Daily Illini Article

The Daily Illini is the University of Illinois school newspaper. Emily Bayci, sports writer, interviewed me on Skype last week. I think she did a great job capturing all of the different aspects of my experience. Here is the article that she wrote:

Volleyball alumnae continue career, friendship overseas

Six months ago, Johannah Bangert and Laura DeBruler hung out every day in their campus apartment, joking around and talking volleyball. Now, the Illinois volleyball players, who graduated in the spring, still chat all the time. But these days they communicate over Skype instead of on the sofa.

The duo is playing professional volleyball in Europe — DeBruler in Switzerland and Bangert in Sweden. The other half of their senior class (Hillary Haen and Nicole Kump) moved on to the working world, but DeBruler and Bangert were not ready to walk away from volleyball quite yet.

“I can continue playing, I don’t have to stop my career,” DeBruler said. “It’s really sad, I actually talked to some of the girls here about this. They don’t understand how many people play in college and then don’t do it anymore after college. It’s just done, their career is over.”

As professional players, both Bangert and DeBruler are expected to be key contributors to their teams.
Bangert, a middle blocker for Ljungby Volleybollklubb in Ljungby, Sweden, has become much more focused on attacking than ever before.

“I think I have gotten better attacking just because I’ve been put into a different role,” Bangert said. “I am supposed to score most of the points for us. I think I’m held to a higher standard now in attacking than I was before.”

DeBruler, an outside hitter for Sagres NUC VolleyBall in Marin, Switzerland, has been having more difficulty than expected coming back from her ACL injury last fall.

“I’m in a lot of pain and my knee still swells up,” DeBruler said. “It’s frustrating because I don’t feel like I’m at the same level as before I got hurt.”

And she has to adjust to a format unlike what she was used to at Illinois.

“Volleyball is a lot different actually,” DeBruler said. But then she paused for a minute.

“Well I guess it’s not that different,” she said with a laugh.
The setup is similar to college with multiple divisions, usually broken up among countries. Each division typically has about 10 teams, which all play one another twice.

The players don’t practice as much as in college, because most of the team members are locals with jobs or school. The seasons are also much longer than in college, starting in early September and running through April. Coaching staffs are much smaller, forcing players to teach themselves more than in college.

“There, you’re a pro,” said Illinois head coach Kevin Hambly, who keeps in touch with Bangert and DeBruler over e-mail. “No one’s telling you what to eat, no one’s telling you when to lift, no one’s telling you how to change your passing. They just expect you to perform. I think it’s a good life lesson, a good experience for everyone.”

The former Illini are both pretty convinced they’ll play another season abroad — they aren’t ready to be done playing volleyball yet. They might consider joining different teams to experience a new culture, but haven’t thought much about it, Bangert said.

Now, they are focused on enjoying their final months within the current culture.
Bangert found that people of all ages were able to speak English nearly fluently. She is familiar with Swedish, having taken three semesters of it at Illinois.

“We go anywhere and people know us as the American volleyball players,” Bangert said. “A lot of people, when they first meet us, are afraid to speak English because they think they’re going to be bad at it, but really everybody is so good at it.”

During practice, Bangert’s coach and teammates typically speak in English. Sometimes, when the coach wants to get a lot of information out quickly, he goes on a Swedish rant.

“Those times, someone will have to translate for us,” Bangert said.

The language barrier isn’t as simple for DeBruler, who is surrounded by numerous languages.
“In my part they speak French, but like two towns over they speak Swiss-German, which is different than German,” DeBruler said. “Some parts speak Italian and there’s a really, really small part that speaks a combination of all three together.”

Something more difficult to get used to is Europe’s high expenses, Bangert said. A cheeseburger, fries and drink from McDonald’s costs about $13. DeBruler said she only goes there when she’s feeling especially homesick.

“I knew it was expensive, but I didn’t think it would be this expensive,” Bangert said.
Part of Bangert’s contract requires her to eat lunch every day at Hotel Terraza, where “everyone in the town goes for lunch,” Bangert said. Her favorite meal: bacon.

Bangert was amazed by the presence of team sponsorships. Her black jersey has ads plastered all over it and her gym has banners and posters everywhere. The sponsors also give bonus prizes to the MVP of every game. So far, Bangert has won flowers and lottery tickets, which didn’t win her any money. Her roommate, Meghan Sherman, won on the “jackpot day,” Bangert said.

She received flowers, a pair of socks, a hat, lanyard and wallet.
Sherman is the team’s other American import and played volleyball at the University of Tampa. She and Bangert met on the plane to Sweden and have been getting along very well, Bangert said.

The two have been promoted as mini-celebrities, with their pictures often featured in the newspaper and life-size posters made of them.
Bangert plans to travel for Christmas, going to the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Paris. “It’s like I finally get a chance to study abroad, without the schoolwork,” Bangert said.

DeBruler is looking forward to 10 days at home.

She is not forgetting her Illinois roots, and her parents certainly don’t let her. They were visiting Oct. 8, when the then-No. 1 Illinois defeated the then No. 8 Penn State in Happy Valley.

“They stayed up from two in the morning until five in the morning to listen to the game on the radio,” DeBruler said. “I was sleeping, because I had a game the next day, but they are seriously die hard fans.”

Although they are both abroad and hope to see each other, Bangert and DeBruler don’t know if they will make it because of their varying competitive schedules. Getting from Neuchatel, Switzerland, to Ljungby, Sweden, requires a 12-hour drive and ferry ride. They know they’ll continue to speak often, though.

“I talk to her a lot because we’re going through the same situations,” DeBruler said. “I can talk to people at home but they just don’t understand what it’s like to be without family, without close friends. And she was my roommate, my best friend. It’s just kind of cool that we’re going through this together.”