Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Frum School Wins a Championship in Incredible Comeback

North Hollywood Valley Torah rallied in the fourth quarter to defeat Bishop Diego, 58-51, to win the Southern Section Division 6AA championship on Motzei Shabbos, March 5, at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, CA.

First-quarter scores of 17-5 are usually in Valley Torah’s favor. Not so against Bishop Diego of Santa Barbara, which seemed poised to end the No. 1-seeded Wolfpack’s winning season. But, as the adage goes, “It’s not how you start, it’s how you finish.”

The Wolfpack finished strong, becoming the first Orthodox Jewish school to win a California Interscholastic Federation championship after coming back from a 44-35 fourth-quarter deficit to take the Southern Section Division 6AA championship title, 58-51. “It’s an incredible feeling to be the first Jewish team to win a CIF championship,” star center Aaron Liberman said, “and now other Jewish schools realize it’s possible to accomplish what we did.”

Liberman tied the game at 46 on a three-point play (which can be seen in the video below at the 1:23 mark) with just over three minutes to play, and Valley Torah finished the game on a 23-7 spree. Valley Torah fans broke into refrains of “mishenichnas Adar marbim b’simcha” as the game wound down.

The win sent Valley Torah to the Division 5 state championship tournament where they beat the Calvin Christian School of Escondido at Los Angeles Valley College on March 8, by the score of 58 - 50.

The next game for Valley Torah will be played Thursday, for the second-round game, against the 17-16 View Park Prep.

Click Here for the full article on the win against Bishop Diego
Click Here for the full article on the win against Calvin Christian

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