The new school year is here and now’s the time to wish good luck to all of the young Maccabists. In honor of the occasion, we checked with some of the Maccabi Stars to find out what type of students they were back in the day with the help of 6 questions.
1. What do you remember from the first day of school?
Yonatan Cohen: “I was very excited but then things settled down once I was with all of my friends.”
Dan Glazer: “I remember the first day of grade 7. I changed schools and went from elementary to high school. I was very excited about the change.”
Maor Kandil: “I felt a tremendous amount of pressure and excitement.”
Ruslan Barsky: “I remember the excitement of meeting my friends at school and beginning the new year.”
2. What class did you enjoy the most?
Cohen: “Sports of course! We always played football.”
Glazer: “Sports…as I wasn’t the greatest in many of the classes I was very happy that there was one class that I was the best at.”
Kandil: “Sports. Of course football was the best.”
Barsky: “Sports class. Most will agree with me that there’s nothing like playing football at school – everyone against everyone.”
3. Which class did you least enjoy?
Cohen: “History.”
Glazer: “Literature. It was difficult.”
Kandil: “History. It was boring, so much so that I fell asleep.”
Barsky: “History. I hope my teacher will forgive me.”
4. What did the teachers say about you?
Cohen: “I was wild but when I needed to be serious I was.”
Glazer: “The teachers really liked me a lot but at parent-teacher meetings they would tell my mother and father that I talked too much and disrupted the class too much in the middle of a lesson.”
Kandil: “Hyperactive.”
Barsky: “They always believed that I could get better scores and be a better student. They always tried to help me be the best I could be.”
5. What type of student were you really?
Cohen: “I was wild. The teachers were correct.”
Glazer: “I was always a good student with good grades. It wasn’t always easy because o football but I always gave the maximum.”
Kandil: “I admit that I wasn’t a star if I always did what I needed to.”
Barsky: “I was always a good student but I’m sure that I could have done even better.”
6. How did you combine football and your studies?
Cohen: “It was easy to combine football and school. I had many classes and tests but the club always helped me out the best they could.”
Glazer: “Thanks to my school Lady Davis, they were always there to help me in terms of my football and helped me make up school work when I had to fly with the club or national team. Luckily I was together with Yonatan Cohen in the same class and many times the teachers put together a calendar and schedule for us that was different than the rest of the class so we could make up the school work we missed. I had a lot of private tutoring and I always gave my maximum.”
Kandil: “I tried to rest a bit after school and then continue my lessons at the training facility before practice began.”
Barsky: “It’s a very important integration and combination of the two. I always believed that if I succeeded in school, I would succeed in football. They go together and I always tried my best to do the maximum in both. You need to understand the importance of being able to combine the two and that way you’ll be able to.”
