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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