Brandi Butler Millis was raised in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania and had a love of sports and a passion for competition. Her older brother signed up for a basketball league and Millis begged her parents to allow her to play. Her love of the game began while playing for the Junior Jewish Basketball League (JJBL), but… Read more »
At age three, Sarah Friedman’s love for soccer began when her parents enrolled her in the Lower Merion Soccer Club. With a clear affinity for the game, she continued to play for LMSC and also joined the FC Pennsylvania Strikers where the team won a regional title and placed third in Nationals in 2008. At… Read more »
Jimmy Kieserman was born into a basketball family in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania. Temple University coach and Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee Harry Litwack was his grandfather and inspiration. He became an Abington High School basketball standout, a University of Miami basketball letter winner and was selected a total of five times to participate for… Read more »
Veteran broadcaster, Jeff Asch has been in the Philadelphia media for 45 years and loving every minute of it. Sports Anchor, Sports Reporter, and News Anchor for 24 of those years at KYW Newsradio Philadelphia. He had prior stints at WCAU-TV as a Sports Producer, Sports Anchor, and Sport Reporter and at WCAU-AM where he… Read more »
Class of 2020
William Yale Saltzman, considered one of the greatest football players in Philadelphia High School history in 1928, was inducted into their first Sports Hall of Fame class 63 years later. In his junior year at Franklin & Marshall College, he was the first Jewish captain of the football team with wrestling, boxing and baseball rounding out his sports interests. He was inducted into F&M’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1998.
During the 1960’s, real estate developer Jerry Wolman owned the Philadelphia Eagles, Connie Mack Stadium, and was a founding owner of the Philadelphia Flyers. He also developed the Spectrum where the Flyers and 76ers played for most of the next three decades. The man who’d been raised in an Orthodox home in Shenandoah, PA was… Read more »
The Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame has inducted boxers, trainers, promoters, even a referee – but never before a judge. Yet this isn’t the first time Carol B. Polis has made history, because 47 years ago she became the first woman boxing judge, appointed by then Pennsylvania governor Milton Shapp. Polis has made her… Read more »
Contrary to popular belief, Sandy Koufax wasn’t the first dominant Jewish pitcher in baseball. That distinction belongs to Erskine Mayer, who made history nearly five decades earlier by becoming the first Jew to win 20 games and also pitch in a World Series, both of which he did twice. Mayer, whose father composed an opera… Read more »
Bryan Cohen, is the first basketball player in Patriot League history to earn Defensive Player of the Year three consecutive seasons while also scoring 1,102 points at Bucknell University from 2009-13. A Lower Moreland, PA native, he had played for 2014 PJSHOF inductee Coach Steve Chadwin at Abington Friends and later became a three-time participant… Read more »
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Carl Cherkin has enjoyed a long running career of success in sports, broadcasting, marketing, business development and public relations. While some may know him as an athlete or broadcaster, most recently he has been known for his involvement as one of the founding executives of the Philadelphia Union, a Major League Soccer… Read more »
