Color War Decathlon Won by Jewish Boy for Eighty First Straight Summer

Huron Lake, PA (August 6, 2018) – Fourteen year-old Saul Kaplan kept the streak of dominance alive as he became the eighty-first Jewish boy in a row to win the Camp Huron Lake Decathlon, a staple of the camp’s annual Color War event.  Not only did a Jewish kid come in first, but the next ten finishers including runner-up Jake Jacobson and third-place finisher Sam Weiner, were all Jewish as well.

Kaplan, who competes on the track and field team at the Solomon Schechter Day School, is the latest in a long line of Jewish athletes to win Camp Huron Lake’s biggest individual Color War event.  The Decathlon takes place over four rest hour periods and tests the competitors overall athletic prowess featuring ten track and field events.  Due to parent complaints, the javelin (“the ends are too pointy”) and the shot put (“do you have to use such a heavy ball?”) have been discontinued as well as the high jump in 2013 because parents want their campers to jump high but “not so high that they can get hurt.” These events have been replaced by the 100 meter walk, the mile run (with three breaks for water and rest), and the ping pong ball toss.

Camp Director Marty Feldstein was ecstatic for his latest winner.  “Saul joins an exclusive group at Camp Huron Lake.  And we’ve had some good athletes here in the past.  Barry Posner won the B’Nai Brith Camp Tennis Tournament in 1977.  In the 80’s we had a kid named Harry Goldenblatt who went on to compete in the New York State Southeast Region Maccabean Games.  Jews seem to always do very well those events for some reason.”

Rarely has one event been dominated by a group of people like the Huron Lake Decathlon.  While UCLA had a stranglehold on men’s college basketball for a decade and the USSR seemingly never lost a hockey game over an even longer period of time, Jewish boys and girls just keep on winning summer after summer at Huron Lake.  During this week’s Color War, each event in every divisional swim and track meet was won by a Semitic young man or woman.  Additionally, all team sport competitions were won by teams made up of solely Jewish campers.  Feldstein is also forecasting the same at tonight’s Tug of War and tomorrow’s Quiz Bowl.

Despite all the athletic success since the camp opened eighty-one years ago, Feldstein tries to keep these accomplishments in perspective.  “Jewish kids seem to win everything here. I’m predicting these streaks will last another eighty years or at least until a non-Jewish kid signs up one summer.  Once that happens, all bets are off.”