PHOTOS BY LEAH BERNSTEIN
SPORTS
Best of Three
Frankel Jewish Academy baseball team wins its first Catholic League division title in 17 years. STEVE STEIN CONTRIBUTING WRITER
T
he Frankel Jewish Academy baseball team put an accomplishment on its resume this season that it hadn’t been able to do since 2005. The Jaguars won a Catholic League division championship. The Intersectional 2 division had just three teams in it and each of the teams played only four division games, but Frankel coach Joe Bernstein said that doesn’t take the luster off the Jaguars’ title. “No one can take championship away from us,” he said. The Jaguars went 4-0 in division games, sweeping two
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games from Detroit Cristo Rey (2-2) and Detroit Loyola (0-4). Frankel’s short path to the division championship isn’t unusual for the Catholic League. “The Catholic League has several three-team divisions, and they’re in many sports,” said Frankel athletic director Rick Dorn. There’s more to the baseball Jaguars’ 2022 story than winning the division title. After starting the season 0-4 and 1-5, they finished 6-8-1. “We were playing our best baseball as we headed toward the end of the season,” Bernstein said. The season stopped May
13 after a tie with Bloomfield Hills Roeper because Frankel juniors and seniors went on the school’s annual spring trip to Israel. The Jaguars didn’t play again until June 3, exactly three weeks after the Roeper tie, when they lost 15-0 to Lutheran Westland in a Division 4 district semifinal game at Plymouth Christian Academy. “We looked like a team that hadn’t played in three weeks,” Bernstein said. “We only had two practices before that game. “The trip to Israel was fabulous, of course, but if we had played a few games during the time we were off, I think we would have gotten
ABOVE LEFT: The Frankel Jewish Academy baseball team celebrates its Catholic League Intersectional 2 division championship following a May 10 win at Detroit Cristo Rey. ABOVE RIGHT: Daniel Bernstein (left) and Joe Bernstein chat before Daniel’s final at-bat for the Frankel Jewish Academy baseball team.
to 10 wins for the season.” Bernstein said his team faced more than its share of adversity this season, but persevered. “Injuries and illness always hit you during a season, but they hit us the worst times this season,” he said. Through it all, Bernstein said, the Jaguars had a “never-say-die” attitude, never complained, refused to give up and showed great mental toughness. Perhaps the grittiest of what Bernstein called a gritty bunch was junior catcher Ethan Gray. “The weather this season was terrible. It went from 20 to 80 degrees. But Ethan never asked out,” Bernstein
