The Yeshiva University of Los Angeles (YULA) Boys’ High School basketball team has won the Westside League championship, making it probably the first Yeshiva High School team to win a league title in an open league.
Unlike the all-Yeshiva league which exists in the New York City area, YULA plays in a league comprising Southern California-based private and non-Los Angeles city public schools. Its overall season record of 15-5 provided the Yeshiva with its second consecutive qualification to the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) playoff tournament.
But YULA, playing with its season’s top scorer Jeff Remer hampered by a wrist injury, was defeated in the first round of the tournament by Pasadena Poly, 53-34.
The 5-foot-10, 170-pound Remer, who has averaged 27 points, five rebounds and five assists per game this season, was held to one point by Pasadena. Remer, a guard, was selected Westside League player of the year. He has received a basketball scholarship from Yeshiva University in New York.
YESHIVA HAS A NON-JEWISH COACH
Unlike most yeshiva basketball clubs around the country, the Los Angeles institution has a non-Jewish coach, Scott Rice, a graduate of Hope College in Michigan who, in addition to coaching basketball, serves as the yeshiva’s athletic director and chairman of the physical education department.
Rice has had his share of problems throughout the year while coaching the Yeshiva University quintet. The club’s starting center left school before the start of the basketball season to study in an Israeli yeshiva. The school also has no gym of its own and the three formal practices held since the start of the season were conducted on a parking lot basketball court owned by the school.
To help improve the team’s performance, Rice scheduled several pre-league games against non-league teams. But scheduling is difficult since, as is the custom of all yeshivas, school studies come first. On Sunday’s the team would play pick up games to improve their performance.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
