball team was one of those teams.

We went to Kansas City with a very simple goal: win our third consecutive gold medal and keep an unbeaten streak alive that had stretched through the previous two Maccabi Games. It was an ambitious goal, especially when you consider what we had lost from the year before.

Twelve players from our 2025 championship team had aged out.

Twelve.

So when Andy DiOrio and I sat down with 39 players at tryouts and eventually had to make the incredibly difficult decision to get down to 14, we knew exactly what we were looking for. Talent mattered, obviously. But so did something else.

We were looking for the right people.

And as the week unfolded, it became increasingly clear that we had found them.

Before the First Pitch

This was the first year the Sid Jacobson JCC participated in what is known as the Maccabi pre-weekend, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions we could have made.

Before anyone worried about batting averages, pitching rotations or lineups, the boys had the opportunity to simply be together.

There were team-building exercises, along with the chance to experience Kansas City. We visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, took in the NCAA experience, sampled some real Kansas City barbecue and attended a soccer game.

For the players, it was a chance to become a team before they ever stepped between the lines.

For Andy and me, it was something else.

It was an opportunity to watch.

We watched how they treated each other. How they interacted with other athletes. How they handled themselves away from the baseball field. Who stepped up. Who included others. Who listened. Who helped.

And by the time the baseball tournament began, we had learned something incredibly important.

We had made the right choices.

The Exercise That Told Me Everything

One of the things I like to do with my teams is give the players an assignment about a week before the Maccabi Games begin.

I give each player a piece of paper and a pen and ask them to write down three things:

What do you hope to accomplish individually?

What do you hope to accomplish as a team?

And what do you hope to get out of the experience personally?

I've done this exercise with a lot of teams over the years.

When I read the papers from these 14 players, something immediately jumped out at me.

There was a maturity in those answers that went far beyond their years.

The individual goals weren't about statistics. They weren't about being the star. They weren't about getting the most at-bats, pitching the most innings or being the player everyone talked about.

Almost universally, the message was some variation of:

*Whatever you need me to do, I'll do it.*

Whatever role I was given, I would embrace it.

Whatever I could do to help this team win a gold medal, that's what I wanted to do.

Fourteen incredible players.

Zero ego.

That is an incredibly difficult combination to find.

Character When Nobody Is Watching

Then came the community service project.

The boys were tasked with making wash kits for people living in shelters.

I've coached a lot of Maccabi teams, and every one of them has contributed to the community. But I can honestly say this was the first group where all 14 players went completely all-in.

Andy, being the amazing coach he is, somehow turned the whole thing into a competition.

He wanted to know what the record was for the most kits made by a group.

We gave him a number.

Actually, we made up a ridiculous number somewhere in the 300s.

The boys proceeded to make more than 400.

They created an assembly line and just kept going.

But the part I will remember has nothing to do with the number.

When the project was finished, three of our players stayed behind.

There was no coach standing there.

No parent.

No camera.

No one handing out an award.

They simply asked the people running the program if they needed help cleaning up the room.

And they stayed until everything was put away.

There is an old saying that a person's true character is revealed by what they do when nobody is looking.

Those three boys proved it.

And, in a way, so did all 14.

The Maccabi Games have a special recognition called the **Midot Medal**, awarded for demonstrating exceptional character, sportsmanship, kindness, respect and the values that the Maccabi experience is supposed to represent.

Our boys received Midot Medals.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/d7b7c8_02739a1e23bf4009a9a2aba5e4355db4/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

And I couldn't have been prouder.

Because by then, the medals felt less like an award and more like a confirmation of what Andy and I had already seen.

Then They Played Baseball

Of course, eventually, we had to play.

And there was still that little matter of the goal we had set from Day One.

The 3-peat.

It became our rallying cry.

The boys started the tournament with a dominant 17-1 victory, highlighted by a no-hitter from our pitcher.

They followed that with a 6-2 win over Gezer, Israel.

But even after beating them, our players took the time to spend time with the opposing team and build friendships.

That, too, was part of who they were.

The next day brought a 12-2 victory and set up a final pool-play game against a Hudson, New York team that also entered the game undefeated.

The winner would earn the top seed and a first-round bye.

We won 4-1 behind another outstanding pitching performance.

Then came the semifinal.

We jumped out to a 4-0 lead, only to watch the other team battle all the way back and tie the game in the third inning.

For a moment, the tournament became very real.

One victory from the championship game, with everything on the line.

And these kids responded the way they had responded all week.

They didn't panic.

They didn't point fingers.

They didn't try to do too much.

They simply went back to being a team.

Nine unanswered runs later, we were heading to the gold medal game.

The championship was everything you would want a championship game to be.

Great pitching.

Timely hitting.

Amazing defense.

And two teams that refused to give an inch.

When the final out was recorded, we had won 3-2.

Three consecutive gold medals.

Nineteen consecutive victories over three Maccabi Games.

The 3-peat was complete.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/d7b7c8_041afbe73a57451b8769bc17dfb792ab/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

But as proud as I am of those numbers, they aren't what I will remember most.

Not even close.

And Then There Were the Parents

There was one more moment in Kansas City that I don't think I'll ever forget.

After the championship, as we put those gold medals around the players' necks, I looked around and saw the parents and grandparents who had made the trip to Kansas City to watch these boys play.

The pride on their faces said everything.

These weren't just spectators who had come to watch a baseball tournament. They had watched their sons and grandsons put in the work, make sacrifices, deal with the pressure, learn to put the team ahead of themselves and, ultimately, accomplish something they had set out to do together.

And now they were standing there watching those medals being placed around their necks.

As coaches, Andy and I got to see a side of these 14 young men that many people never get to see. But the parents and grandparents got to see something even more meaningful.

They got to watch the young boys they had raised become young men.

I found myself looking around at those families and thinking about how much went into getting everyone to that moment. The practices. The tryouts. The travel. The sacrifices. The early mornings and late nights. The financial commitment. The emotional investment.

A gold medal doesn't just belong to the players.

It belongs to everyone who helped get them there.

And seeing the pride on those parents' and grandparents' faces as we put those medals around the boys' necks was one of the most beautiful moments of the entire week.

For a coach, there are few things more rewarding than seeing a player's face light up when he realizes he has accomplished something special.

There may be only one thing better.

Seeing his parents and grandparents realize it at the exact same moment.

The Part Nobody Sees on the Scoreboard

I've coached baseball for a lot of years.

I've coached a lot of players.

I've watched teams win championships and I've watched teams fall just short. I've experienced the joy of watching young men accomplish something they thought might be impossible.

And every year, when a Maccabi team ends, there is a little sadness.

You invest yourself in these kids.

You watch them grow.

You spend countless hours with them.

You argue with them.

You laugh with them.

You teach them.

And, if you're lucky, they teach you something too.

Then the week ends, everyone goes home, and you realize that the group you've spent so much time building is no longer going to be together every day.

This year feels different.

This year is harder.

Much harder.

Andy and I both knew somewhere along the way in Kansas City that we were watching something special.

It wasn't just the baseball.

It wasn't just the undefeated record.

It wasn't just the gold medal.

It was the way these 14 young men carried themselves.

They competed without ego.

They celebrated each other's successes.

They accepted whatever role they were given.

They respected their opponents.

They embraced the Maccabi experience.

They gave back to their community.

They looked out for one another.

And when nobody was watching, they did the right thing anyway.

That is what made this team special.

The gold medal will eventually find its way onto a shelf.

The statistics will become part of a record book.

The 19-game winning streak will eventually end.

That's baseball.

But the memories of these 14 young men will last much longer.

I think back to those 39 players who showed up for tryouts and the incredibly difficult process of getting to 14.

At the time, we were trying to build a baseball team.

Looking back now, I realize we were doing something else.

We were putting together a group of young men who would become a family.

And somewhere between the first tryout and the final out in Kansas City, that family became something very special.

I don't know if there is such a thing as the perfect team.

But if there is, I suspect it looks a lot like this one.

Fourteen players.

Zero ego.

One goal.

And an experience that none of us will ever forget.

The hardest part of winning a championship isn't always the final out.

Sometimes it's realizing that you've just spent a week with a group of people you wish you could keep together forever.

So yes, I'm incredibly proud that we won the gold medal.

I'm proud that we won three in a row.

I'm proud that we went 19-0 across three Maccabi Games.

But more than anything, I'm proud of the people these boys proved themselves to be.

And that is why, after all these years of coaching, saying goodbye to this team is going to be the hardest goodbye of them all.

The gold medal says they were champions.

I already knew that.

What Kansas City showed me was something much more important.

They were champions long before the final pitch.