National Collegiate Athletic Association

NCAA News Archive - 2010

back to 2010 | Back to NCAA News Archive Index

Apr 28, 2010 8:20:36 AM

Montana State football student-athletes Joe Schreibeis, Tanner Ripley and Caleb Schreibeis spent their spring break coaching a football team in Istanbul, Turkey.

The trio was part of a group that included six former and current student-athletes from Texas that spent a week with the Istanbul Cavaliers.

The group was led by former Indiana State student-athlete Tunch Ilkin, a native of Turkey who played professionally for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Ilkin now serves as an analyst on a Pittsburgh television station. In addition to running daily practices – a rarity for a team that fields players between the ages of 16 and 30 – the Americans conducted a workshop on weight-lifting and training.

For Joe Schreibeis, the week was a return trip. He spent part of the summer of 2009 in the country and met one of the local coaches of the university team. That coach, an American originally from Texas, arranged for Schreibeis and the others to come back in the spring.

The Montana State student-athletes found a different approach to football in Turkey than in the U.S. Many teams are not supported by a university, and the playing season can stretch over 11 months with sometimes several weeks between games.

"The team that we worked with had pretty good equipment considering, but the league is trying to work on a way to maybe get some used equipment from American teams," Ripley said. "Football over there is really in its infancy so they are still organizing at many levels."

Many of the Turkish players have regular jobs and would come to the 9 p.m. practice sessions at the end of the work day. The players ranged in age from 16 to 30. The sport isn't as popular in Eastern Europe as it is in the U.S., and the skill level is still evolving.

"Quarterbacks are really hard to come by over there," Joe Schreibeis said. "They don't grow up playing any games that include overhand throwing. All their games revolve around footwork or underhand tossing. So, the catching and throwing part of basic skills needs a lot of developing. Their tackling methods are kind of unorthodox as well, but they are learning. There's no football program for young kids, so by the time they get to the university age, they have some technique problems."

The experience was life-changing for Joe Schreibeis. He will graduate in May with a degree in civil engineering and is considering going back to Turkey to coach for a year or two before he pursues a career in his field.

"I always said I'd never coach football, but going over there it's different," he said. "It's fun to see how excited they get about something as simple as learning to block a punt. There's a real satisfaction in helping them reach a level of excitement about learning the game."