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Thursday, May 21, 2020
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
SPORTS

Izabel Varejão’s epic journey through basketball

Six-foot-four and cramped in the 

seat of an airliner, Izabel Varejão 
kept thinking, What am I doing, 
what am I doing, what am I doing? 
Mom?

Suddenly, in that steel cylinder, 

the reality came crashing down on 
her. There would be no cousins in 
Cary, N.C. for her to lean on, and her 
mom was a 17-hour flight away. She 
was landing in a completely foreign 
culture, and the winters would 
actually be cold.

Her brother was six. She was 16. 

And now they were 5,000 miles 
apart.

It wasn’t the first time she’d 

left her home and her family for 
basketball. In October of 2013, at 
14 years old, Varejão had to choose 
between two paths: basketball or 
modeling. 

Days of coming home, tears in her 

eyes, to her mother’s queries and 
torturous periods of self-reflection 
haunted the 14-year old as she 
stared down her first major fork in 
the road.

One path would take her toward a 

modeling career. 

After a months-long process, she 

had been accepted into a trial phase 
in São Paulo to undergo a boot camp 
for aspiring models.

Two grueling weeks later, she 

received offers from three modeling 
agencies, and they all told her the 
same thing: We would love to have 
you, but you would need to lose 15 to 
20 pounds.

The other path was basketball.
As a young child, Varejão wasn’t 

keen on basketball — she didn’t like 
to be touched. Instead, she danced, 
taking ballet and jazz dance lessons. 
But the allure of sport, and a bad 
case of scoliosis, forced her into 
swimming. 

“My parents,” Varejão recalls. 

“Since I was little, they were like, 
‘No matter what you do, if you want 
to just go straight to school, don’t 
care about sports. No matter what 
you do, you gotta do something 
outside of (school).’ You gotta do 
something like exercise, something 
like that.”

Her cousins played basketball, 

her mom played basketball and 
her 
uncle, 
Anderson 
Varejão, 

was a world away in Cleveland, 
playing in the NBA. The sport was 
omnipresent, and as the swimming 
helped her back, she slowly grew 
into basketball. Until another health 

issue appeared.

When she stood, the world spun 

and darkness clouded her vision. 
The faintness overwhelmed her and 
any sport became nearly impossible 
to play. Varejão had anemia.

“I could barely stand up, I would 

almost pass out,” Varejão said. 
“I stopped basketball, I stopped 
everything for almost two years.”

As she recovered, she tried a 

couple other sports before returning 
to basketball. Varejão was good, and 
tall, and with time she became more 
and more focused on basketball. It 
became her passion, her work.

And then, two weeks after being 

given an offer to become a model, 
a scout for a club called Bradesco, 
headquartered 
in 
São 
Paulo, 

watched her play and saw something 
in her. Her talent was clear, her 
vision superb, but she looked a little 
rough around the edges. Still, the 
scout offered her a spot in Bradesco’s 
academy. The offer was extended in 
late October, 2013, the same month 
as the modeling spot.

Of course, there was a third 

option. She could stay home.

Her family lived in Vitoria. Her 

grandparents, uncles and cousins all 
resided there, a key part to her life. 
For Varejão, family is everything, 
and it had just gotten a new addition.

For 
the 
first 
10 
years 
of 

Varejão’s life, her parents tried 
to have a second child. After two 
miscarriages, they managed to have 
a son. She had a brother. When she 
was confronted with the choice of 
what to do with her future, he was 
four. He was just becoming his own 
person, with his own personality.

And now, she had to decide 

whether or not to leave him.

Her father, though, offered her 

a piece of advice that would stay 
with her for life, “Sometimes, the 
carriage just passes by your door 
once.” 

***

Two weeks into living in São 

Paulo, the homesickness set in. The 
store that sold candy down the street 
became less and less appealing as 
she yearned more and more for the 
beach that was omnipresent in her 
childhood. For the friends she’d left 
behind. For her family.

For her brother.
Now, she lived in a house with 

other girls her age, all of whom 
missed their own families.

“It was hard in the beginning, 

and people thought I was going 
to give up,” Varejão recalled. “My 
best friend (Daniella’s) mom, was 
like ‘Can you do it, you know how 

you are, you’re very close to your 
family.’”

At first, she only practiced three 

times a week instead of the usual 
five; she needed time to adjust to 
the rigorous practice schedule. The 
club was built around sport, and 
while Varejão had grown up around 
it, the intensity at Bradesco was 
something new.

She needed to adjust to the 

distance, too, and for that, she 
turned toward her family.

“I had a cousin that lived in São 

Paulo,” Varejão said. “So sometimes 
on the weekends, I’d go to his house 
and stay with a familiar face.”

Her parents were only four hours 

away by airplane, and Varejão, with 
her friendly personality, quickly 
created her own family in São Paulo 
with the other girls at the club.

She caught up to the practice 

schedule, too, and quickly grew as 
a player. The next year, at 15, she 
tried out for the Brazilian under-16 
national team. They cut her. 

The next year, after trying out 

again, Varejão waited to hear her 
name called, to join the team and 
go to Mexico for the Americas 
Cup, representing her country and 
competing at the highest level. She 
never heard her name. She was cut, a 
second year in a row. A second time, 
she returned to her club, dejected.

The dejection wouldn’t last. 

After an injury to one of the players 
above her on the roster, they called 
her, and she immediately pounced 
on the opportunity to go to Puebla, 
Mexico.

First, though, she had to practice 

and join a team that was already 
midway through its preparation. 
Varejão, 
who 
started 
playing 

competitive basketball much later 
than most of the girls on the team, 
is a quick learner, and the transition 
into the team was quick.

Her talent caught the eye of an 

American AAU coach, who ran 
a team in Raleigh, N.C. Three of 
her teammates on that national 
team had already played for him 
for six months, and he had a good 
relationship 
with 
the 
national 

team’s coach.

After one of the practices, he 

approached Varejão and asked about 
her dream to come to America. A 
quick conversation later, he vowed 
to talk to her more about it, but first, 
there was a tournament to play.

The Brazilians made a deep run, 

even bouncing out the Americans 
in the semifinal, setting up a finals 
meeting 
against 
Canada. 
The 

Canadians and Hailey Brown — 

one of Varejão’s future teammates 
at Michigan — won by one point in 
overtime.

From there, the AAU coach 

ramped up his communication with 
Varejão and her uncle Anderson, 
who spoke better English than her 
parents.

This time, when faced with a big 

decision, she knew what she wanted 
from the get-go. Since she was a 
child and begged her father to buy 
her a foldable anatomy book, she 
knew she’d wanted to be a doctor. 
Growing up, her uncle and his life in 
the United State had appealed to her. 
This was the place she wanted to be, 
and when the carriage plopped itself 
outside her door, she didn’t hesitate 
to get in.

Her 
life, 
her 
family 
and 

everything in São Paulo that she’d 
spent two years building up was left 
in the rearview mirror.

***

It was snowing when she landed 

in Cary during January of 2016.

She was first set up with a young 

couple, friends of her AAU coach, 
Eric 
Hemming. 
They 
weren’t 

prepared to handle a 16-year old 
Brazilian, despite their best efforts. 
Awkward months went by as both 
parties navigated this new world 
of theirs, but when things started 
settling down, they left.

They moved, 40 minutes away 

from Varejão’s friends, school and 
basketball team. Just after getting 
settled in, she had to look for 
another host family.

“We found another family that 

could do it that were friends with 
my coach and they were a very 
big family, four kids, one had just 
graduated high school and another 
three were still in school,” Varejão 

recalled. “So they were not driving 
yet, the logistics were really hard 
because they had to take care of 
those three and then me. So that 
was really hard and I had to change 
again.”

In the midst of this turmoil, she 

also switched schools. After starting 
out with her friends Babalou and 
Geassy at Friendship Christian, she 
was uprooted again — this time, just 
down the street to Neuse Christian.

Yet despite the chaos surrounding 

her life, when the turmoil hit its 
hardest, Varejão opened up, instead 
of closing herself off.

“If I struggle, I will find friends, 

or I will look a lot for help,” Varejão 
said. “And also I am very, very, very 
social. I make friends super easily. 
I feel like that helped me a lot. 
Also having other Brazilians there 
helped me a lot, too.

“I make friends very easily, I talk 

to people a lot. I talk to everybody. 
Literally if I’m on the street and 
I’m bored, I’m going to start talking 
with someone and become best 
friends with them, just like my dad.”

On her third host family and 

second school, Varejão was finally 
in a permanent spot in America.

She grew, on and off the basketball 

court. The bond between her and 
her new host family tightened, her 
English improved, her passion for 
biology blossomed and in her three 
years of high school basketball in 
America, Neuse Christian made 
the state finals every year behind a 
troop of talented Brazilians.

Varejão’s 
sophomore 
season, 

Maria Albiero — a guard from 
Londrina, Brazil — drew attention 
from collegiate scouts, eventually 
accepting a spot on BYU. Her junior 
year, the two Iz’s — Izabela and 
Izabel — drew crowds to the small 
Christian school in Cary. 

KENT SCHWARTZ

Summer Managing Sports Editor

EMMA MATI/Daily

Sophomore center Izabel Varejão has moved three times for basketball.

See VAREJÃO, Page 11

