Rutgers women’s volleyball embarked on the program’s first-ever foreign trip this past May, competing in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy. It was an exciting excursion for the Scarlet Knights, who finished dead-last in the Big Ten Conference last season.
“It was a goal of mine when I first was hired that I wanted to do that trip and wait for the right timing of it,” head coach Caitlin Schweihofer said Monday at Big Ten Volleyball Media Days in Chicago.
Schweihofer had taken foreign trips while coaching other programs, and explained the opportunity to take a trip like this had been available to Rutgers for the past three years, but she’d been dragging her feet a bit.
“I wasn't sure the team dynamic, everything was exactly where I wanted it to be, [to] really jump start the next season,” Schweihofer said. “I felt after this spring, actually after last fall of knowing we were retaining the majority of our team, having the opportunity to train for the extra 10 days before that trip and then go on that trip, the relationships, and then the growth from a player development that we were able to create, [the team dynamic was where Schweihofer wanted it].”
The head coach explained there’s a positive trend related to the success of programs after international tours, which helped motivate donors to support the trip itself. For the players, the trip helped them grow closer as a team, which libero Kenzie Dyrstad hopes will benefit them this fall.
“Yeah, it was so cool to be able to experience new cultures, especially we have a girl on our team, Ema [Grubanov], she's from Serbia, so to be able to experience her culture, her home, it was so cool,” Dyrstad said. “Just all the new experiences and being able to create new memories, especially with the new people, that just makes your team so much closer. It's going to really translate to the court hopefully.”
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