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Kaiserman JCC Announces New Class
of Hall of Famers
T he Kaiserman JCC in Wynnewood
opened the JCC Maccabi Hall of
Fame last year to honor Philadelphia
area athletes, coaches and contribu-
tors who represented the region at the
national JCC Maccabi Games.

The fi rst class had 13 inductees, a big
group designed to establish the hall. The
man behind the eff ort, Kaiserman board
member Daniel Weiss, said that future
classes would be smaller.

The JCC revealed the 2023 inductees,
and the group is a little smaller, but not
by much. It includes nine new members
because there are still so many worthy
inductees, according to Barrie Mittica, the
JCC’s director of engagement.

This year’s class includes volunteer
and emcee Michael Barkann of NBC
Sports Philadelphia fame, coach Keith
Bradburd, coach Brian Schiff , swimmer
Beth Adler, basketball players Aron and
Bryan Cohen, baseball players Ryan
and Conor Donavan, dancer Shelby
Rosenberg, the coaches and volunteers
from Bill and Tracey Brody’s family and
the 1984 boys’ basketball team that won
gold in Detroit, the fi rst Philly team to win
gold at the JCC Maccabi Games.

The games are for athletes between
the ages of 13 and 16. The induction
ceremony will take place on April 2.

JCC offi cials are hoping to unveil an
exhibit for the hall of famers at the
ceremony, one similar to the wall honor-
ing Philadelphia Jewish sports hall of
famers in a Kaiserman hallway.

Proceeds from the event will go
toward scholarships for the next crop
of JCC Maccabi athletes from the
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From left: Aron and Bryan Cohen
Philadelphia area. Mittica said the JCC
is hoping to off er as much as $20,000
in scholarship money to local teens.

She believes the experience is import-
ant for young athletes because they
are often too busy playing sports to
participate in Jewish activities with their
peers, like a youth group or camp. The
JCC games become their connection to
Jewish peoplehood.

“It creates positive Jewish adults,”
she said.

This year’s hall of famers speak to that
experience. The brothers Cohen, Aron, who
went on to play at the University of
Pennsylvania, and Bryan, who played
for Bucknell University, participated in a
combined seven JCC Maccabi compe-
titions and won six gold medals. Aron
Cohen said playing on those teams at a
young age helped him develop a strong
work ethic. They also helped him build
connections that he would use later on
in his business career. The brothers own
Full Court Development, a real estate
development company in Philadelphia.

“A lot of people I work with today
come from that world,” Aron Cohen said
of his JCC Maccabi connections.

Bryan Cohen said the brothers grew up
playing one-on-one against each other,
with the older Aron Cohen winning until
the younger Bryan Cohen grew taller than
him in high school. They also spent a year
playing together at the Abington Friends
School in Jenkintown, reaching the
Friends Schools League championship
with Aron Cohen at point guard and
Bryan Cohen at forward. So to go into the
hall together, after a lifetime of playing
together, is just a cool experience.

“We put a lot of time and sacrifi ce
in working out, being disciplined at
basketball. It really paid off to play at
diff erent levels,” Bryan Cohen said. “It’s
something you don’t think about when
you’re young and working hard.”
Brian Schiff , a longtime boys’ basket-
ball coach for the Philadelphia JCC team,
described the games as a life-changing
experience. In 1992, he was writing for
The Jewish Times when he visited a
JCC basketball tryout. He told the coach
it looked fun. The coach asked him if he
wanted to help. Schiff said yes and went
to Baltimore with the team that year for
the games.

The man who had never coached
basketball before, and who admittedly
did not know the Xs and Os, ended up
coaching for the next quarter century.

He was an assistant on that boys’ team
for the next fi ve years before taking
over as head coach, leading the team
to seven golds between 1998 and 2016.

Schiff also assisted Philadelphia Jewish
sports hall of famer Steve Chadwin at
Abington Friends for six years. Along the
way, he learned the Xs and Os.

“It’s humbling; it’s a huge honor,”
he said of his hall induction. “Getting
involved was kind of an accident, and
then it changed my life completely.” ■
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
Courtesy of Alan Cohen and Cynthis Cohen
Jarrad Saff ren | Staff Writer