Once upon a time, Thomas Jeschke and Jeff Jendrick were needles in the same haystack.
Both grew up in Wheaton, with Jeschke two years older. They both discovered volleyball in high school — Jeschke at Wheaton-Warrenville South, Jendrick at St. Francis — and both developed a love for the sport and joined the same Aurora-based club, Sports Performance. They both ended up starring at Loyola University, where Jeschke, now 30, and Jendrick, now 28, met and, incredibly, won a Division I national championship together.
They reached such heights. They shared such glory. It's an incredible story.
But it's not even half done. More different!
Both Wheaton natives, Jeschke and Jendrick, are currently ranked No. 3 in the world and are members of the 12-person U.S. Olympic Team headed to the upcoming Summer Olympics in Paris.
How about that?
This will be the third Olympic Games for Jeschke, a 6-foot-6 outside hitter. He won a bronze medal as part of the U.S. team in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and also competed in the 2021 Tokyo Games, which were postponed a year because of the pandemic.
But for Jendrick, a 6-foot-10 middle blocker, this is a much-anticipated debut on the sport's biggest stage. He was on the national team that featured 14 players in every other international tournament leading up to Tokyo, but was unfortunately left in the corner of the editing room when the squad was cut to 12.
“We had four great middle blockers, and you never knew who wasn't going to make it,” Jendrick said. “When I found out it was me, I was really disappointed. I'd worked hard every day for four years, honing my craft. It took me a few months to let it go and come to terms with it. All I could do now was focus on the next game. [team]. “
Waiting for news from Paris was also stressful, receiving the good news was an indescribable joy.
“I'm very excited,” he said. “For me, it's been eight years of work to get to this moment.”
Both are, of course, Loyola's greatest players of all time, and they've achieved unlikely, if unheralded, success in this sports-conscious city: The Ramblers won back-to-back national titles, first at Gentile Arena in Rogers Park in 2014 and then at Stanford in 2015. Jeschke was a star on both teams and was named National Player of the Year in 2015. Jendrick watched a game from the stands in 2014 while still in high school and went on to become Loyola's only four-time All-American and his final first-team All-American in 2018.
Jendrik was a freshman with incredible size and all the qualities, but Jeschke was the best guy. And one day during practice, he taught me a lesson that would serve me well. A teammate on the other side of the net hit the ball so hard that Jendrik didn't think he had a chance to dig it out. But Jeschke dug it out, and the ball came over to Jendrik and hit him in the back.
“I turned around too late,” Jendrick said. “I got a little lazy, and Tom came running and grabbed me by the shirt and was like, 'You've got to be ready all the time. Get ready for this ball!' Basically, I love the guy. He's a really hard worker, but he expects a lot from his teammates and wants the best for them.”
Jeschke played road baseball and basketball as a kid, and golf and basketball as a freshman in high school, the same year he decided to quit baseball and try volleyball.
“When I started, I was 5-foot-10,” Jeschke said, “but the next year, my sophomore year, I was 6-foot-5.”
Plus, he has a vertical leap of 38 inches. This kid is really good at slam dunking, but volleyball quickly became his thing. Jeschke has played professionally in Poland, Italy, China, Turkey and Japan, but he hasn't been without his fair share of major injuries, the worst of which was a torn ACL. Overall it's been a fun journey, but being able to experience a third Olympics has been a real gift.
“It's a completely different life,” he says. “I'll be very grateful when I retire. There are challenges in day-to-day life, but now I speak Italian. I never thought I'd be like this when I grew up. As I get older, now at every game, wherever I am in the world, I just stop for a second, look around me and think, 'Wow, this is amazing.'”
Jeschke's girlfriend, parents, sister and grandfather are all planning to come to Paris, and Jendrick's girlfriend and entire family will be there, too, including his older sisters, who played college volleyball at the University of Illinois and the University of Dayton.
Jendrik has played professionally in Germany, Poland and Italy, but it was his sisters who encouraged him to try the sport at age 16. But the truth is, he was a basketball player at the time, but not a great one.
“As a freshman, I was scoring two, four, six points a game,” Jendrick said. “I was 6-foot-4 and about 150 pounds. I was built for volleyball.”
He was still at Loyola when the basketball team captivated the city with a run to the Final Four in 2018. In some college sports, that's the case, but in others, it's not.
“I was really excited for the players,” he said, “but I wish more of that happened in volleyball. I wish there were more media outlets promoting volleyball and getting to know the players. It's a bit of a shame, isn't it?”
Jendrik is often mistaken for a basketball player, but that's common in volleyball.
“But I'm proud to be a volleyball player,” he said.
He couldn't be prouder than he is in Paris, far from home.
