Monmouth swimmer balances student life, real life as war rages in homeland of Israel
WEST LONG BRANCH – When Ziv Cohen woke up on the morning of Oct. 7, nothing could have prepared the Monmouth University swimmer for the onslaught of messages and images that awaited him when he picked up his phone seven hours after the Hamas terrorist attacks on his native Israel began.
“I just wanted to put my head in the water and not hear anything, literally. It was traumatic,” said Cohen, who completed his service in the Israel military in June and has family directly involved in the conflict. “Then every time I finished a practice I had to go fast to the locker room and get my phone to see what was happening.
”I was full of emotion. I was with myself that week. I couldn’t express any feelings. My teammates took a step back and told me that if I need something, checking in with me. But they cannot feel it. They cannot be in my place.”
Six days later, Cohen, who has competed for the Israeli national team, hit the wall first in the 1,000-yard freestyle for a poignant victory in the first race of his college career.
And there in the top row of the stands inside Steadman Natatorium, waving an Israeli flag, was Hawks’ tennis player Yoav Weinberg, also an Israeli national and military veteran.
“It was really nice. I was there for him,” Weinberg said. “He didn’t know I had the flag so I kind of surprised him. What he is going through is a lot more difficult that what I am going through. He has brothers who are still in the army reserves so everything is super sensitive right now, and he needed a small gesture to keep his life here as regular as we can.”
Since then, the 21-year-old Cohen, an Israeli open water national champion at 3K and 5K, has another victory and a third-place finish.
“I’m sure for him to just know that there is someone else here who has a deeper understandings of what is going on with him, and that connection to back home,” Monmouth swimming coach Matt Nunnally said.
"Impossible to process"
One of the reasons Cohen came to Monmouth was the fact that he grew up in Bat Yam, Israel, “a 10-minute walk to the Mediterranean Sea,” along with the lifeguarding credentials the coaching staff possesses, with Nunnally having competed for the U.S. at four Lifeguarding World Championships.
But as Cohen recounted the events of the past few weeks after practice last Thursday, his thoughts were thousands of miles from the Jersey Shore. In addition to having two brothers who in the military, Cohen had a cousin at the music festival near the Gaza boarder where hundreds were killed.
“He survived. Like, a miracle. There’s no other way to say it – a miracle,” Cohen said. “He is 19 years old - he was there with his friends. He filmed everything.
“He went to his car, there’s one desert road to exit, and they closed it wearing IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) uniforms, and they waited until there were hundreds of cars waiting and they started spraying them with automatic rifles. He had to leave his car with one of his friends dead in it. They ran to a bomb shelter, and thought they were safe. There were 40 or 50 in there trying to escape. He was one of the first in that is what saved him. They threw grenades in, five or six. He collapsed and when he heard them coming back he hid under the bodies of dead people.”
The Monmouth men’s tennis team was competing at the ITA’s Northeast Regional in Philadelphia when Weinberg received the same barrage of messages and missed calls from family and friends.
“I woke up at 7 a.m. and we were supposed to go get breakfast and I woke up with no battery in my phone even though I went to sleep with a full battery. I had a few dozen unanswered calls, lots of pictures, notifications, messages.
“It’s impossible to process it from so far away. I lost a friend in the first week, I couldn’t even go to the funeral because I am so far away. It’s really hard to stand on the side. It’s impossible, you can’t do anything, I can’t do anything contribute to the country, to help my friends my family, so it’s impossible to process it.”
Student life, real life
The structure provided by the pool and the classroom has helped create, along with support from the Monmouth University community, has helped provide a sense of normalcy while the events in the Middle East have dominate the news cycle in recent weeks.
“I just tried to tell the team to surround him and support him and be there for him in terms of us really being his family here in Jersey, and being so far from home,” Nunnally said. “I think that was the biggest thing, being so far from home and the uncertainty of. I’m sure it’s been a really stressful time for him. I think just the practices and the structure of what we’re doing helped him a bit there, and also the fact that he’s got people here to support him.”
But balancing student-athlete life and real life is difficult under normal circumstances. Factor in concerns about the safety of family and friends and the reality of a complicated situation can be overwhelming.
“I now have a new nephew. He is one-month-old and he needs to go to a bomb shelter,” Cohen said. “I have another nephew, 3-years-old, and he already knows that when there’s a siren, he needs to go to the bomb shelter. It’s sad. It’s not supposed to be regular.”
Stephen Edelson is a USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey sports columnist who has been covering athletics in the state and at the Jersey Shore for over 35 years. Contact him at: @SteveEdelsonAPP; sedelson@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Hamas vs Israel: Monmouth swimmers concerned for family, friends
