Last night, the Varsity Lions headed to The Lions' Den to take on the Rambam Ravens in the first round of the playoffs. After a disappointing loss to North Shore in their final game of the season, the Lions looked to bounce back and continue their run towards the championship.

The Ravens were in for a big surprise. The Lions came onto the court with fire and brought that excitement to the back of the net, scoring 3 goals in the first period, one each from Zev Markowitz, Daniel Yager and Ezra Quint. 

In the second period, the Lions continued their domination, with star goalie Shuki Weinstein again not letting anything through. Yager tacked on a second goal from Ami Rosenfeld and the Lions entered the second intermission with a commanding 4-0 lead. 

Every line for the Lions created great scoring opportunities throughout the game and especially in the final period, when Eitan Shatkin scored his first of the game off a crisp pass from Ezra Quint and Daniel Yager scored yet again to complete the hat trick. 

The final score was 6-0 for MTA. The Lions are now preparing for their quarter-final matchup against the HAFTR Hawks on Tuesday, February 24 at 8:00pm.

On Friday, February 6th, students in the MTA LEAD program had the opportunity to attend the Kukin Lecture Series and hear from Executive Vice-President and General Counsel of the Madison Square Garden Company, Mr. Lawrence Burian. 

Mr. Burian provided a detailed overview of the business of sports and entertainment and explained his leadership role at MSG. He also provided the students with career advice, as they look to finish school and enter the workforce, stressing the vital importance of communication skills. 

In addiotion, Mr. Burian offered his unique perspective as an Orthodox Jew in the business world, explaining how important it is to be religiously consistent (e.g., not staying in the city for Shabbos to attend a Rangers playoff game) and how, as religious Jews, we need to always demonstrate strong integrity and a strong work ethic to makes up for the time we need to miss for religious observance.
 

On Tuesday evening, a number of students chose to stay after school to attend a business plan workshop presented by Dr. Galit Ben-Joseph, Clinical Assistant Professor of Management at YU's Sy Syms School of Business. Dr. Ben-Joseph also serves as an Executive Director and Financial Advisor at J.P. Morgan Securities. Prior to earning this title, she spent a total of 20 years working at Goldman, Sachs & Co., JP Morgan Chase, and Neuberger Berman. While the presentation was set up as part of the MTA LEAD entrepreneurship program, it was open to all students. 

Dr. Ben-Joseph walked students through the fundamental steps involved in initiating and developing a business idea. As an example, a proposal to open a coffee shop on the Yeshiva University campus in Washington Heights was introduced. At first, opening such a shop seemed like a great and easy idea, however, once students took a closer look at the steps it would take to actualize this idea, they realized the tediousness of the project. This was the case because like most people, they didn't think about the essential marketing, management, competition, and industry background before saying how great the idea is. After going through the list of pros and cons for the coffee shop proposal, students discovered that the problem wasn't that it would be too expensive of an endeavor or too difficult to market, but that the profit per customer would be little to none. That said, Dr. Ben-Joseph personally thought that a coffee shop would succeed on the campus because of the high margins and the high expected number of daily customers. 

The students understood from this program that it takes a tremendous amount of work and passion to be an entrepreneur, but that it is also definitely do-able if one is willing to put in the "blood, sweat, and tears" necessary to be successful. That said, who's up for coffee?

Acclaimed Holocaust scholar and award-winning film producer Dr. Michael Berenbaum spoke to Jewish students in New York on Tuesday, urging them to "cherish" their unique position as the last generation to be able to speak to Holocaust survivors.

 Read more on Arutz Sheva

This past Wednesday, MTA had the privilege of having Dr. Cenk Sumen address the Honors College and Applied Science club regarding Cell Therapy. Dr. Sumen works for a company called Progenitor Cell Therapy (PCT), which works on healing people through the use of varying cell therapies.  

Before delving into his lecture, Dr. Sumen provided some background on how substances travel throughout the human body, how cells interact with one another, and how the human body's immune system works.

Then things got very interesting. Dr. Sumen relayed to us the fascinating details in which T-Cells, which kill bad foreign substances that are in the human body, are removed from the human body unharmed, cultivated, and are then released back into a human body one hundred fold. This process multiplies T-Cells to be able to kill substances, including cancers, that are harmful to our bodies. Another name for this process of multiplying T-Cells and inserting them back into a person's body is "Cell Therapy." This therapy was successfully applied in England where ninety percent of the patients had complete remissions from the cancers where other drugs failed.

Dr. Sumen's time was well appreciated and we look forward to having more interesting and influential speakers like him speak here at MTA.