No sooner had Lior Garzon committed to play women’s basketball for the University of Colorado than she started to get messages that she could hardly believe.
“Fans of CU Women’s Basketball who are Jewish started to contact me and ask if I needed help with anything!” Garzon says, laughing. “I thought, ‘Wow, you don’t even know me and you are asking if you can help me move in!’”
Garzon may have been on the receiving end of special attention because she has the distinction of being the first known Israeli student-athlete at CU Boulder.
When the Women’s Basketball Team lost to Gonzaga in the second round of the Women’s Basketball Invitation Tournament on March 23, Garzon’s college career came to a close after five years. At the end of the school year, she will take her basketball experience back to Israel along with fond memories of her time in Colorado.
“I love the Jewish community in Boulder,” she says. “When they came to cheer at games, they felt like special fans, and I tried to make them proud.”
How a 6-foot-two-inch Israeli woman who hopes to be a lawyer someday ended up playing basketball at CU Boulder after seasons at Villanova and Oklahoma State is a story that starts with a basketball court on a residential street where kids could play pick-up games—only this court was in Ra’anana, Israel.
‘She really saw me and my goals’
Israel has become a country where basketball is taken seriously thanks, in great part, to Tal Brody who played for the University of Illinois in the 1960s. Drafted by the NBA in the first round, Brody abandoned his NBA dreams after competing in the Maccabiah Games—the Jewish Olympics—and moved to Israel to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv which needed a star to elevate the sport.
Garzon’s father, who is 6 foot 5 inches, also played for Maccabi Tel Aviv until he was injured. Her mother played volleyball.
“She made us all try volleyball,” Garzon recalls. “But none of us liked it.”
What Garzon, her older brother, and twin younger sisters really liked was basketball, and the neighborhood court gave them plenty of opportunity to practice.
By the time she was in high school, Garzon had helped Israel to a third-place finish at the 2018 18U Women’s European Championship (Division B).
“It was a chance to see how you compared to other players in other countries,” she says. “At the time, I thought ‘We have a long way to go,’ but now all of Israel’s women’s teams at all ages are competing in the best divisions in Europe, so we have come a long way.”
Garzon intended to go professional straight out of high school, but instead, she followed in the footsteps of another Israeli player and committed to Villanova University. She arrived at Villanova in 2020 in the middle of the COVID season.
“We played in masks with no fans in the stands” she recalls. “When I signed up to play college basketball, everyone said you will love the fans because it’s the best part of college basketball. But instead, the campus was empty, and the games were silent.”
Garzon started all 32 games her sophomore year at Villanova. She likes to call it her “revenge year.”
“Everyone was cheering you on,” she says. “That’s the way it’s supposed to feel.”
Garzon played her junior and senior year at Oklahoma State (OSU). She was ready to go pro, when CU Assistant Coach Taelor Karr, who knew Garzon from a coaching stint at OSU, encouraged her to consider playing a fifth year at CU Boulder. In the back of Garzon’s mind, she was thinking that, at age 23, it was probably time to start earning some money from her talent. The opportunity to do that through Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) while still playing college ball appealed to her. A conversation with CU Women’s Basketball Head Coach JR Payne closed the deal.
“She really saw me and my goals,” Garzon says. “I realized how competitive she was and how well her teams have done.”
‘I was more than how many points I scored’
Garzon plans to return to Israel at the end of the school year, sign with an agent, and go professional either in Israel or in Europe. Right now, her family is divided between two countries with her younger sister Yarden in the U.S. playing basketball for Indiana University and Yarden’s twin in Israel serving in the IDF.
Garzon’s love for basketball is rooted in the opportunity it gives her to explore a different side of herself.
“I’m a quiet person, but on the court, I can express my feelings and emotions,” she says. “I get to be a different version of myself.”
She believes that her strongest asset as a player is her hard work and her determination to always get better. The game teaches tools and skills besides shooting a ball, she says, skills that can “take you places besides basketball.”
Because of her collegiate career, Garzon has spent the months since October 7th far from her home and her family.
“Last year was the hardest because people didn’t understand what I was going through wondering if my family was okay,” she says. “This year, there have been more good days than bad days, but there are still times I need to find a quiet, safe place on campus to be with my friends.”
She says that she found it easy to meet people who were Israeli or Jewish at CU Boulder through Rohr Chabad Center. She will take home great memories of her time in Colorado, especially those CU fans who made her feel so welcome
“I have loved Colorado—the weather, the mountains, and the community,” she says. “People made me feel like I was more than just how many points I scored. They made me feel at home here.”