No 3:00 AM wake up time. No early morning flight. No staying with host families or visiting an unfamiliar school. No late night journey home. Instead, the AJA High School volleyball team would play on their home courts and in their own community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, the AJA volleyball team traveled to LA for a tournament at YULA High School. This fall, however, they attended an invitational hosted at their own campus from November 30 to December 3. Organized by a committee of AJA parents led by Justin Katz, a parent volunteer and coach for the flag football and baseball teams, the tournament welcomed seven schools. On Thursday and Friday, teams participated in rounds of pool play to determine their position in later competitions. After a Shabbat of programming in Toco Hills, the tournament concluded with elimination matches for a silver and gold bracket, with AJA winning third place in the gold bracket. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor junior Dassie Chasen, the invitational offered the benefits of a sports tournament and Shabbaton without the hassles of traveling as a visiting team.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n For junior Dassie Chasen, the invitational offered the benefits of a sports tournament and Shabbaton without the hassles of traveling as a visiting team. Dassie said she enjoyed participating in the tournament at her own school, knowing she was near home in a familiar setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though Dassie did not need to travel by plane to the tournament, many of its attendees did. On Thursday, players arrived at AJA from seven schools across the country: Berman Hebrew Academy (MD), Maimonides School (MA), Northwest Yeshiva High School (WA), Ma\u2019ayanot (NJ), The Frisch School (NJ), Salanter Akiba Riverdale Academy (NY), and Magen David Yeshiva (NY). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hosting more than one hundred volleyball players, along with their chaperones and coaches, required much preparation. Tournament organizers spent hours planning logistics including host families, food, coordination with visiting schools, and security. Coach Katz said he based many of these details off of the annual Flag Football Spring Classic Tournament, which he organized for the past two years. The football invitational gave the planning committee \u201ca roadmap, a blueprint to build a successful experience,\u201d he said, so \u201cwe weren’t starting from scratch.\u201d The group began planning logistics in mid-September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coach Katz said that the Spring Classic served not only as a model but also an inspiration for the Volleyball Invitational. With an annual flag football tournament at AJA as well as other basketball and baseball tournaments for the boys, \u201cI thought: why not the girls? The girls can have that too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n AJA entered the tournament with a match against Frisch, which they won 3-0. Senior Leora Frank saw the game as evidence of the team\u2019s cohesiveness and \u201chigh energy going in\u201d to the tournament. \u201cWe really worked together and played to our full best,\u201d added freshman Liel Lugasi. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen us play that well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The support of the AJA community further encouraged the team. On Friday morning, the Jaguars played and won a match against NYHS, in a game that the entire high school came to watch. Many students and teachers also attended Thursday and Sunday games to support the Jaguars. Leora enjoyed the \u201chome court advantage\u201d and appreciated that \u201cpeople are there to cheer for us,\u201d although she missed the opportunity to travel to a different school for a tournament as in years past. She said the team felt \u201ccomfortable\u201d playing at AJA, knowing that \u201cthis is our ground; we\u2019ve got this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Thursday and Friday\u2019s rounds of pool play complete, the tournament transitioned to its Shabbaton portion. All Shabbat programming, including tefillah, meals, and an afternoon Torah Bowl competition, took place at Ohr HaTorah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Senior Ella Katz said the Friday night dinner stood out among the Shabbat activities. The girls were encouraged to sit with other teams, allowing for them to get to know each other. \u201cEverybody was there to meet people, to become friends with these people, on the court and off the court,\u201d she said. At the end of the meal, all gathered around one table for zemirot<\/em>. \u201cIt didn’t matter if you were SAR, you’re AJA, you’re Frisch, you\u2019re Ma\u2019ayanot,\u201d Ella said, because \u201cyou still are sharing the same songs and you’re saying the same words.\u201d The tournament concluded with single elimination competitions on Sunday for the gold and silver bracket. In a gold bracket semifinals competition, AJA played SAR, a match many players considered the tournament\u2019s highlight. Ella described the match as highly anticipated, as it would decide whether SAR would advance to play its rival team Frisch in the gold bracket finale. Volleyball Coach John Metallo said it was the most \u201cheavyweight\u201d and \u201cintense\u201d match of the tournament, one he spent time preparing for by watching SAR play against other schools in earlier games. After around two hours and five sets of play, AJA ultimately lost, allowing SAR to advance and win the gold bracket, but only after pushing SAR through a long and close game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This loss, however, did not quell the Jaguars\u2019 spirits. \u201cI think it just showed how our team can really come together and\u2026 play our strongest, work our best as a team, and unite when we need to,\u201d said Leora. Despite their outcome, the team felt \u201cproud\u201d of their progress in making it to the semifinals match. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The SAR match was not the end of AJA\u2019s tournament experience. The Jaguars secured third place in a consolation match against Berman. Coach Metallo called the AJA team \u201cthe best communicators on the court,\u201d saying he also appreciates their energy and dedication. Considering their performance in this year\u2019s tournament, he said the team feels proud of their progress since attending the tournament at YULA last spring, where they lost to SAR by a larger margin. \u201cWe went from not being able to compete to it being a winnable game,\u201d which Coach Metallo says reflects \u201ctremendous growth for the girls in their focus and tenacity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Coach Metallo said he already heard from some junior members of the team who want to start planning its next steps. \u201cThe team is capable of accomplishing anything we set our mind to, wholeheartedly,\u201d he said. \u201cSo the question is, what do we set our mind for? And then once that’s set, I have high hopes.\u201d In addition to their regular season, Coach Metallo plans to look into other tournaments to join.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team will certainly compete in next year\u2019s Volleyball Invitational, which Coach Katz plans to organize again at AJA. Coach Katz has shifted gears in preparation for the upcoming football Spring Classic in late March. He hopes to develop both tournaments as annual events hosted at AJA. Atlanta\u2019s central location, AJA\u2019s campus, and the Toco Hills community make it \u201cprime to offer\u201d such tournaments, according to Coach Katz. \u201cThe plan is to build this volleyball tournament for future years, and make sure that Atlanta is known for their two Shabbatons a year,\u201d Coach Katz said, \u201cwhich is volleyball in the fall and flag football in the spring.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AJA Hosts Inaugural Volleyball Invitational<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":2279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"The high school volleyball team participates in tournament hosted by AJA \/\/ Photo Credit to Yaacov Shuman","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","entry","rows"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/IMG_7058-scaled.jpeg?fit=2560%2C1707&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2280,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions\/2280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/palette.atljewishacademy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Ella saw the opportunities to bond with other teams as a theme of the weekend. \u201cAll the girls came in knowing that they were on separate teams but wanting to become one team,\u201d she said. Commenting on the players\u2019 sportsmanship during games, Liel elaborated, \u201cEven though we were all there to win, we were really nice to each other and we supported each other.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n