MITCHELL HORUCY
Asst. Sports Editor
For many Fredonia students, coming to school doesn’t even require crossing a state line. However, in the case of Alon Haimovitz and Peter Buerfent, they both had to cross the Atlantic Ocean to find their way to Fredonia.
Alon Haimovitz, a senior on the men’s basketball team, is from the city of Herzliya, Israel.
Peter Buerfent is just beginning his Fredonia journey as a freshman on the men’s hockey team. He’s from Cologne, Germany, home of the world-famous Cologne Cathedral.
When asked about the differences between their hometowns and Fredonia, both said it’s almost a different world.
“I’m not really proud of it, because it’s not really representing me, but our twin city is Beverly Hills,” Haimovitz said of his hometown.
The city lies on the eastern Mediterranean coast with the coldest temperatures being just 50 degrees during January.
Buerfent echoed this sentiment, saying that his move has “been a change,” and one of the biggest adjustments is the lack of public transportation. He mentioned that back in Germany, he was able to take the metro everywhere.
Playing a sport at an American university was never originally in the script for either Haimovitz or Buerfent.
Neither one of them ever considered it being a possibility until about a year prior to their arrival to Fredonia.
In Haimovitz’s case, he was playing professionally in Israel until the COVID-19 outbreak happened, which led to the termination of his contract.
At the time, his agent knew Coach Smiley and told him, “There’s going to be a phone call, just be ready.”
After about a 20-minute talk with Smiley, he made up his mind and decided that he wanted to come to Fredonia.
For Buerfent, his journey here was not as simple as Haimovitz’s.
In Germany, after finishing your u20 (under age 20) season, you have to turn professional. However, if you aren’t a top player, it’s difficult to develop and improve as a young player.
He began to reach out to different Division III hockey programs. Head Coach Jeff Meredith showed interest in Buerfent and the rest is history.
Both Haimovitz and Buerfent mentioned that one of the main reasons they decided to make the journey here was opportunity.
“I get to study during my time [here], where in Germany I would have had to decide between hockey and education,” Buerfent said.
While there may be benefits to traveling overseas for school, there’s also some downsides.
One of the biggest that they both mentioned was not being able to see their families or go home for breaks, apart from the major breaks between semesters.
Haimovitz, however, said that he only gets to go home during the summer months from the end of the Spring semester until the start of the Fall semester.
He stays at school for all the breaks including Thanksgiving and winter break.
Buerfent said that luckily, he is going to be home for Christmas, but will have to be back on campus on Jan. 2.
Like some people, they didn’t know a ton about Fredonia before coming here. Both were able to visit the campus before officially coming to school, but other than that, they had very little knowledge of the area and Western New York as a whole.
“The one thing I knew is that there’s an iconic clock tower next to Thompson [Hall],” said Haimovitz.
Buerfent and the men’s hockey team will end the semester with back-to-back home games on Dec. 8 vs Potsdam, and Dec. 9 vs Plattsburgh.
The men’s basketball team doesn’t have a home game the rest of this semester, but they open up the Spring semester at home against SUNYAC rival Brockport on Jan. 23 at 5:30 p.m.