By Stacey Dresner

JASON DECK

Two Connecticut teens will travel to Israel this summer to participate in the 20th World Maccabiah Games.

Jason Deck of Fairfield and Nadav Zarmi of Stamford have both been selected to play on the Maccabi USA Youth Men’s Soccer team. They will be among the more than 9,000 athletes from 70 countries competing in the games from July 6-18 in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Maccabi USA alone will be taking 1,100 athletes to the Maccabiah Games, the third largest international sporting event in the world.

“My teammates and I have the distinct honor of representing the United States and our respective communities at the World Maccabiah Games, which are held every four years in Israel,” said Deck. “I am pretty sure that my teammates and I equally share the same level of excitement and enthusiasm of competing in the Games.”

NADAV ZARMI

“I want to play in the Maccabiah Games for the experience and the exposure,” says Zarmi. “I want to go because it’s a great opportunity for me to showcase my soccer abilities to other coaches and people and hopefully get some interest in my soccer ability. I always want to represent my country so playing for the U.S. team really means a lot to me.”

Deck, 18, a senior at Fairfield Warde High School, says his love for soccer began very early.

“My soccer career began at the age of one when I pushed a size one ball with my feet around our family room,” he says. “By age three, I was on my first recreational soccer team. As a little kid, I loved to move, and still do. I was naturally fast, and I used my speed to gain the advantage on the field.”

When his family moved to Fairfield in 2005, he joined a Fairfield recreation soccer team. He later played from U9-U13 on several different Fairfield’s travel teams (FUSA). In 2013, he joined the CT Club Soccer team Revolution United, FC.

“My club team competes in various leagues: New York Regional League, Eastern Development Program, Connecticut Junior Soccer Association as well as a spot to play in the CT Cup. My club team participates in out-of-state soccer tournaments held throughout the year as well.”

Deck was a starter on the Warde Varsity Soccer team for three years, and the recipient of the All-Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference (FCIAC) East Award in 2015 and 2016, the FCIAC Scholar Athlete in 2016, and Fairfield Ward HS Award for Offensive MVP in 2016. He holds the varsity boys’ title for most career goals scored (18) and career assists (12) in Warde’s history.

Deck is the son of Camy Selig Deck, a learning specialist/adjunct professor at the University of Bridgeport, and Andrew Deck, a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley in Fairfield. His brothers, Jacob, 15, and Jesse, 10, “are very supportive siblings, smart students, avid soccer players and fans,” he says.

His fans also include grandparents, Dr. Gad and Phyllis Selig, who live in Fairfield. “[They] make every attempt to attend several high school and club soccer games for all three of us, and my cousins’ games, as well,” he says.

A resident of Stamford, Nadav Zarmi says he has played soccer all his life.

“From the beginning I was the kid who knew where the goal was,” he says. “I always wanted the ball and scored. I wouldn’t say I was the best player when I was young but I understood the game from a very young age. I like the physical part of soccer and the mental side.”

The 17-year-old senior at the Academy of Information Technology and Engineering played travel soccer with the Stamford Hurricanes until he was 12, when he joined Beachside Soccer Club and played Premier for two years. During his freshman year in high school, Beachside became a U.S. Soccer Academy Club, the highest level of youth soccer. Zarmi has played at that level ever since. He did not play on his high school teams because the U.S. Soccer Academy Club, which plays year-round, doesn’t allow its players to play on high school teams.

The son of Israeli-Americans Itai Zarmi, a cyber-security consultant and Sigal Zarmi, CIO at PwC Israel, Zarmi says he has been to Israel many times, travelling to Israel most summers to visit family. He has a brother, Tal Zarmi, 22. He is the grandson of Moshe Zarmi of Stamford.

Zarmi played twice in the JCC Maccabee games. In 2014, he played basketball at the games in Orange County. In the summer of 2016 he played soccer when the games were held in Stamford. “There we made it to the semifinals and finished in third,” he says.

It was while playing in the Maccabees that he was approached about the Maccabiah Games.

“When I played soccer in the 2016 Maccabee Games in Stamford the soccer coach for the Maccabiah Team going to Israel really liked me and asked to come try out,” he says.

The Maccabi USA Youth Men’s Team held tryouts on both the East and West coasts in January. Deck and Zarmi tried out at the University of Pennsylvania’s Indoor Bubble on the Philadelphia campus against 100 players, both making it onto the 20-person roster.

The Maccabiah Games will be the first time Deck has been to Israel.

“Hopefully, this trip will be the first of many,” he says.

Deck is looking at colleges in Connecticut and New York and hopes to compete on a Division III college or club team. He wants to study biology and eventually become a doctor. His family belongs to Congregation Beth El in Fairfield and he has served as a madrich (aide) and has tutored children in Hebrew as well. He also attends Merkaz, the local Jewish community high school program.

“Merkaz exposed me to Jewish culture, food, and language,” he says. “The lessons I have learned about what the Jewish people endured over centuries has helped guide me on the soccer field. Believe it or not, I aspire to be a player who competes with a high level of integrity, on and off the field, because of the history of our people,” he says.

Two years ago when he had a soccer tournament in New Jersey, Deck’s’s mother packed up the family’s entire seder – haggadot, wine, seder plate, meal and all – and celebrated the seder in the New Jersey hotel room.

“We then proceeded to share our wines with my teammates’ parents. It was a very memorable seder for us,” Deck recalls.

Zarmi attended Bi-Cultural Day School until the fifth grade. He has served as a counselor at the Stamford JCC summer program and is a Friendship Circle volunteer.

For both of these young athletes, their love of soccer goes beyond this summer at the Maccabiah Games.

“I am going to Fairfield University and I am playing (Division I) soccer there,” Zarmi says. “I want to study something [related to] engineering or computer science. I want to see how far my soccer abilities can take me so I’d like to try to go pro after or during college.”

“Soccer is a sport that keeps you in shape,” Deck says. “My grandfather still plays soccer a few times a week, and on occasion, so does my dad. I hope my brothers and I continue our family’s soccer tradition. I want to play the sport for as long as I can; I love the sport that much.”