June 10 to June 22, the South Dakota State University volleyball team had the opportunity to travel internationally and play competitively in four different cities in Brazil.
“I had been on three foreign tours in my career in the past; twice with the University of Wyoming and one tour with the University Kansas, so I had first-hand experience of the advantages a tour can provide to a team,” head coach Dan Georgalas said. “Taking over this program a little over four years ago this was definitely something we wanted to provide in terms of a student-athlete experience for our program and we’ve been saving our fundraising money.”
With years of planning and fundraising, all finances for the trip were covered, excluding the occasional souvignier or extra cup of coffee.
The NCAA allows for teams to take an international tour once every four years. With generous donations, planning, and financial aid support, fourteen players along with the coaches were able to have 10 extra practice days before their trip. This allowed for players to grow together and get a head start on their fall season training.
“The cohesiveness of our team is apparent,” Georgalas said. “We started this season 6-0 and it’s the best start in division I history for our program and is the best winning streak to start a season since 2002, so we are doing something our program hasn’t done in over 20 years. I would be naive to think that our foreign tour didn’t help us get off to that fast start especially with a team with eight new players.”
While the team knew they were going to being traveling internationally, it was through a game of hangman that allowed the coaches to reveal their travel destination.
“We were trying to guess what country we were going to because we knew we were going on a trip we just didn’t know where so we found out via hangman,” Sophomore setter Rylee Martin said. “I was thinking we were going to Europe and no way in my mind were we going to Brazil. I just thought it was a really cool experience because there’s no other time in my life that I probably would go to Brazil if it weren’t for volleyball.”
The team traveled to four different cities, starting their tour in São Paulo where they checked out a fruit market and competed in their first match of the tour against two club teams.
Their second spot was Rio de Janeiro where much of their sightseeing took place. A full day to walk around and visit Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain where they took a ride on the Gondolas. Along with seeing plenty of monkeys everywhere, Rio was the location for their second game of the tour.
“The beach that we stayed at in Rio was actually where they hosted the Rio Olympics for beach volleyball which was really cool,” Senior middle blocker, Annalee Ventling-Brown said.
While in Rio they also checked out the Copacabana beach where they played beach volleyball against some of the locals.
“I loved the beach day in Rio,” Martin said. “We got to play some beach volleyball against some people who were there. That’s one of their main sports, soccer and volleyball. Beach and indoor are completely different too so it was cool to play a different sport in a sense.”
In Saquarema the Jacks got to visit Brazil’s Olympic training facility for volleyball where all their indoor and beach volleyball teams and players train. While visiting they played against the U19 Junior National team twice.
To finish off their tour they had a boat day in Arraial do Cabo. It was a day filled with swimming with sea turtles, snorkeling and team bonding.
“The boat trip was definitely my favorite experience,” Ventling-Brown said. “It was so surreal just being there on the boat looking at this beautiful scenery and being there with our team. We were all just having a blast, having so much fun with this once-and-a-lifetime experience.”
Through getting some extra playing time in the summer, for many of the players, taking their first trip abroad and growing as a team makes this a trip that will not be forgotten.
“It sounds strange but the trip was near perfect,” Georgalas said. “There were no injuries, there weren’t any travel logistics that went wrong. Truthfully, we ate a lot of great food and experienced the Brazilian culture.”
The Jacks are grateful for this experience and want to thank all donors, staff, family and friends who helped make it possible.
First home game, and first athletic event held in the now finished First Bank and Trust Arena, will be on Thursday, Oct. 3 against Kansas City.