The Yavneh Academy Red Hawks 8th grade basketball team opened their season at home against Solomon Schechter of Bergen County Sharks. The Redhawks had a disappointing 0-10 season last year, but looked to start this year off with a victory. The team managers for the year will be Zach Levy and Ian Bromberg
The game started off slowly with good defense by both teams, but behind two treys from Xander Schrier (7 pts) Yavneh took a 6-4 lead. The Red Hawks started the 2nd quarter on a roll behind the offense of David Siesser (5 pts), Avi Bursztyn (game high 10 pts), Jake Dube (8 pts) and Devin Scharf (6 pts) and the defense and rebounding of Yoni Menashe. Right before halftime, with less than a second to play, Siesser inbounded the ball to Bursztyn who went right up and hit the layup to close the half with Yavneh leading by the score of 19-7.
At the start of the second half, SSBC went on a mini run but Yavneh was able to take back control of the game under the direction of Eitan Guzman (5 pts), Lior Aharon (2 pts) and Eliav Baron (2 pts) and extend their lead to 13 points to start the final quarter. In the 4th quarter Noah Cohnen and Daniel Stempel stepped up their defensive play and the Red Hawks went to the locker room with a 47-25 victory and their first win in over a year. Yavneh’s next game is on December 8 at WDS.
