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WNBA Leigha Brown playing for Kangoeroes Basket Mechelen in Belgium in April 2025. Jill Delsaux / Belga Mag / AFP via Getty Images Morgan Batey moved through her calming routine: Breathe in, hold; breathe out, rest. Clench the muscles; release slowly. The former Vanderbilt guard and 10-year overseas pro usually saved these exercises for the tense moments before pivotal basketball games. Now, she needed them more than ever. It was 8 a. m. on March 3. Three days earlier, the United States and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes in Iran, and Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks on Israel and other targets in the Middle East. Batey was about to leave her apartment with all her belongings and climb into a van with a driver she’d never met. The plan was simple: a three-hour ride from her apartment in Tel Aviv to the Jordanian border.   From there, she hoped, she could make it home to Atlanta. Advertisement “People are worried about whether I’ll get paid, ” said Batey, now home after a two-day journey spanning more than 7, 000 miles, four cities and three countries. There was no time to talk contracts with Hapoel Rishon Le Zion, the club she’d been playing for in the Israeli Women’s Basketball Premier League. “Nothing pays for the price of being back home and being safe. I’ve grown to realize, there’s so much more in this world and life than money. ” The idea to reach Jordan came together March 2. The 31-year-old spent most of Sunday booking about $10, 000 worth of flights out of Israel, none of which she would ultimately use. On Saturday, she packed for the uncertain journey ahead between trips to the bomb shelter built into her apartment. That morning, Rishon Le Zion officials told Batey and the team’s other international players to begin planning their departures. Leigha Brown, who finished her college career at Michigan in 2023 and played one WNBA season with the Connecticut Sun, was signed to another Israeli club, Elitzur Holon, when the war started. She learned about it from online news sources. When she asked team officials about it, she said they were dismissive and told her the immediate danger would fade. They encouraged her to stay put. “They’re so accustomed to this and the dangers of being there, ” Brown said Thursday, after she reached her home in Auburn, Ind. “They didn’t really think too much of it. ” Along with Batey and Brown, dozens of U. S. athletes playing professional basketball and other sports in the region found themselves scrambling to arrange tickets out of a war zone in the past week. Others remain in the Middle East as airport closures, airspace restrictions and thousands of canceled and rerouted flights have left international travelers stranded. Batey is familiar with conflict in Israel. She first played in the country in 2024, with Israel at war with Hamas in Gaza. “A lot of Israeli citizens are so used to war, ” she said. “They’ve been in war their whole lives. So it’s just like, ‘Oh, this will pass. ’” Advertisement But before the end of the first day of hostilities in this one, Batey had already decided to leave Israel. Even though Israeli airspace was closed, she booked a half dozen flights scheduled to leave Ben Gurion Airport in the next week, hoping that one of the itineraries would hold if the airport reopened. She later managed to recoup most of her $10, 000 through cancellations. By Monday, it became clear that commercial air travel would not return to normal anytime soon. That’s also the day that the State Department issued a “DEPART NOW” recommendation for U. S. citizens in Israel and 13 other Middle Eastern nations, citing “serious safety risks. ” Batey, in communication with her sister and family friends in Jordan, devised a plan to cross into Jordan the next day and fly out of Amman. Even after the three-hour van ride to the border — the driver was “very nice, ” she said — Batey felt as if she couldn’t exhale until her flight Wednesday morning left the Middle East. She landed in Chicago that afternoon and, from there, flew home to Atlanta. For Brown, who played professionally in Spain, Belgium and Puerto Rico after her WNBA stint, this was her first season in Israel and her first brush with international conflict. She hardly slept that first Saturday night, stuck in a vicious cycle of shelter-in-place alarms, then eerie stillness, then the sounds of war, again and again. “It sounded like fireworks, like the Fourth of July, ” she said. “You could literally feel the walls shake and the impact from the missiles being intercepted. ” Brown said her club initially showed little urgency to help her and her fiancée leave. Only after she coordinated with other U. S. players in the country — and the bombing continued — did the club take action, she said.  Her team president called Tuesday morning to confirm that a van would arrive in an hour to take Brown, her fiancée and an American teammate to Egypt, where they would catch a flight to Turkey. Advertisement About 30 minutes from the border with Egypt, one of the tires fell off their van, forcing the driver to skid to the roadside. So close yet still stranded, they contacted another group of departing American players, who picked them up and got them to the airport. When she and her fiancée landed in Istanbul late Wednesday afternoon, Brown turned on her phone, and the first notification that popped up reported that NATO had intercepted an Iranian missile bound for Turkey. Seconds later, the now-familiar sound of bomb alerts blared from another passenger’s phone. “I literally said, ‘Are they following us? ’” Brown recalled. “Can we even get away? ” Even after boarding a flight to Germany, Brown’s mind churned with worst-case scenarios. “(The) whole time, ” she said, “just in the back of my head, I was like, ‘Are we going to get shot down by a missile? ’” She was finally afforded relief when they touched down in Frankfurt. From there, Brown and her fiancée flew to Detroit, then drove the final 150 miles home to northeast Indiana. When asked how the basketball contract in Israel would be resolved, Brown answered, “I haven’t even thought about it until you just asked. ” Batey’s agent, Lorenzo Gallotti, said that the Israeli league is currently suspended, so the players’ pay should continue. If the season resumes, however, Batey, Brown and other athletes who left the country would be expected to return. Both players said they remain open to playing overseas in the future, but not in the Middle East. For now, the next step in their globetrotting careers doesn’t feel like a priority. Getting home was all that mattered. And Batey hopes to make it through the rest of her basketball days using her breathing exercises as intended, to center herself before big games. Not for escaping wars. — Chantel Jennings contributed to this story. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Devon Henderson is a staff writer for The Athletic. He has covered the Summer Olympics, College Football Playoffs, and the Men's Final Four while at Arizona State University and was an intern at the Southern California News Group, where he covered the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Chargers, Los Angeles Sparks, and LAFC. Follow Devon on Twitter @Henderson Devon_