Two teenagers from Gush Etzion took home gold medals after winning their respective categories at the Israeli Youth Judo Championships held in Ra'anana earlier this week.
In addition to the two gold medals, a third Gush Etzion teenager won a silver medal at the championships after coming second in the under 52 kg girls division.
"Gush Etzion’s youth are outdoing themselves time and time again as leaders in Israel, and now in judo as well"
Gush Etzion Regional Council Head Shlomo Neeman
All three of the Gush Etzion medalists are products of the Meitav Jerusalem Association and were trained under coaches Dan Fitusi, Yoel Libster, and Ido and Noam Elkayim.
The first of the two gold medalists is eighth-grade student Boaz Greenwald from the Elazar settlement, son of Gush Etzion Regional Council member Yitzhak Greenwald. Greenwald took home gold in the under 50kg boys division.
Sixth-grade student Benaya Kuperman, also from Elazar, was named to be the second gold medalist, coming first in the under 42kg boys division.
The region's silver medalist is tenth-grader Neta Hadar.
Regional Council congratulates
All three medalists were congratulated by Gush Etzion Regional Council Head Shlomo Ne'eman, who said that they "brought great pride to Gush Etzion, and to Judea and Samaria.
"Gush Etzion’s youth are outdoing themselves time and time again as leaders in Israel, and now in judo as well. Congratulations to Dan Fitusi and the entire coaching staff on this achievement.”
The Meitav Jerusalem Association where the three medalists train, thanks to a partnership between the association and the Gush Etzion Foundation, was first founded in 2000 and has trained hundreds of elite atheletes from across the region, including Olympic bronze medalist Timna Nelson-Levy.