Four Olympic volleyball players on Team USA who all trained at the same gym in Aurora are garnering special recognition as they live out a dream they helped build together.
“They’re not just the best, you know, athletes out of our program and in our country, but they’re also true character people ,” said Stephan Hewitt, the boys’ program director at Sports Performance Volleyball. “They’re people that are really proud representatives of everything we strive for our kids to achieve here both on the court and off the court.”
Those representatives, Thomas Jaeschke and Jeffrey Jendryk on the men’s team and Lauren Carlini and Kelsey Cook on the women’s team, have been in Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics.
“It’s really cool for our athletes to see them passing and being successful and defending at a really high level, and knowing that everything they’re training here is exactly what they trained when they were here,” he said.
More than 100 boys, all incoming high schoolers, took part in summer camp Friday morning at the facility, learning new skills and training for the upcoming club season.
“We have a slogan on the back of our shirt that says, ‘I survived for our summer camps,’ and we pride ourselves on being America’s toughest volleyball camp,” he said. “So kids come here and they know the training is going to be intense, it’s going to be fast-paced, it’s going to try to replicate a lot of what they’re seeing in the Olympics right now.”
While camp can be tough, Hewitt said the kids are dedicated and motivated to learn and be the best.
This weekend, they’re cheering on the women’s team as they compete for gold.
“We won the last Olympics back in 2021 in Tokyo and that was the first-ever gold medal for our women’s national team, so being able to see them go back-to-back, you know hopefully repeat, defend their title is pretty cool,” he said.
Meanwhile, the men’s team secured a bronze medal in competition on Friday.
Hewitt hopes for a big win on Sunday and knows for future athletes on and off the volleyball court that anything is possible.
“Not just proud of the athletes that we have representing us right now, but also proud of the kids for dreaming big,” he said. “You can’t achieve something great if you’re not going to put 100% of yourself into it.”