For the past year, Dan Hoffman, of Hollywood, Fla., has watched his 11-year-old daughter Nessa train several hours a day, five days a week for the 2025 USA Gymnastics Florida Xcel women’s championships.
The Hoffmans, who are frum Jews, planned each of Nessa’s meets around Shabbos and Yomim Tovim, but it turned out that the Florida championships were to be held over the first days of Pesach.
“This has been a tremendous part of her life for the last year, and then literally, two weeks before, it was ripped away,” Hoffman told JNS. “We considered scootering the 8.2 miles to the Florida Convention Center on the Sunday between seders, which would have been a disaster.”
Months before the competition, the Florida arm of USA Gymnastics told the family that Nessa would be able to compete in the state championship on April 11, the Friday before Pesach. But the private body told the family two weeks prior to the competition that Nessa’s performance scores wouldn’t count toward medals or regional qualification.
Hoffman told JNS that the policy felt punitive. “They told us she could compete on Friday with the same judges, same equipment, same everything, but that her scores wouldn’t count,” he said.
“The only reason not to count the scores was to penalize Jewish athletes for choosing to be religious,” he said. “Everything about it just seemed wrong.”
Hoping to preserve his daughter’s opportunity to compete after so much hard work, Hoffman sought help from the Christian Legal Society and the Orthodox Union.
Nathan Diament, executive director of Orthodox Union Advocacy, told JNS that when he learned of Nessa’s situation he partnered with the Christian Legal Society.
“We knew we had to reach out to the decision makers to urge and press them to accommodate Nessa’s Sabbath observance and still enable her to qualify for regionals,” he told JNS.
The two groups sent a joint letter to Florida Gymnastics urging it to reconsider its policy and allow Nessa’s scores to count.
Steve McFarland, director of the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom, told JNS that Florida Gymnastics changed its policy.
“To say ‘We’ll score her but the scores can’t count’ is just mean-spirited or just brain-dead,” he told JNS. “They recognized that and rectified it, which is a real pleasant turnaround.”
“We didn’t have to spend a quarter-million dollars in legal fees and have somebody say what any rational human being could conclude: let the 11-year-old get scored and try to reach her childhood dream,” he said. “You don’t need lawyers for that. Just common sense and a heart.”
On April 11, Nessa competed and qualified for the 2025 Florida Xcel Gold Regionals.
It’s rare for youth sports organizations to accommodate religious beliefs of young athletes, according to McFarland.
“There are things worth sacrificing for and obviously, Nessa is willing to sacrifice countless hours to perfect her athletic ability,” he told JNS. “She also realizes that, apparently, there are things even worth more than athletic success and in our society, athletics can be a religion, with all the fervor and passion and emotion and sacrifice that one used to associate with religion.”
“It’s only appropriate that we realize that religious conscience should be celebrated and accommodated wherever possible,” he added.
A fifth grader at Brauser Maimonides Academy, a Modern Orthodox day school in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., Nessa told JNS that she is grateful to the two groups for their intervention and for helping her achieve her dream of making it to the regionals.
“Almost not being able to go was really horrible,” she told JNS. “Steven and Nathan helped me get to that goal of regionals and they were super powerful. They helped a lot.”
The gymnast told JNS that Orthodox Jewish athletes should never feel that their religious observance will hold them back.
“Everyone who is having a hard time just has to keep going and push yourself,” she said. “Practice really hard and you’ll get there if you set your mind to it.” JNS
{Matzav.com}