The Israeli men’s and women’s national flag football teams came away from the July 25-27 International Federation of American Football World Championships a bit disappointed by the final results.
Israeli flag football women’s national team starting quarterback Shana Sprung
Of the 13 countries participating in in the biannual event, the Israeli women finished fifth and the men seventh, despite more optimistic expectations.
Flag football is American-style football in which a down ends after a small flag that each player wears in his or her belt is grabbed from the ball carrier by the opposing team.
The Israeli teams’ results were attributed, at least in part, to the fact the squads, which don’t compete on Shabbat, had to play six, 40-minute games in five hours on a blisteringly hot Friday.
“The women had a tough first day [June 25],” Uriel Sturm, chief operating officer of the Israel Football League, said in an e-mail to The CJN.
“After beating the Austrian team handily in their opener, they dropped their remaining preliminary games [against Canada, France, Mexico, Japan, and the United States].”
That automatically took the women out of medal contention.
The men, for their part, played five games on the Friday shorthanded due to injury and a personal “tragedy” for one of the team members, but they qualified for the quarter-finals by winning three straight games after dropping the first two to France and another in overtime to Italy. They finished seventh after winning their final game against Japan 35-0 with recharged batteries on the last day of the championship.
The combination of the heat and having to play so many games in so short a time “definitely played a role,” Sturm said, but the team has not used it as “an excuse,” he added.
In a statement issued by the two teams, women’s backup quarterback Yael Freedman said her squad “should have taken at least four of those [six] games. We just missed on a couple of key possessions and couldn’t turn it around in time.”
Emerging as the ultimate victors in what was touted as the “World Cup” of flag football – played out in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu just outside Montreal – were Canada for the men and Mexico for the women.
All in all, though, the championship in Montreal was definitely a trip worth making. “While our overall results may have been a little disappointing, this tournament really solidified Israel’s place as a contender on the international scene of American [flag] football,” women’s coach Yonah Misha’an said in the teams’ statement.
“In some ways, this was a necessary wake-up call to our entire program, in the wake of our recent successes, that we still have a lot of work to do to rise to the pinnacle of our sport.
“It says something positive about Israeli amateur sports, though, that fifth place in the world is no longer good enough as we continue to strive to be the best.”
Steve Solomon, director of the Canada Desk of the Jerusalem Foundation, which provided support for the teams while they were in Montreal, congratulated all who made Israel’s participation possible, and especially the players.
“The promotion of amateur sports continues to offer opportunities for Israeli amateur athletes to make positive encounters with athletes from throughout the world and also to strengthen relationships between our Jerusalem-based teams and world Jewry,” he said in an e-mail
