Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Northwest Yeshiva players wear skullcaps

Seattle Times:

Q: Do boys on the Northwest Yeshiva basketball team wear the traditional Jewish hat, the yarmulke, during games?

A: Yes. It's a rule at the Mercer Island school.

Athletic director Jed Davis said the feeling is they are representing an Orthodox Jewish school so customs will be followed.

Yarmulkes are small, thin skullcaps. Most players use an athletic headband to keep them on the back of their heads, but metal clips are allowed under an exception to national high-school rules. However, headbands are more popular because clips sometimes come off during games at inopportune times, Davis said.

The girls basketball team at the school is noteworthy because some girls, for modesty reasons tied to religion, choose to play in skirts.

Northwest Yeshiva is a Class B school and one of its top boy players, Golan Silverman, a 6-foot-3 junior, was the Seattle Times' boy athlete of the week in early December. He earned the award during a week in which he scored 87 points, grabbed 73 rebounds and shot 85 percent from the field in a three-game stretch.