When Sarah Abraham, a champion of Thai boxing, made aliyah from India with her family in 2009, one of her first steps toward integration was to seek out a competitive sports framework to continue her training. However, her search came up empty.
“I noticed that there were no clubs or anything, no sports… That system is not set up at all,” Abraham, 31, told The Jerusalem Report.
Abraham’s experience reflects a broader pattern described by athletes and coaches across the country. While in many parts of Israel it is easy for a young girl to find ballet, gymnastics, or swimming classes, structured competitive leagues – particularly team sports – remain limited, leaving fewer clear paths for girls who hope to pursue athletics at a high level.
Getting involved in sports at a young age can help a girl harness her physical strength and learn about her body, Abraham said. It is also character-building, as it instills a strong sense of personal responsibility.
Boosting confidence
Nili Block, 31, another world champion boxer who trained alongside Abraham and is still competing today, emphasized the critical impact sports can have on a young woman’s confidence.
“Sometimes getting hit in the face and coming home bruised up – it just teaches you so much confidence,” she told the Report.
Abraham found Thai boxing entirely by chance and became a world champion over the course of her decade-long career before stepping back to focus on other pursuits. In 2023, she began training on her own to maintain her fitness and soon found the Jerusalem Women’s Rugby team on social media. She immediately fell in love with the sport and was quickly whisked off to the Israeli national team, and then to England to play for a professional club.
She has been an athlete all her life, and her years of dedicated training have helped her succeed in a new sport as an adult.
“If I’d started at 20 rather than at 30,” she said, “I would have definitely been a [better] player.”
Sivan Zafrani, a player and coach for the unique Israeli volleyball-like team sport kadureshet, or catchball, echoed similar sentiments. Formerly a nail technician, she now runs a catchball league in the city of Modi’in, through which she empowers young girls in all aspects of their lives.
A longtime player in two different women’s leagues, Zafrani explained that she could have gone even further in the sport if she had started younger, and she wants to make that option available to future generations of young girls.
“We played dodge ball,” Zafrani said, describing the closest she got to catchball in elementary school, adding, “We didn’t have anything like what I do today.”
The biggest barrier preventing the catchball league for minors from expanding beyond Modi’in, Zafrani said, is finding high-quality coaches and trainers.
“It takes work. You have to work at it and grow with it. But there’s huge potential,” she stated.
Set for life
Block said that if there were more female coaches and role models, more young girls would take sports seriously. She was one of a handful of girls encouraged to pursue a wide variety of sports at a young age, and laments the lack of sports infrastructure for girls in Israel, particularly at the professional level.
In other countries, she explained, world-class athletes can live comfortably while focusing entirely on their sport. “You’re set for life… you get a car, you get a pension, you don’t have to think about it, so you’re going to give it your all.”
In Israel, she said, there is little to incentivize athletes to stay with sports. Block had to work extremely hard to make professional martial arts into a realistic career path for herself.
The notable exception to this phenomenon appears to be judo, which became extremely popular among Israelis after Yael Arad and Oren Smadja won Israel’s first-ever Olympic medals (silver and bronze, respectively) in judo at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.
In a comment to the Report, Arad agreed that while team sports can be very difficult for young girls to access, Israel excels in individual sports like judo, which provide a more level playing field and substantial support for female athletes.
When asked about the lack of competitive sports for girls, Nurit Sharvit, senior head of the women’s sports division at the Culture and Sports Ministry, acknowledged the many ways sports can empower young women. She said that the ministry has attained a budget of NIS 40 million “specifically dedicated to transforming infrastructure and making sports accessible to every girl in Israel, through a sustainable and results-oriented approach.”
Israel has already shown through judo what happens when infrastructure, funding, and cultural momentum align: Female athletes succeed. It remains to be seen whether that same commitment will extend to other sports, enabling young Israeli girls to train from an early age and grow into world champions, Olympians, and elite coaches in rugby, catchball, and beyond.■