By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
If there’s one passion that united members of the old JCC building, it’d probably be summed up in a single word: Sports.
And those members were pretty good at it, especially the succession of men’s basketball teams, which won national JCC championships in 1968 and 1996. They – and winning athletes from such competitions as the JCC Maccabi Games – were honored by having their names affixed to banners raised to the top of the JCC’s Large Gym.
These banners will be rededicated and raised once more on the afternoon of Nov. 28, when athletes from recent times to decades past gather for a JCC Sports Reunion at the Trager Family JCC’s Goldberg Family Gymnasium. It will be an opportunity to greet old friends and teammates, to recall sweet victories (and a few not-so-sweet defeats), but most of all, to acknowledge how a building could nurture relationships that would endure a lifetime.
And of course, those storied emblems of competitive triumphs.
“This sports reunion is gathering all generations of JCC Basketball players and sports alumni to rededicate the sports banners that hung in the old JCC building in the Large Gym,” said organizer Abigail Goldberg, Teen Director/Philanthropy Outreach at the Jewish Federation of Louisville and the Trager Family JCC. Alums of BBYO are also invited. “Basketball isn’t the only sport represented. The old JCC hosted such athletics as softball, tennis, racquetball, fencing, and volleyball. Though they may no longer be played here, their associated memories remain strong.”
“Honoring our JCC history and our 135 years of existence, we are telling the stories of important parts of our history,” Goldberg said. “Basketball and other sports are a huge part of our story and the generations of people who connected to the JCC through sports leagues and competitions.” Additionally, “we are collecting photos, videos, stories, and memorabilia to share during the event.”
“I’ve had several friends who – over the years since the (new) building has gone up – have wanted to know, ‘Where are the banners?’” said Evan Rowe, who played on JCC basketball teams during the 1990s.
The old Large Gym loomed large in the lives of JCC athletes.
“For some of those participants, it was their Freedom Hall, their Rupp Arena,” Rowe said. He and countless others needed only to glance upward to see the iconography of championship teams hanging from the rafters in silent, majestic tribute.
“We had a track on the upper level, and when I would train, I would see family members of ’68, or you knew someone from ’76,” recalled Rowe, who went on to work for several major league baseball teams. “Everything that I was taught and instilled from everyone at the JCC I took into my own career in athletics.”
Jim Goldberg was a member of that 1968 championship squad.
“Growing up in Louisville, I spent all my waking hours at the JCC playing ball,” he said. “And when I came back from college (at Indiana University/Bloomington), the first thing I’d do was meet everybody. We’d play basketball for two or three weeks during break.”
Goldberg, who now lives in Naples, Florida, has vivid memories of playing the 1968 finals in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Previously, the team had defeated regional rivals from Cincinnati and Detroit, going on to beat a team from New Haven, Connecticut in the national semi-finals.
His Louisville team vanquished a contingent from Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. “My recollection was that it was close for a while, and then we kind of ran away with it,” he said. When the team returned (via a chartered plane) to Louisville, “there was a big banquet, and they raised the banner in the old gym.”
Asked to share specifics of that experience and the banner itself, “I just remember that it was green and white, and had our names on it, including my little brother, Billy, who was the ball boy.”
Eight years later in 1976, another championship banner went up in the Large Gym. One of the members of that 1976 JCC team was Mark Behr, whose 1977 squad made it to the national semifinals before losing to a team from New Jersey (he apologized for not remembering who his team beat the year before).
Behr would go on to attend IU, though by then tennis was his principal sport. But his sports cognizance, and many of his most significant friendships, were forged at Louisville’s JCC.
“Sports at the JCC is very near and dear to me,” he said. “It’s one of my true loves, and one of the reasons why I’ve stayed faithful to the JCC my whole life. I’m sure you’ve heard this over and over again, but so many people have been touched by the sports department and everything else at the JCC, and at the former YHMA.”
Behr and others lauded the contributions of former JCC athletic director Joe Goodman, and Ken Porco, who worked under Goodman before eventually returning to the JCC as Health, Physical Education, and Recreation Director (Porco died this past August 30 at age 87).
“From First Grade on, we would go there for PE after school,” Behr said. “Those guys taught us the basic building blocks for proper exercise. But Ken and Joe also instilled in us the importance of a healthy life, and how to conduct yourself – that winning isn’t everything, how to get along with other people, and how to lose gracefully.”
Life lessons like these “molded me and tons of other people through the years,” Behr said.
Ed Rosen, who served as physical education director at the JCC from 1980 to 1987, spoke about its broad range of sports offerings (which included gymnastics, softball and even fencing), and the busy schedule of club competition.
“To give you an example of how involved everything was at that time, there were four softball fields back where the Center now stands. We had four leagues, 28 teams in a league, a couple of nights a week. It was the hub of activity in this community.”
Basketball, though, often occupied pride of place. And the championships weren’t confined to the JCC Nationals.
“We developed a JCC team for exceptional players,” recalls basketball stalwart Barry Stoler. “Not everybody made the squad, but the good players did. We travelled all over the South and played in what was called the Blumenthal tournament,” named after “one of the old-time athletic directors in Atlanta. We flew to Atlanta; we flew to Houston; we flew to Dallas. It was incredible.”
Meanwhile, it will soon be banner-up time in the Goldberg Family Gymnasium. “I did a walk-through trying to figure out the best place for them,” said Behr, a principal Sports Reunion organizer. Apparently, the banners are in excellent condition.
Behr has been taking the lead encouraging JCC sports alums to attend the Nov. 28 reunion. “I have a list of something like 300 names that were on the banners, so I’ve been contacting them,” he said.
Still, “it’s not just a rededication of the banners,” Behr emphasized. “It’s really about the importance of JCC athletics and sports – for everybody.”
“The take-home is how important sports was to us,” he said, “and how the JCC allowed us to reach our goals and strengthen our Jewish ties.”
The JCC Sports Reunion runs Friday, Nov. 28 from 2-4:30 p.m. in the Goldberg Family Gymnasium. The Reunion will feature “Cocktails, Mocktails, Nosh & Nostalgia, Basketball Challenges & Reunion Photos,” with the Banner Rededication slated for 3:30 p.m.
To register, go online at tinyurl.com/5a2bt9fa. If you have any questions, email Abigail Goldberg at agoldberg@jewishlouisville.org.