(Arutz Sheva) Israel’s national baseball team is set to play its first game at the Tokyo Olympics this week, after a year and a half of COVID restrictions which had kept the team apart.

Eric Holtz, Head Coach of the Israel National Baseball Team, spoke with journalists in Tokyo about the team’s preparations and the upcoming game, expressing confidence about the team’s chances.

“After 20 months of not being together, we’re very excited to be here. Our preparations are going extremely well. We are two days away and we’re excited to get the guys on the field and to get ready to compete.”

“We are playing some of the best teams in the world. These teams are ranked from first to sixth, seventh. But we feel pretty confident about this. We have prepared and we have some great baseball players. We’ve done our work in the back office getting prepared, doing a lot of scouting over the last two months. So we’ll be prepared to play with anybody that we step on the field with.”