Mastodon hooper Yuval Levin braved the sea to get from Israel to Fort Wayne

Yuval Levin remembers the stars.

Hundreds of them were visible after sunset, above the choppy waters of the Mediterranean Sea between Israel and Cyprus.

“There’s no light,” Levin said. “It’s an amazing view. You can’t even film it. I tried to film it, you can’t even film it.”

That sparkling nighttime vista was the highlight for Levin during an otherwise exhausting and somewhat perilous trip alongside his mother and 14-year-old sister that last week took him more than 6,000 miles from his hometown of Haifa in Israel to Fort Wayne. The journey allowed him to be in the Summit City in time for summer classes at Purdue Fort Wayne in anticipation of playing basketball for coach Jon Coffman and the Mastodons this winter.

Getting Levin, 21, who played three seasons of professional basketball in Israel, in a position to help Coffman’s team in the coming season took monumental work from the Mastodons and the Fort Wayne community in a process that unfolded over recent months.

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