“I Love Israel! This One’s for Israel!”

April 6, 2006 - 7:22 AM by Allison

Those were the words of the new Israeli sports star on the horizon, Shay Doron, right after she led the University of Maryland basketball team to victory in the NCAA championship.

She was the first Israeli ever to play in an NCAA final and is a shoo-in to be the first Israeli to play in the NBA in the United States (the WNBA)

That is such a triumph, considering how the development of organized, competitive sports for women lags so far behind the U.S. and most of the rest of the Western world. Having a role model like Doron will be wonderful for young Israeli girls.

And obviously, she’s a fabulous ambassador. All of the media coverage of her is incredibly flattering, painting her as not only a star player, but a team leader — as one of her fellow players puts it, the “epicenter” of the Maryland team. Here she is starring in articles about the game in the Washington Post,the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Miami Herald.
Here’s a great profile in Newsday, which notes the irony that when Doron’s family moved to the U.S. for her to pursue her basketball dream and she looked for the strongest girls high school program, she ended up at Christ the King, a Catholic high school in Queens.

And so one day Christ the King coach Bob Mackey got a call from Shay’s father, Yuda, essentially saying how’d you like to meet my daughter, the basketball player?

“I figured Christ the King is a Jewish school — I mean, Jesus was a Jew,” Yuda Doron said with a laugh.

Her first visit back to Israel after this game should be quite the victory lap. She’s already a national hero — it warmed my feminist heart when my basketball fanatic son ran to the computer the morning after the game to see whether Doron led her team to victory, and exclaimed in excitement when he found out that she had done it.

Oh, and by the way, Doron’s not alone. No less than fifteen female Israeli basketball players are making their mark on U.S. college teams.

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