{"id":34944,"date":"2024-07-30T14:30:33","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/?p=34944"},"modified":"2024-07-24T14:42:18","modified_gmt":"2024-07-24T19:42:18","slug":"feature-biegert-reflects-on-recent-coaching-journey-overseas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/about\/news\/feature-biegert-reflects-on-recent-coaching-journey-overseas\/","title":{"rendered":"Feature: Biegert Reflects on Recent Coaching Journey Overseas"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"block rtf align style-default align-default position-right bg-color-default\">\n\t<div class=\"block-wrap\">\n\t\t<div class=\"rtf-content cf\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>This story originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/kwucoyotes.com\/sports\/womens-volleyball\">KWUCoyotes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jessica Biegert and her America\u2019s Team volleyball players were excited to visit St. Peter\u2019s Basilica in Rome, but what happened there was more than they planned.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While Biegert and the players mingled with the crowd in St. Peter\u2019s Square, their attention shifted suddenly to a balcony window of the Apostolic Palace as Pope Francis emerged and delivered his weekly blessing to the crowd below.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt was a Sunday at noon, and the pope gave a citywide blessing that we got to experience and witness,\u201d said Biegert, who is in her sixth season as women\u2019s volleyball coach at Kansas Wesleyan.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The visit to St. Peter\u2019s was one of many stops during her recent journey to Italy for three days of competition and three days of sightseeing.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The trip was Biegert\u2019s second to Europe with America\u2019s Team. She went to Barcelona, Spain, in 2023.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey do softball, baseball, volleyball, women\u2019s basketball and lacrosse,\u201d she said. \u201cGirls from all over the country sign up to travel overseas and play volleyball in a tournament, ages 16 to 18. They\u2019re high-schoolers who have never played together, don\u2019t know each other. College coaches get to go free \u2014 that\u2019s what they sell, you\u2019re coached by a college coach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Coaches and players gathered at a hotel in Milan.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOn Day 1, we throw them on the court and play \u2014 no practice, no nothing, we just start,\u201d she said. \u201cThe longer they\u2019re together, the more they get to know each other and figure out our style of play. They were pretty open and had a lot of energy and were excited about being there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Biegert\u2019s team played six matches in three days and were \u201caround .500\u201d but won the championship, defeating a second team from the United States.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI had a Canadian girl, girls from Alaska, California, Arizona, and there was one from Wichita (who attends Berean Academy in Elbing, Kan.),\u201d she said. \u201cThey come from all over.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn pool play we did \u2018fair play\u2019 \u2014 everybody got in and played. On the last day, it was the championship. I\u2019m playing to win, so I played the stronger players and we were able to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Pool play included a team from Italy, and the coaches opted to mix the rosters for a match.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe girls were like, \u2018Coach we don\u2019t speak the same language,\u2019 and I\u2019m like, \u2018Volleyball is a language; you just go out and play,\u2019 \u201d Biegert said. \u201cTheir style is not that different. It was fun to watch their world get bigger.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The enjoyment continued well into the evening.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cEvery night after the games, we had homemade Italian food from the Italian girls\u2019 moms, and we all ate together,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was fun to see the Italian girls and the American girls interact. They were never on their phones. (The Italians\u2019) social time is their two-hour dinners; we typically eat and run, so we actually had to sit down and have three-course meals during their social time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A two-hour train trip from Milan to Rome followed.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt was good to see the country and the vineyards, the farms and sheep &#8230; and castles.\u00a0 Michelangelo\u2019s really big over there, and we got to see his artwork and the history of that. We toured a cathedral, and we saw the Spanish Steps and the fountain in front of it (Fontana della Barcaccia).<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe next day we went to the Colosseum and got the history of it. They talked about the gladiators, and we got to walk around it. Then we went to the (Tyrrhenian) Sea. It has black sand (caused by material from a nearby volcano), so it was a fun, relaxing day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Biegert said life in Italy is different from the U.S.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey walk everywhere, bike everywhere,\u201d she said. \u201cTransportation\u2019s a little harder in Europe, so they\u2019re definitely more fit. They\u2019re happy people, very nice and social and interactive.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Biegert is thankful for the opportunity.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIt was an experience of a lifetime,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was a way to represent myself and Kansas Wesleyan and make connections all over the country.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYou\u2019re there for the culture, and volleyball is just a good way to connect with people in different countries. You have a common ground.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">Story by Bob Davidson<\/span><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":34945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Feature: Biegert Reflects on Recent Coaching Journey Overseas - Kansas Wesleyan University<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.kwu.edu\/about\/news\/feature-biegert-reflects-on-recent-coaching-journey-overseas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Feature: Biegert Reflects on Recent Coaching Journey Overseas - 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