WALL TOWNSHIP – Following the organization’s announcement that it would be relocating from Middletown to the Jersey Shore Arena, the New Jersey 87’s revealed that head coach Adam Houli has been selected as a member of the Team USA coaching staff for the 21st Maccabiah Games in July 2022.
The Maccabiah Games is an international an international multi-sport event for Jewish and Israeli athletes, and is the third largest sporting event of its kind in the world.
“It is an honor to be named to Team USA Men’s Ice Hockey staff for the 21st Maccabi Games,” Houli said in the organization’s official media release. “Being able to return to Israel to represent Team USA behind the bench is an amazing feeling. Having so many Jewish athletes from around the world come together to compete is life changing.”
In 2009, Houli, a Trinity College hockey alum, skated with Team USA at the Friendship Games, an event sanctioned by the European University Sports Association. The event was held in Eilat, Israel.
“When I was a player for Team USA in the Friendship Games I felt a tremendous amount of pride for putting on my jersey, but even more so when I realized where I was playing,” Houli added. “Being able to represent both my national and religious pride is an amazing feeling…”
Ice Hockey was first introduced at the Maccabiah Games in 2007, and then not again until 2013.
In 2017, Team USA’s Maccabiah Games club secured the gold medal with a roster that included a couple of local standouts in former Brick Township High School goaltender Jake Lakatos, and former Manalapan High School defenseman Ben Tartakovsky, who both expressed pride in suiting up for the country as well as their religion in an APP.com article.
While recruiting and training Team USA’s 2022 club, Houli will work alongside head coach Michael Gershon, a Sparta, NJ native who spent four seasons as an assistant at NCAA Division I Robert Morris University before being named head coach of NCAA Division III Chatham University in April.
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