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For Boyd “Rainmaker” Melson, life at the United States Military Academy at West Point was not easy. West Point demands physical and academic discipline, and even periodic “white glove” room inspections. Lucky for Melson, it also requires a semester-long class in boxing.

“The goal of the course is to teach you to face your fears with no one to lean on. It teaches you to stand up for yourself. You are really exposed and naked when alone in the ring,” says Melson, 32, now a professional light middleweight boxer with a career record of 12 wins, one loss and one draw with four knockouts. He is a 2013 inductee to the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame

“I started to knock out opponents. And I won the school championship as a freshman,” says Melson, who soon found himself practicing at both 5:30 am and 4:30 pm, while carrying a difficult academic load.

“If you are not an engineering major, you must have an engineering minor. I majored in psychology and minored in nuclear engineering,” says Melson.

An army brat, Melson was born in Brooklyn, New York to a Creole father, Nolan, born in Louisiana, and a Jewish mother, Annette, born in Israel to Polish Holocaust survivors.

“Her mother fled to Uzbekistan and spent a year in prison; her father was conscripted by the Russian army, and their four children were all born in different places — Uzbekistan, Austria, Canada and Israel,” says Melson.

How did Annette and Nolan Melson decide to bring up the children Jewish?

“There was no negotiation,” says Boyd laughing, “You know Jewish moms. She said, ‘I am Jewish and our household is Jewish!’”

Boyd attended yeshiva for kindergarten (“I hated it”) and Hebrew school three days a week at Temple Beth El in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Melson celebrated his bar mitzvah in Brooklyn and “was taken to Israel as a bar mitzvah present.”

West Point was his father’s choice of school, but one night during his junior year, Melson’s sense of purpose and mission in life changed abruptly. He was visiting his folks in White Plains, NY, and went out with friends to The Thirsty Turtle, a dance club and lounge.

“I saw a girl who was out with her friends, dancing and a little tipsy,” he recalls. Melson was immediately interested in her and started dancing with Christan Zaccagnino — who was in a wheelchair.

“I crouched down low and we danced,” says Melson, matter of factly. The two began dating soon after.

Boyd Melson and Christan Zaccagnino, currently not dating, but still great friends. (photo credit: courtesy)

Zaccagnino had broken her neck and become a quadriplegic in 1993 at the age of ten after jumping in to a pool. She became Melson’s inspiration, in and out of the ring.

Melson continued to study (he graduated West Point in 2003 and earned an MBA at Touro College) and box — he was a three time All American, a four time West Point Brigade Open Boxing champion, and earned a spot as an alternate on the 2008 US Olympic boxing team.

Before going pro in 2010, Melson worked as a medical devices representative for Johnson and Johnson.

Since 2010, when Melson and Zaccagnino, still great friends, though no longer dating, founded Team Fight to Walk to raise awareness of spinal cord injuries, he has devoted his time to training full-time as a boxer for charity. He donates every penny of his boxing earnings tojustadollarplease.org, in support of a clinical trial to test promising treatments for spinal cord injuries.

Zaccagnino says, “I knew Boyd loved boxing and he loved to help people, so I helped him find his passion.”

“In the US alone, where a spinal cord injury occurs every 43 minutes, there are 300,000 people living with the tragic after-effects. And 40,000 of them are US Armed forces Veterans,” says Melson.

“The field of regenerative medicine is exploding and holds great promise for the treatment of these injuries,” says Melson.

JustADollarPlease.org is the fundraising project of SCINetUSA, the clinical trial network launched to test promising treatments for spinal cord injury in the United States. SCINetUSA is a partner with ChinaSCINet, the 25 center clinical trial network in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where clinical trials have already started.

SCINetUSA supports the work of Dr. Wise Young, the director of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Young’s clinical trials in China have already begun to show promise, says Melson, who has observed successes there after umbilical cells are injected to the spinal cord, and a patient is given six months of walking therapy. Young hopes to bring similar clinical trials to 40 patients in the US by 2014.

‘If five million people each give $1, then we will have a cure. We potentially have the winning lottery ticket without the money to buy a ticket!’

“If five million people each give $1, then we will have a cure. We potentially have the winning lottery ticket without the money to buy a ticket!” says Melson.

Melson reports, “I have experienced firsthand how adult stem cells can improve quality of life. I live to help Christan and others like her.”

The two have traveled the world together in search of an intervention which will get Zaccagnino up and walking.

“Boyd and I are relentless,” says Zaccagnino. “And he takes relentless to a whole new level.”

Melson is currently deep in training for his December 4 bout at BB King Blues Club and Grill where he faces Gundrick King in the eight round main event.

In and out of the ring, Melson is committed to “the cause.” Even his jewelry, clothing and nickname tell the story of his current passions, commitments and causes.

A black bracelet on his left wrist with gold writing says “Team Fight to Walk.” A blue bracelet on his right wrist says “Clinical Trials Now.” He wears a necklace with both a chai pendant and boxing gloves. And his boxing trunks feature symbols he chose in the summer of 2010, leading up to his professional career: a Star of David and a camoflauged wheelchair and West Point ’03 (his graduating class).

The Star of David, says Melson, is to honor his Holocaust survivor grandparents.

“Judaism influences my choices by reminding me of the hardships that our people endure as a race in order to merely survive, and how the idea of loving humanity is the backbone of our religion,” says Melson.

The camouflage wheelchair, he says, is for wounded warriors, Fight To Walk, for Team Fight To Walk, and “Christan’s battle along with the rest of the spinal cord injured world’s battles to get up out of their chairs.”

In the ring, Melson is known as “Rainmaker,” a name is taken from the movie, “The Power of One.”

“The Rainmaker was the nickname given to the main character because he brings hope. The Rainmaker brings hope and that’s my goal for a cure for spinal cure injuries,” says Melson.

A win for Boyd Melson means a purse for Team Fight to Walk. (photo credit: courtesy)

(Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com)

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Major League Baseball veteran’s gig as coach in the Holy Land last year is one of the more important lines on his resume

BALTIMORE – Almost from the moment they met him, several officials and players with Israel’s national baseball team said they saw manager Brad Ausmus headed for the major leagues.

They cited his communication skills, command of the game and preparation — not to mention his 18-year playing career as a catcher that included winning three Gold Gloves and reaching the 2005 World Series with the Houston Astros.

“We knew that even though he’d never had any managerial experience, he’d go and be a major league manager,” said Nate Fish, the bullpen catcher for an Israeli squad that came up short in its bid for the World Baseball Classic. “The overall chemistry was at a very, very high level, and Brad was very professional. He created a very good environment in the clubhouse.”

Fish and the others proved prophetic: Ausmus, 44, was introduced Sunday as the manager of the Detroit Tigers, succeeding Jim Leyland.

“I’m very excited about the opportunity to manage the Tigers. This is a very good team, and new managers rarely are handed the reins,” said Ausmus this week to the Times of Israel.

Ausmus joins a short roster of Jews who have managed major league teams, which includes current Oakland Athletics manager Bob Melvin — both have Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers. The first was one of the earliest Jewish players, Lipman Pike, an outfielder-infielder who managed the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1877.

In the WBC qualifiers, Israel won its first two games before being eliminated by Spain in a 10-inning loss.

Former Major Leaguer Brad Ausmus in Israel as part of his post as coach of the Israeli team for the World Baseball Classic tournament. (photo credit: Michal Shmulovich)

“Brad did a great job of managing the entire tournament, especially the [elimination] loss, which he handled with dignity and class,” said Gabe Kapler, who coached for Team Israel alongside Ausmus, his former Tigers teammate, and now is a Tampa Bay Rays consultant.

His age and long playing career helped Ausmus earn respect from the Team Israel players, officials and players said.

Ausmus was so refined in his attention to detail, said Peter Kurz, president of the Israel Association of Baseball, that the team practiced keeping on its caps for the playing of “Hatikvah,’ the Israeli national anthem, following Israeli custom.

In assembling the club, Ausmus compiled information on prospective players on his iPad and index cards. His recruiting effort also included calls to scores of candidates, as well as their parents.

His work not only before but during the WBC qualifying “made our team legitimate,” Kurz said. The experience apparently assured Ausmus that his post-playing career inclination was accurate.

“He told me he felt that he was not just the manager, but the general manager — that it was a lot of fun choosing his own players. It gave him the feeling he could do it,” Kurz said.

Though there has been some talk in the media about Ausmus’s lack of experience, the veteran catcher disagrees.


Former All-Star catcher Brad Ausmus gives some pointers to a young Israeli baseball enthusiast (photo credit: Michal Shmulovich)

“There’s many levels of qualification to manage a MLB team. I suppose we will find out a year from now if I was qualified or not. In the meantime I have a veteran bench and pitching coach standing beside me in the dugout that I can lean on if necessary,” Ausmus told the Times of Israel this week.

Last year, prior to taking on Israeli baseball, Ausmus had said, “I have experience coaching on the field at both the major and minor league level, and I have done front office work. To be a manager is not a huge shift.”

Ausmus is replacing a successful manager in Leyland, who at 68 was the oldest skipper in baseball. Leyland guided the Tigers to two American League championships in his eight seasons. In 1997, he had managed the Florida Marlins to the World Series crown.

Several members of Leyland’s staff will be staying on with Ausmus, including bench coach Gene Lamont. With Team Israel, Ausmus leaned on Kapler and Shawn Green, both former major league outfielders. It was an arrangement that developed unusually.

At a November 2011 meeting in Cypress, Calif., Kapler peppered team officials with questions, while Green and Ausmus “were very quiet,” Kurz recalled. The three ex-players were offered playing and field leadership roles and asked to select their preferred jobs.

“I thought for sure Gabe would be the manager because he’d managed one year in the minors,” Kurz said.

In a February 2012 conference call, the trio revealed to Israeli baseball officials their division of labor: Ausmus, manager; Green and Kapler, player-coaches.

“From then on, Brad came into his own” on the job, Kurz said.

That May, Ausmus and his wife, Liz, visited Israel, where the new manager ran baseball clinics for children, held a news conference, donned tefillin for the first time and went surfing in Tel Aviv.


Brad Ausmus, President Shimon Peres and US Ambassador Dan Shapiro. (photo credit: courtesy of US Embassy)

Ausmus took great pride in meeting Israeli President Shimon Peres, said the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, who accompanied Ausmus to the meeting.

“Peres is an impressive man. I get the feeling he could slide in to any situation with people of any background and make them feel comfortable,” Ausmus told the Times of Israel last year.

“The opportunity to lead the team struck him as fun and also novel,” Shapiro said of his conversation with Ausmus, who wracked up 1,579 hits — fifth among Jewish players — while playing for four teams in the majors.

Ausmus has stayed in touch with his Team Israel players. He helped pitcher Alon Leichman deal with some mound struggles at California’s Cypress College and wrote letters of recommendation on his behalf when Leichman was transferring to the University of California, San Diego.

“It meant so much that … he really helped me,” said Leichman, one of three Israel-born players on the team – he was raised on Kibbutz Gezer – and now a pitcher at UCSD. “He owed me nothing, so I’m really humbled by it.”

One player on the Israeli team might even rejoin Ausmus in Detroit: Ben Guez, an outfielder for the Tigers’ AAA Toledo club. Three Team Israel members played in the major leagues in 2013: Nate Freiman of the Athletics, the Astros’ Josh Zeid and Josh Satin of the New York Mets.

Leichman already was a Detroit fan because his mother, Rabbi Miri Gold, is a native. But with Ausmus as the Tigers manager, “I’m rooting for them even more,” he said. “Every baseball fan in Israel is now a Tigers fan.”

 (Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com)

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With a cadre of middle-aged Jewish male fans, feisty Sharon Fichman is hopeful for her upcoming women’s doubles match

FLUSHING MEADOWS, New York — On the court at the US Open in Flushing Meadows, 22-year-old Canadian Sharon Fichman is a hard-hitting, feisty, grunting right-handed baseliner who packs a lot of punch into her 5 foot, 4 inch (1.63 meters) frame. Her fighting spirit and determination helped the number two seed as she battled through three matches in the US Open qualifying tournament last week.

There, Fichman earned one of the 128 coveted spots in the US Open 2013 Women’s draw, unlike Israeli star Shahar Peer, the number one seed in the “qualies,” who lost her first round match in straight sets to Russian Ksenia Pervak 6-4, 7-6 and did not make the main draw for singles. Peer will play doubles with Lourdes Dominguez Lino of Spain.

At a career-high rank of 95 in the world, and despite being relatively unknown outside of her native Canada, Fichman attracts a small group of loyal followers. These mostly middle-aged Jewish men from New York city chant courtside, “Go, Sharon!” throughout her matches and appear to know a great deal about the Jewish players and coaches represented at the US Open.

One Fichman fan sees my Times of Israel media credentials, grabs the daily schedule of matches from my hands, and points out all players with a Jewish connection: “Julia Cohen is half Jewish; Camille Giorgi is Jewish; Youzny is maybe a quarter Jewish but his Russian coach is a proud Jew…” Nachas.

Fichman’s own parents are not in the crowd; she matter-of-factly reports in a post-match interview that her nuclear engineer father, Bobby, and computer engineer mother, Julia, have already used up their vacation time.

Fichman was born in Toronto in 1990, where she was also raised, but is currently training in Vancouver with coach Larry Jurovich. Her Romanian-born parents moved to Israel in 1982, then to Canada in 1989. Fichman began playing tennis at age 6.

“I come from a tennis family — my dad played in the nationals in Romania, my mother loved playing tennis recreationally and my older brother, Thomas, plays tennis. We had a club near our house and I was good at tennis right away.”

In 2004, when she was 13, Fichman won the prestigious Orange Bowl juniors title and was the world’s number two player in her age group. The same year she was Canada’s under-18 Indoor and Outdoor National girls champion. By 14 she had won the gold medal for tennis singles at the 17th Maccabiah Games, where she also won a silver in mixed doubles and a bronze in women’s doubles.

“I got really sick when the week of the Maccabiah Games started,” she vividly recalls.

Fichman has been to Israel many times. “I really love Israel — it is an amazing place. I have dual citizenship, and I have lots of family — aunts, uncles, cousins and nephews in Israel.”

She had a very successful 2006 with doubles victories in both the junior Australian and French opens; she reached the quarter finals in singles and the finals in doubles at the junior US Open later that year. In October of 2006, Fichman began beating some of the world’s top ranked players including Hana Sromova (114).

Fichman turned pro in 2007 and managed to defeat the world’s #90, Stephanie Cohen-Aloro. Later, in 2012, Fichman’s competed in Challenger tournaments and her rankings began to climb — from 239 in July to 153 in December.

Most recently, Fichman has achieved some success in her native Canada

Most recently, She has achieved some success in her native Canada. At the Rogers Cup in Toronto earlier this month, Fichman, then ranked 104, reached the second round in singles and made it to the semifinals for doubles.

With a career win/lost record of 234 and 148, she has earned $85,383 so far this year, with a career net of $338,643.

Following Fichman’s three wins in the US Open qualifiers, she faced Romanian Sorana Cirstea, ranked 22 in the world and the tournament’s 19th seed.

Asked in a post-match interview about facing another player of Romanian descent in the first round, she playfully said, “I’ve known Sorana since we were 11 years old. We’ve played so many times. We met at age 13 or 14 in the finals at the Orange Bowl — it’s not weird at all. We grew up together and we’re friends.”

Cirstea defeated Fichman 7-5, 5-7, 6-1.

“I had a lot of opportunities but I didn’t connect on the break points. I felt I played pretty well for the most part.”

Fichman is intensely focused on her tennis career, which often requires 35 to 40 weeks of travel per year.

“It’s hard to find another passion when I am in one,” she said, but speaks of her love for cooking and baking, the outdoors (walks, hiking and fishing) and of possible future professional interests including business, finance, real estate, and interior design.

But for now, it’s back to tennis. Despite her loss in the singles, Fichman and fellow Canadian Aleksandra Wosniack are in the main draw for  the US Open women’s doubles, where Fichman is currently ranked 89 in the world. (Fichman and Wosniack were scheduled to face wildcards Allie Kiick and Sachia Vickery, both of the United States, on Wednesday, but the match was postponed due to rain.)

Fichman is optimistic. “This is the best I’ve done as a pro — the best is yet to come!”

(Source: http://www.timesofisrael.com)


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FLUSHING, New York – A handful of Israeli players fought for the chance to qualify for the prestigious U.S Open Grand Slam tennis tournament, which began plan on August 26 and will wrap up on Sept. 9. The U.S. Open is the world’s highest attending sporting event, with more than 700,000 fans expected to attend.

Dudi Sela, ranked 76 in the world and a member of Israel’s Davis Cup team, automatically qualified for the main draw of the tournament. In the week leading up to the Open, Sela participated in an Israel Tennis Center clinic in Manhattan, playfully rallyng with New York Junior Tennis League tennis students, as well as with nine-year-old Israeli hopeful Neria Yona. Sela arrived a week early to the Open to practice with his coach and other main draw players, and to watch countryman Amir Weintraub’s third round qualifying match. Sela won two Challenger tournaments this summer and has acclimated to his new Wilson Blade tennis racket; he switched rackets several months ago and reports, “I had a tough time getting adjusted to my new racket.”

On opening day, Sela took on Andrey Kuznetsov of Russia in a nail-biting match. Sela was down 4-1 in the first set, but battled back to take it 7-6. He then won the second set 6-3, but lost next two sets 6-7 and 5-7. With the men tied at two sets each – and with his countrymen and Open doubles players Andy Ram and Yoni Erlich in the stands – Sela won the fifth set 6-4 for the match. Exhausted, he fell to the ground, then stood up and proceeded to pose with every single fan seeking a photo and/or an autograph.

Julia Glushko won her first round match .

Julia Glushko, who played in last year’s U.S. Open and is currently ranked 128, battled her way through three matches in the qualifiers to earn a spot on the main draw.  She won her first match on August 27 against 20th seed Nadia Petrova of Russia. While Glushko needed three qualifying round wins to make the main draw, coach Liran Kling, in an interview with the Ledger following her first round qualifiers match, noted proudly, “Now, people expect Julia to qualify [for the main draw of major tournaments]; it is not like last year when she was a surprise.”

Weintraub, ranked 188 and also a member of the Davis Cup team, spent three weeks in New England this summer playing for the Boston Lobsters World Team Tennis team. He won two matches in the qualifying tournament, which took place the week before the Open, but in the third round match, a 6-4, 6-2 loss to Argentinean Maximo Gonzalez prevented him from making the main draw.

Shahar Peer, ranked 79 and coming off her first tournament win in four years with a victory over 19-year-old Saisai Zheng of China at the Caoxijiu Suzhou Ladies Open, was the number one seed in the qualifiers. Peer, whose up and down career has taken her as high as number 11 in the world, suffered a disappointing 6-4, 7-6 defeat in the first round of the qualifiers to Russian Ksenia Pervak.

Also getting ready for their first-round matches, as the Ledger went to press, were doubles partners Ram and Erlich, as well as Shahar Peer, who was scheduled to play womens doubles. One Israeli junior, Or Ram-Harel, may attempt to qualify for the juniors main draw.

Once again this year, kosher tennis fans will be able to feast at the open, thanks to New Jersey resident Jonathan Katz, owner and operator of Kosher Sports, and his staff, who will be operating a cart outside of court 12.

The Kosher Grill cart at the US Open is a popular food stop for fans.

“This is our tenth U.S. Open,” Katz told the Ledger. Among the items diners will find on his cart: chipotle chicken wrap, crispy chicken wrap, Italian sausage with peppers and onions, sliced steak sandwich, knishes, franks, and overstuffed pastrami sandwiches. All meats are Glatt kosher and all breads are Pas Yisrael; the cart is under supervision of the Star-K and will be open each day of the Open, except Shabbat and Rosh Hashanah.

Katz was not particularly concerned about loss of business due to the Jewish holidays.  “We’ve had Rosh Hashanah fall during the US Open before. He says, “The main factor affecting sales is the weather!”  The cart closes at 4 pm on Fridays.  Katz concludes, “We are looking forward to another successful US Open!”

(Source: http://www.jewishledger.com)

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