Life in the fasting lane

YAKIMA, Wash. -- The seven girls on the Northwest Yeshiva High School basketball team put on their uniforms, posed for a state tournament team photo and then forfeited, unwilling to compromise religious principles in order to play a game Thursday.

Northwest Yeshiva, an Orthodox Jewish school of about 60 students on Mercer Island, refused to break the Fast of Esther, a Jewish holiday that precedes Purim and fell on Thursday.

So its players took the court at the Yakima Valley SunDome, shook hands with declared winners St. John-Endicott and walked off the court and out of the Class 1B state tournament.

"It was really important for us to get the chance to show up and come out," said 15-year-old sophomore Julia Owen, the team's captain.

Though Orthodox doctrine does not prohibit physical activity during the Fast of Esther, it does mandate that followers refrain from eating or drinking between sunrise and sundown. That includes water. School officials decided it would be unsafe to let the girls play under those conditions, despite a tournament rule leaving teams that forfeit open to future sanctions.

"They go through like two or three bottles during a game," Northwest Yeshiva coach Jed Davis said after the forfeit. "If something happened, the first thing a parent's going to ask is, 'Why were you doing this?'"

Though there were a few tears, the girls were alright with the decision, said 17-year-old senior Zelle Rettman.

"It was good to be able to stand up for something I believe in," she said.

There is a long history of Jewish athletes sitting out games during holidays. Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg skipped a 1934 game that fell on Yom Kippur. And Sandy Koufax famously declined to pitch the 1965 World Series opener, which also fell on Yom Kippur. Northwest Yeshiva's forfeit was just the most recent in that line.

"We stand for certain principles as a school," Davis said. "And we have to respect those."

The team was the first from an Orthodox Jewish school to reach the tournament, which it opened with a Wednesday loss to a powerhouse Sunnyside Christian team. A win would have put Northwest Yeshiva in an evening game Thursday.

School officials lobbied the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association to adjust the schedule, but the organization did not want to disrupt the schedule for other teams in the tournament, WIAA Executive Director Mike Colbrese said.

The school also has hired Seattle attorney Sim Osborn to handle any potential legal issues involved with the tournament. Osborn said Thursday that the school has no plans to file any sort of action against the WIAA, and that he'd been hired to represent the school in the event the WIAA penalizes it for forfeiting.

WIAA state tournament rules state: "Any withdrawal or intentional forfeiture shall be considered a violation of WIAA rules and regulations, and shall be subject to penalties as determined by the WIAA Executive Board."

Colbrese said Thursday that the WIAA board has not discussed potential sanctions and would not until at least late March, when it convenes for its next meeting. He declined to comment on the likelihood of sanctions or whether the religious reasons for the forfeit could merit leniency. He did say the board is under no obligation to sanction Northwest Yeshiva.

Osborn said he hopes it never comes to that.

"(The team) went into it trying to do the right thing," he said.

That was also the general opinion of the SunDome crowd, which applauded the team during its brief on-court appearance Thursday. And though the team members were sorry to leave without playing another game, they were proud of themselves -- for the season they had as well as the stand they made. The team was one of 16 in its class to make the tournament.

"We sat down at the very beginning and we wrote out a lot of goals," Rettman said. "And one was making it to state. So we accomplished our goal."

* Pat Muir can be reached at 509-577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.