Everywhere I looked, I found the same story.
“Victoria’s one of the hardest workers we’ve ever had,” Vanderbilt Bowling head coach John Williamson said.
“She is by far the hardest working person on the team,” Vanderbilt Bowling student-athlete Haley Lindley said. “She’s one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met.”
From a 30,000-foot perspective, you might not know it. Much of it occurs behind the scenes, after practice and on her own time. But to those on the team and on the coaching staff, one thing is abundantly clear: Victoria Varano isn’t just another hard worker — she’s perhaps the hardest worker in the history of one of collegiate bowling’s most successful programs.
“She’s extremely dedicated to her craft and [to] the idea of being the best bowler she can be,” Williamson said. “There are certain days that we have to tell her to not practice extra just to give herself a physical break.”
That kind of athlete doesn’t just spawn out of the aether. They develop over time — through trials and adversity — into the kind of person willing to do whatever it takes to become better. Such is the story of Varano’s bowling career.
“A bar that she’s set is that she wants to be like her sister,” Williamson said.
That’s one piece of the puzzle. Varano’s sister, Danielle McEwan, won an NCAA Championship, NCAA Championship Most Outstanding Player honors and two NCAA Player of the Year awards at Fairleigh Dickinson. That’s a large legacy to live up to — but Varano’s already part of the way there with a 2023 National Championship, an All-American Honorable Mention and a Second-Team All-American selection.
She wasn’t just a benchwarmer on the 2023 championship team, either — she was an active contributor for Vanderbilt in Las Vegas. As a first-year, Varano got the start in the finals against Arkansas State and stayed in for the duration of the seven-game match.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do it if she wouldn’t have been able to right the ship,” Williamson said. “For her age, being able to do that on national TV speaks a lot to her overall maturity and her ability.”
Maturity was another theme that came up a lot in talking with her teammates.
“If we’re struggling, she’s typically one of the first ones to bring us all together and bring us all back on the same page,” Lindley said. “She’s the one that steps up to calm us all back down.”
Varano, with her dedication and maturity, had offers out of high school to bowl at any of the sport’s elite programs. Her decision to come to Vanderbilt, however, was two-fold.
“[Vanderbilt] was by far the best academic school that I looked at,” Varano said.
That answer is standard across student-athletes, but it only formed the first part of Varano’s decision. The second reason was much more novel.
“This was one of the schools [where I thought], ‘Yeah, they’re going to treat me like an athlete rather than just a bowler,” Varano said.
The facilities. The training regimen. The intensity of the program. All of it struck Varano as not just another collegiate bowling experience but the experience of a student-athlete at an SEC university. Bowlers aren’t always treated like other student-athletes, but in Varano’s eyes, they should be. They train. They condition. They compete at the NCAA level. A student-athlete is what Varano wanted to be — and it’s the experience that Vanderbilt offered.
“I had some friends that went here before I committed, and they [told me], ‘They’re going to treat you like a national-championship [caliber] athlete,” Varano said. “When we’re in there, we’re doing the same stuff that soccer is doing, that lacrosse is doing.”
Since arriving on campus, Varano has leveraged her university’s pedigree and her own talent to great effect. She’s tapped into an opportunity more present in sports other than her own but nonetheless still available in the world of bowling: name, image and likeness.
Every Vanderbilt bowler, to some extent, engages in NIL — each one has their own personal deal with a bowling ball company that offers money in exchange for exclusively bowling with their balls. Oftentimes, you see a member of Vanderbilt Bowling post an Instagram highlight of them throwing a strike with said ball to promote the product. What Varano does, however, is much broader than just promotion
“My first NIL experience came through the Anchor Collective,” Varano said. “They pulled a bunch of athletes to just hear their stories, and my coach recommended me because at the time I was the only one big into social media. That was the takeoff for me.”
If you glimpse at Varano’s Instagram feed, you’ll be able to see promotions for everything from snack bars to sunscreen. Student-athletes are marketable, especially when, like Varano, they have over 14,000 Instagram followers.
“People think bowling is so cool,” Varano said. “Once they get to hear the story about how I get to travel the country and travel the world, people just think it’s really interesting. NIL is a way that I can share that with people.”
As she expected, and to an extent desired, not everything in her experience as a student-athlete has been easy.
“Last year was hard,” Varano said. “Not a reality check, but it was kind of a perspective on how different things can be in such a short period of time.”
Vanderbilt Bowling’s 2023-2024 season wasn’t a disaster. It failed to make the Final Four, but the team still advanced to the NCAA Regional stage and gave Arkansas State a tough matchup. It did not, however, bring home a second-straight national championship — and that still stings to Varano. It also lit a fire.
“When we didn’t make it to the Final Four and we lost — that’s a feeling you wouldn’t wish on anyone,” Varano said. “It was such an awful feeling, and I’m glad looking back on it — myself and most of the girls that were on that team are able to reflect on it to make sure it never happens again.”
This season, Vanderbilt Bowling is back in its historic position as a perennial title contender. The Commodores are ranked No. 3 in the March NTCA Coaches Poll and were even atop the rankings during the month of December. They’ve won two tournaments — the Prairie View A&M Invitational and Stallings Invitational — with more than a little help from Varano. A staple figure in the rotation, the New York native is squarely in the running for another All-American appearance, an impressive feat on a Vanderbilt roster that’s nine players deep.
Through it all, Varano’s work ethic hasn’t slouched — it has only increased. National championship or not, and a spot in the starting lineup secured or unsecured, Varano is still the player who coaches have to tell to take a break from training. Old dogs don’t learn new tricks, and workhorses never slow down. It all comes back to what her teammates say about her.
“Just include her work ethic [in the article],” Lindley said. “She doesn’t give herself credit for it as much as she should.”
