It has been an exciting few weeks! Maryland college ballplayer Varun Ram was gracious enough to give me a little under an hour of his time around The Big Dance this year, and consequently India Abroad featured the profile I wrote about his career on their issue cover this week! I loved this assignment, because Varun Ram and his parents were so wonderful to get to know and work with. Varun was quick with his responses to me and eager to help with the interview process where possible. The whole time, the parents went out of their way to answer my questions and provide detailed, frank stories about their lives and their outlook on bringing up a son who excelled in an unconventional Indian-American hobby-turned-career. It was heartwarming to hear how supportive they were of Varun’s exceptional talents and drive. It’s clear that Varun’s going to do even more great things, and I’m glad to get to know him.
It was the thick of March Madness—the infectiously absorbing NCAA college basketball tournament held annually this time of year—when the Maryland Terrapins faced the Valparaiso Crusaders in the Midwest Region matchup on March 20.
With Maryland clinging to a three–point lead with 13 seconds left to go, Terrapins’ coach Mark Turgeon put point guard Varun Ram in the game.
It was the 22-year-old senior’s first 13 seconds ever in a March Madness tournament. They became 13 seconds to remember. As the clock ticked down, Valparaiso’s Keith Carter attempted a three-pointer to tie the game, but defender Ram applied pressure and made sure to get his hand on the ball. Ultimately, the ball flew nonthreateningly upwards and landed in the clutches of one of Ram’s teammates as time expired, giving Maryland the nail-biting 65-62 win—and Ram the game-winning steal.
“Coaches always told me that everything’s a bigger deal in tournaments, and it’s so true,” Ram said, responding to the celebratory attention his play received afterwards.
Ram’s likeable humility aside, let there be no doubt. This was a big deal. That Friday night, Ram became one of the top trending topics on Twitter and got a shout-out from ESPN’s SportCenter anchor Kevin Negandhi, who tweeted, “Keep breaking barriers for Indian-Americans in hoops. Proud of you bro.”
Ram is one of just five other Indian-American Division I men’s basketball players, and his ability to inspire has had far reaches.
“Other Indians have gotten in touch with me and said, ‘I didn’t even know it was possible for Indians to play basketball,’” he said. His presence on the court is banishing preset expectations of what some believe Indian-Americans can and can’t achieve.
“There has been an overwhelming outpouring of support, which is incredible,” Ram, who was raised in Howard County, Maryland, said.
He acquired his passion for the Terrapins as a fan first, watching the team win it all back in 2002.
“If you would have told me that I would be part of a Maryland Terrapin NCAA tournament when I was in high school, I would have thought you were crazy,” Ram said. “I wake up everyday and feel blessed to represent such a great university and basketball program.”
But Ram’s affinity for basketball awakened early. When his uncle and aunt asked him what he
wanted for his fourth birthday, he requested an indoor basketball hoop. Not letting their gift go to waste, Ram played all the time after that.
“We thought that he loved putting the ball inside the hoop for fun; that turned out to be his passion,” Ram’s father, Kolandavel “Rom” Ramasamy, said. “One of our family friends used to tell him that he was playing like Michael Jordan, and Varun really took that so seriously and started playing harder and harder.”
His parents didn’t particularly follow basketball or know much about the rules of the game until Ram dug into the sport over the years.
Five years later, for his ninth birthday, his grandmother, visiting from India, bought him an outdoor hoop.
Ram never looked back. Working out and playing ball became part of his daily routine. “I would go to school, come home, do my homework, and then go to the gym,” he said. “I would get my homework done just so I could go to the gym.”
As in most Indian-American families, education is highly valued in Ram’s family. His grandparents were teachers. His father, Kolandavel, is an IT programming manager for the National Weather Service. Ram’s mother, Santhini Ramasamy, is a toxicologist at the Environmental Protection Agency. Both, originally from Salem, Tamil Nadu, immigrated to the United States back in the 1980s to pursue career opportunities. Ram’s older sister, Anita, is currently earning her medical degree at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
In a family that always cherished educational opportunities, academics were a natural prerequisite: As long as schoolwork was prioritized, basketball could be a priority, as well.
But those terms worked just fine for Ram. He balanced a 4.56 GPA in high school, all as captain of the school’s basketball team. He also played on traveling Amateur Athletic Union teams.
“Without basketball, I can’t function,” Ram said.
“When we found that the only thing that would wake him up from his bed in the morning was his basketball practice schedule, we took that seriously and drove him to all the local games … sometimes two games on Saturday and two on Sunday,” his father said. “He used to do his school homework at night until 1 a.m. and go to high school by 7:15 a.m.”
Growing up, Ram’s dream was to eventually play basketball for an Ivy League school, as those institutions are often seen as touting the ultimate duality in academic and athletic excellence.
He was recruited by many of these institutions and, when it came time to consider colleges, sent
applications to all of them. However, Ram’s “Plan A,” as his mother called it, didn’t quite come to fruition at that moment in time.
He remembers calling recruiters at schools such as Harvard persistently.
“But recruiters should be recruiting you; you shouldn’t be recruiting them,” he said.
“I was rejected by all of them in a matter of two days,” Ram recalled. “It was really stressful, actually.”
That’s not to say that he didn’t receive acceptance letters and academic scholarship offers from other non-Ivy League institutions at the same time. However, Ram wanted to continue to chase his dream of playing Division I basketball, and he hoped to increase his chances of doing so by delaying college for a year and attending a college-prep school instead.
“It was a difficult decision as parents to send him to another high school instead of colleges, especially when he received academic scholarships,” his mother, Santhini, said.
However, his parents also unconditionally backed Ram: “Parents must support the event that their kids are passionate about,” Ram’s father said. “Once the kids know that the parents care and support their interests, then they do their own time management; just trust the kids and support their passion.”
And so, Ram enrolled in Winchendon Prep School in Massachusetts for one year, a school where he could continue to sharpen his basketball skills.
“My parents … saw how much I poured my heart and soul into my workouts and tried to get better every day,” Ram said. “They knew that if I didn’t do everything in my power to try and play Division I college basketball, I would probably regret it for the rest of my life.”
After completing that year at Winchendon, Ram enrolled in Trinity College in Connecticut and subsequently transferred to the University of Maryland to be closer to family. There, he tried out for the renowned Division I men’s basketball team hoping to be what’s called a “walk on”—a player who doesn’t come to the team with a scholarship but instead goes through tryouts—and made it.
Ram’s mother said that it was her proudest moment as his mom. “I felt his hard work and dedication was rewarded,” she said.
The next year, Ram returned to the Terrapins with a scholarship, and the rest is history.
Throughout the entire journey, his academics remained robust. Ram maintains a 3.99 GPA at the University of Maryland, where he is majoring in neurobiology and physiology.
Given the discipline and focus it takes to be on a competitive and well-known men’s college basketball team, that seemed like no easy feat. I asked him if his college social life was different than his teammates’ social lives.
“It’s not so much different as it is that they have one,” Ram joked. He said that, while all the other team members lived together, he lived with people who shared his major so that he could focus on his studies with more ease.
Ram knows how athletics can engender confidence and pairs well with academic success. And by traveling to India to volunteer for a non-profit organization called “Hoops Creating Hope” this past summer, he got a chance to help spread that message in real-time in an arena in need. The program, founded by teacher and coach Shaun Jayachandran, targets the high dropout rates of children in India at the high school and elementary levels. Based in Chennai, the program uses basketball to teach boys and girls life skills, teamwork, nutrition, sportsmanship, and character via young mentors such as Ram. It takes place at the Crossover Basketball and Scholars Academy and hosts up to 450 students each year free of cost.
Ram, who speaks Tamil—admittedly with an accent—in his volunteering efforts with the children, plans to return again this summer.
And though he will graduate from the University of Maryland before that, he has one more year of eligibility as a Terrapin and may come back to play. He may also pursue a job in consulting or the public health sector, something that he hasn’t had time for in the past because of his schedule.
“It’s been tough to get any type of work experience because summers have always been working out and taking classes,” Ram said. “I have all my premed requirements done, so if I wanted to do medicine, I don’t think that should be too difficult. I’ll have a better idea after I’ve worked for a few years.”
Though Ram has blazed trails for other Indian-Americans to pursue similar aspirations, he is frank about the fact that he may not fit the mold of your typical college ballplayer.
“Really, most people that see me underestimate me,” Ram said. “It’s understandable because I don’t fit the model of a Division 1 basketball player. I don’t pass the ‘eye test.’”
At 5’9”, he is Maryland’s smallest player. And because it’s not everyday that one sees someone of his heritage on a college basketball court, most of his teammates did not know he was Indian until he told them.
Now, though, he has become a sort of cultural ambassador to his teammates, who sometimes come to him with questions about Indian food and clothes.
Earlier in his basketball career, in high school, he said he loved the feeling of surprising those who underestimated him based on looks. He used that sentiment as motivation and played to his strengths of being quick and having a good intuition for the game.
“I hope young Indian-Americans understand that they can do anything they set their minds to,” Ram said. “I don’t want them to limit or set barriers for themselves just because they haven’t seen someone that looks like them do it before. This goes for anything—not just sports.”
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