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Thursday, May 21, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com SPORTS

As others his age embarked on 

their final year as college students 
last August, Nadav Aaronson set foot 
on campus for the first time. The 
native of Ramot Hashavim, Israel 
was a wide-eyed freshman — at 21 
years old.

Aaronson 
found 
himself 

surrounded by new classmates who, 
at three years his junior, were the 
same age as his younger sister, and all 
had mostly followed the same linear 
path. High school bled into college, 
one a stepping stone for the next.

It’s a path Aaronson wasn’t 

offered. 

“Look at 18-year-old Israelis and 

18-year-old Americans,” Aaronson 
told The Daily. “Americans, they 
graduate high school and they’re free 
to continue in their life, go to college, 
do the stuff they want. In Israel, it’s 
not like that.”

Instead, the Israeli Defense Force 

beckons. 

***

The IDF’s use of conscription 

dates back to its establishment in 
1948. Accordingly, Israeli citizens 
view their service as a right of 
passage. 

“It’s basically what defines us 

Israelites,” 
Aaronson 
said. 
“It’s 

something that everywhere you go, 
every time you meet someone, one 
of the first couple sentences you have 
with someone is about what they did 
in the army.”

As Aaronson enjoyed life as a 

high school senior, his stint in the 
IDF grew imminent. Having already 
turned 18 — satisfying the draft’s 
minimum age requirement — he was 
bound for a 2-to-3 year tour of duty 
when the school year finished. 

On February 5, 2017, his life 

upended. 

“The 
transition 
was 
really 

difficult,” Aaronson said. “To go 
from living at home and being in 
high school with all my friends and 
having a normal life as a kid, it’s 
really different. And at basic training, 
I couldn’t train for swimming.”

It was a predicament Aaronson 

never 
faced 
before. 
From 
the 

moment he took up swimming as 
an eager 10-year-old, the water had 
been his second home. During the 
two-month basic training stretch in 
which recruits are taught military 
fundamentals, his pastime was 
brought to a jarring halt. 

For any athlete, a hiatus from one’s 

sport poses a substantial challenge; 
for Aaronson, the timing could hardly 

have been more inopportune. With 
high school in the rearview mirror, 
he hoped to prolong his swimming 
career at an American university.

Then suddenly, he could make it to 

the pool just twice in an eight week 
span. 

“That was hard,” Aaronson said. 

“I just really wanted to swim.”

Dealt a hand out of his control, 

Aaronson had to choose how to take 
the change. Deciding what to do was 
easy. 

“I just had to have the state of mind 

that I need to do (my service) and it 
doesn’t matter, because everyone 
needs to go through it,” Aaronson 
said. “Basically every citizen in Israel 
has done it. So you just do it.”

It’s an attitude that speaks to both 

Aaronson’s maturity and positivity. 
Israeli citizens had sacrificed in the 
IDF for seventy years; now, it was his 
turn. Dwelling on it wouldn’t change 
the reality. 

With a new outlook in tow, 

Aaronson grew to relish basic 
training and its simplicity. 

“Everyone is wearing the same 

uniform, 
everyone 
is 
shaved, 

everyone is buzzed,” Aaronson 
said. “You have no idea what their 
backgrounds are. I learned from that 
to not judge and think things about 
people from their appearance. I tried 
to understand more about the person 
behind what you see.”

Aaronson 
cherished 
each 

interaction, going out of his way to 
strike up conversations with peers 
from every corner of the country. He 
treasured the time spent swapping 
stories and jokes into the early 
hours of the morning, unbothered 
by the early wake-up calls that 
loomed. Even the draining workouts 

and incessant yelling from his 
commanders became tolerable. 

As Aaronson recounts these 

experiences now, there’s a tinge of 
nostalgia in his voice. He was without 
swimming. But that was okay. It 
would be there on the other side. 

“Sometimes, I would want to 

do other things, want to swim,” 
Aaronson said. “But when I look at 
the big picture, it’s all worth it.”

***

When the recruits were given 

their 
permanent 
assignments, 

Aaronson’s swimming status made 
him one of the more fortunate ones. 

The IDF designated Aaronson an 

elite athlete, subsequently sparing 
him from the front-line combat 
that many of his friends would soon 
endure. His duty would be in an 
office role, leading training programs 
for higher ranked commanders 
and organizing sets of activities for 
incoming units. 

On top of that, he was free to swim 

again. 

Juggling swimming with service 

meant long days — 6 a.m. starts 
and 7 p.m. finishes, with training 
sessions sandwiching a six hour 
stint at the Wingate Base. Aaronson 
concedes that each day was “really 
challenging,” 
until 
he 
put 
his 

situation in perspective. 

“Whoever’s not an athlete goes to 

be a combat soldier,” Aaronson said. 
“Compared to the service that my 
friends did, to see all my non-athlete 
friends having to go into combat, 
I’m just always grateful I had the 
opportunity to combine service and 
swimming.”

Gradually, Aaronson’s dream to 

swim collegiately in America came 
back into focus. Israel lacks wide-

While serving, Aaronson finds a team 

JARED GREENSPAN

Daily Sports Writer

PHOTO COURTSEY NADAV AARONSON

Freshman Nadav Aaronson (left) served three years in the Israeli Defense Force.

Gradually, Aaronson’s dream to 

swim collegiately in America came 
back into focus. Israel lacks wide-
scale collegiate athletics. Amongst 
Israeli athletes, Aaronson said, 
heading overseas is fairly common. 
He’s seen teammates and idols alike 
make the leap after their service. He 
wanted to be next. 

Amongst a slew of options, only 

one school filled his criterion. 

“Really quickly, I found that 

Michigan was something more than 
my individual swims,” Aaronson 
said. “I just wanted to be a part of 
something that is bigger than the 
individual sport.”

There’s a dichotomy between 

swimming, a sport so inherently 
individualistic, and the notion of 
team. Aaronson, more so than many 
of his peers, values the group aspect 
of swimming because of his time 
in the IDF, where his individual 
sacrifices opened his eyes to the 
importance of the whole. 

Michigan coach Mike Bottom 

runs his swimming and diving 
program under a core value system. 

The values, ranging from purpose 
to progress to integrity, span five 
different tiers, each tier designating 
a level of importance. 

One value stands alone at the top. 
“The team is the building block 

of the value system,” Bottom said. 
“That’s what sets us apart from a lot 
of other programs, our focus on the 
team. It’s something that Nadav saw 
in us, and again, it’s a part of who he 
is.

“Nadav, he’s like the glue that 

pulls people together. Everybody 
wants to be a part of that.”

That’s all Aaronson wanted — to 

be a part of a strong team culture. 
That’s 
why 
he 
committed 
to 

Michigan in May of 2018, even with 
his IDF service still ongoing. 

In being forced to put his own 

life pursuits on hold, to look past his 
own swimming feats, to be uprooted 
from his cushy high school life, 
Aaronson found perspective that 
few 21-year-olds have:

“You’re something that is much 

bigger than yourself.”

At the beginning, only local 

schools recruited her — Duke, 
North Carolina, North Carolina 
State — but as more and more 
schools from around the country 
came to visit her and Izabela, 
the offers grew and the world of 
recruiting surrounded her.

In that first round of recruiting, 

Varejão spent little time thinking 
about playing at Michigan. Born 
and raised in the warm climate of 
Brazil, the fear of a harsh winter 
scared her off from committing to 
any colleges that far North.

Yet as the months passed by, 

when Varejão needed to make a 
decision, she was stumped. There 
were no campuses calling her 
name, no schools that felt right. Her 
AAU coach, in the summer before 
her senior year of high school, asked 
her where she wanted to go.

“Coach, I don’t know,” she told 

him. “Like honestly don’t know 
how to decide, when to decide and 
where to decide.”

He made a call to Michigan 

coach Kim Barnes Arico.

“They called and just said 

‘Izabel is open and going through 
the process again,’” Barnes Arico 
recalls. “I said, ‘Well okay, we’ll be 
down tomorrow, how can we get 
down there as soon as we can.’ And 
coach (Melanie Moore) and I got 

on a plane immediately and went 
down and had a home visit with her 
and her family.”

Their sales pitch appealed to 

Varejão, enough to set up an official 
visit. Varejão called her mother, 
telling her about the new school 
and convincing her to make the trek 
up to America to see the northern 
school.

“It was important to her mom 

where her baby was going to 
wind up next,” Barnes Arico said, 
“because her being so far away 
from home, she wanted her to be 
in a place where people could take 
care of her.”

At the end of a recruiting 

Saturday in October, Varejão and 
her family were sitting with Barnes 
Arico at a dinner table. She’d spent 
most of that weekend soaking in 
the campus, confused by a football 
game and bonding with one of 
Barnes Arico’s daughters, who’s 
about the same age as her younger 
brother.

Varejão started gesturing to her 

family that came on the visit with 
her, to no avail. It was time to make 
her decision, and she wanted her 
family to be prepared. Soshe said a 
few words of Portuguese and had a 
quick side conversation with Stacy 
about the commitment. Again, 
she didn’t hesitate to get into the 
carriage.

When told, Varejão swears, 

Barnes Arico jumped two feet in 
the air. 

VAREJÃO
From Page 12

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