South African diaspora dominates pickleball medals at Maccabi Games

PICKLEBALL MEDALISTS WITH SOUTH AFRICAN HERITAGE SHINE AT MACCABI GAMES

Nine medals. Five athletes. Zero of them competing under the South African flag. The pickleball results from the Maccabi Games told a quiet story of diaspora sport: former South Africans, now scattered across Israel and the United States, converging on the podium under different colours while carrying a shared origin.

Warren Stein, Janine Berzen, Tanya Silverman, and Martin Stein played for Team Israel in the Masters pickleball tournament. Mandy Sacks Harnoy represented the United States. All five are former tennis players who found pickleball a natural next step, drawn by its technical overlap with tennis while offering a less physically punishing game that stays competitive and social.

Silverman’s haul was the most substantial. She took gold in the Women Masters 50 Doubles and gold in the Mixed Doubles Master 50, then added bronze in the Women Open Doubles. Her path to the sport began with a tennis-related calf injury and a Facebook scroll that led her to pickleball. She took lessons with Lee Sieradzky, founder and chairperson of the Israel Pickleball Association, and was quickly hooked. When the chance to represent Israel at the Maccabiah arrived, she did not hesitate, partly because she had never known about the Games as a younger person in South Africa.

“I was incredibly grateful to represent Israel at my age. Wearing the Star of David was a real honour. I even wore Star of David socks with matching shoes because I was so proud to represent the country. The support from the crowd was amazing, and seeing so many people cheering for Israel was overwhelming,” she said. “It was a fantastic experience, although I was definitely nervous.”

Meanwhile, Berzen took a different road to the same destination. She had played tennis since age 10, made aliya nearly 20 years ago, and found tennis hard to sustain in her new country. She switched to squash at a facility in Ra’anana, where a fellow player, Adam Bachman, eventually nudged her toward pickleball. “I checked it out, and I got the bug,” she recalled. That bug was enough to earn her bronze in the Masters Women’s Singles.

Martin Stein’s gold in the Men’s Masters 50 Doubles is worth pausing on: he had played pickleball for only a few months before competing. The result says something about how quickly skilled tennis players can transfer their touch to the sport. For Stein, the result mattered less than the context. “Wearing the Israeli colours at the Maccabiah carried a sense of responsibility as well as pride,” he said. “Even though there were quite a few South African olim, everyone was passionate about representing Israel. There was plenty of English spoken, a shared sense of humour, and a real camaraderie, but at the same time, everyone was united by the goal of competing for Israel.”

Warren Stein, 51, took bronze in the Masters men’s singles and silver in the Mixed Doubles Masters. He previously represented Israel at the pickleball world championships in Florida the year before, and he treats the sport as a practical way to stay fit while keeping his racquet instincts sharp. He has also become the group’s unofficial provisioner, arriving at matches with biltong and distributing it among fellow players. “We’re all still learning this new sport and trying to master it. One of the great things about pickleball is that age doesn’t really matter. If you have good touch and feel for the ball, you can compete,” he said. “I’m also known for bringing the biltong, so whenever someone asks, I make sure the South Africans are well supplied.”

Sacks Harnoy, competing for the United States at 60, took silver in the Women Masters Doubles, silver in the Women Masters 50 Singles, and bronze in the Mixed Doubles Masters — the most of any pickleball player in the United States team. She has lived in the United States for nearly 40 years, yet the Maccabiah pulled something out of her that regular competition had not. “I put in so much hard work to get here. I’m 60, and it’s just the most incredible feeling to still have this unbelievable passion for something at this stage of my life,” she said. “I just got a thrill competing and representing the United States, and it was really a very big deal.”

The South African thread running through the group gave the experience a texture that transcended the medal count. Silverman described standing on the podium surrounded by other South Africans as “having a little bit of your home away from home with you as you’re playing.” Sacks Harnoy put it plainly: “We’ve all taken different paths, but it all started back in South Africa. That was like just a lovely common bond for all of us.”

Whether that bond translates into any formal connection with South African pickleball development remains an open question.