Geneva learns teamwork while volunteering in Iowa

Coaches love to tell their teams to pull together and get things done.

Ryan Estabrook saw his Geneva soccer team do plenty of pulling this summer and there wasn't a ball in sight.

To understand why the Vikings were straining and sweating in the August heat in flood-ravaged Iowa, you have to understand a few things.

First, Estabrook is from Muscatine, Iowa, one of many communities hit hard by the May and June rains that brought the Mississippi River over its banks.

Second, the Vikings have taken some of their preseason every year with Estabrook as coach to go to Muscatine and train hard on the hills near the river - trips as much about bonding as they are about seasonal preparation.

But this was no ordinary year, and the trip to Muscatine still took place - but with several twists. In the process, the Vikings showed that goals and one-touch passing aren't their only talents.

"It was a good time," Geneva senior Shawn Sloan said. "We only played soccer two times while we were out there. But I think the moral lessons and the hard work that we put out together helped build us up and maybe build up what we were lacking at the beginning of the year last year."

Muscatine is just downriver from the Quad Cities. And when the floods came, the downtown area and some smaller communities south of the city flooded. When the Vikings arrived two months after the waters receded, the damage was still evident, though they didn't see much of it.

"As you drive down the street, you can see huge trees that were split by wind or lightning or flooding," Geneva senior Ben Orr said. "It's good to see the whole community, and us, trying to give back and help them out."

Estabrook's family lives in an area that was unaffected by the floodwaters.

"We had a lot of friends who had houses that were destroyed," Estabrook said. "To see the damage that the flood did is hard to see."

Geneva is also a river town, though the city's boys soccer players have not had to experience flooding from the Fox River on the scale of that seen along the Mississippi River this year.

"My heart goes out to them," Orr said. "It's got to be a heartbreaking thing to lose your home and a lot of the buildings in your town. We're lucky to have a pretty good environment here - but I hope that they can come through that."

Everything about the Iowa trip was different. In past years, the Vikings stayed in one of the town's churches. This time, they stayed in a hotel. Normally, the days are filled with soccer and talk about soccer. This time, they were working away from practice fields.

"We got a lot of stuff done," Sloan said. "It wasn't all soccer, but it was definitely all team-related activities."

The Vikings found plenty of work. They went to the Port Louisa National Wildlife Refuge, 20 miles further downriver from Muscatine and worked to clear plants that had begun to grow amongst the native species. The work was long and difficult, but complaints were not heard while the heavy lifting took place.

Doing this sort of work is not made for one person, working alone. The job was too extensive and the individual effort required to remove the trees and underbrush meant the Vikings worked in small teams.

"You've got to have the team mentality going out there," Orr said. "All of our team are pretty talented as soccer players - but we've got to bring it together to be successful. I think we've started to do that."

Make no mistake, the work was difficult. Breaking through a packed midfield and stout defense won't be any tougher than what these players saw in their afternoon-long shifts.

"It was all (poison) ivy and layered with stuff that we had to chop down," Sloan said. "We had to give the oak trees area to grow because they were getting crowded and attacked by other plants. It was hot and humid for the five hours we were out there. But it was a good experience."

This was a service project of the purest kind. The Vikings gave completely in their time in Muscatine, and found that while the people they helped certainly gained from their efforts, this sort of giving is a nicely double-edged sword.

"We've been going and using their fields and training in their town for a few years, and it was good to give back to a community that's been nice to us and allowed us to do things like that," Orr said.

Soccer is just one part of the overall high school educational experience - and the Vikings got a good taste of Giving Back 401. By all accounts, the team passed its test easily.

"The soccer field is an extension of the classroom," Estabrook said. "There are so many lessons you can learn from the game of soccer. But when you can step out as a team and as a group of people and do something that's significant for a group of people - I think that is something that will stick with these guys longer than the wins and losses they have this year."

Funny thing about wins and losses: they don't all come on the playing field. And Geneva started the season with an imaginary "1" in its win column.