RECRUITING ALL AROUND THE WORLD.

Wisconsin's women's volleyball team have a national championship and a history, much of this century, of making runs deep into the national tournament.  In part, the team's success is thanks to talent from all around the world.  Gulce Guctekin serves as tour guide during the summer practice season.

What’s funny about our visit to Europe last month is that everyone on the Wisconsin volleyball team was looking to me to be the tour guide. I wound up being as much of a tourist as they were.

Before we left for our two-week, four-country summer tour that took place June 2-14, I was asked to make a presentation to my teammates and coaches about life in Istanbul, Turkey. That was the first leg of our journey. It’s also where I was born, raised and fell in love with volleyball. I told them about the unique culture, food, language and politics of my homeland. How Istanbul, with a population of more than 15 million, is bigger than Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City combined. How my hometown is big enough to touch two continents — Asia and Europe — and how it’s more than 2,500 years old.

Of course, we talked about how volleyball is very popular in that part of the world and some of the best pro teams and players can be found in Istanbul. We found that out in the five matches that we played on the trip that also took us to Slovenia, Italy and Switzerland. We won three times, but all of them were really challenging.

As, apparently, was the traffic.

While we were in Istanbul, I felt like a bridge between my city and my team, connecting everyone to our love of tea, our super-large breakfasts, our fascinating history that dates back to 512 B.C.E. and how friendly the people are despite living in a place where earthquakes — like the one that struck in February and affected nearly 18 million people — are common.

I would have loved to have taken the team to my home and showed them the neighborhood where I grew up, but our hotel in Istanbul was on the European side of the city and my home in the Fenerbahce district is on the Asian side. If there’s a lot of traffic, it could take two hours to get there. We got close, though. On our third night we went to watch and cheer for a former Badger, Nigel Hayes-Davis, as he played for the local pro basketball team.

The travel experiences and the game play did the team well. After one week of intercollegiate play, they're holding the top rank in the country.