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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
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