Around this time last year, Kate Gernold doubted that a service trip abroad during her time as a St. John Fisher University student would happen. She had been researching potential options, but the idea eventually drifted from her radar as she prepared to return to campus for the 2025-26 academic year.
“I thought, ‘Oh, maybe in the future, but probably not,’” she said.
That is, until this spring, when reading about a service trip to Fiji through International Volunteer HQ rekindled her desire. Things moved quickly from there.
After a chat with her roommate and St. John Fisher women’s volleyball teammate, Ashlen Croft, wheels went into motion. They soon had a two-week trip to the tropical island in the South Pacific Ocean booked. During the unforgettable journey in May, Gernold and Croft, both of whom will be juniors this fall, volunteered at local schools, assisting teachers in classrooms and teaching sports education classes. They also had plenty of opportunities to immerse themselves in the country’s culture.
“Ashlen said she was interested, and we were like, ‘Yeah, let’s do this,’” Gernold, an economics and pre-law student at Fisher, recalled.
Croft added, “I am pre-PA, so I wanted to get some more volunteer experience, and when Kate came up with this idea, I was like, ‘I want to go to Fiji.’ It seemed like a great experience. She mentioned it being sports education, and that’s perfect for us. There was a teaching aspect to it, and I wanted to try that out too. We didn’t know much about Fiji or the culture there, but it just seemed like a great pick. And we ended up being very happy with it.”
Gernold is from Orchard Park, a suburb south of Buffalo, while Croft hails from Waverly, a town located in the eastern portion of New York’s Southern Tier. But their pre-trip anxiety of traveling more than 7,000 miles from home gave way to comfort quickly.
Each day, Gernold and Croft found themselves marveling at the generosity of the locals. It did not take them long to learn a popular Fijian word – bula.
“You pass anyone down the street, and they would say it,” Gernold said. “It’s their way of saying hello and welcome. They treat visitors like family.”
Settling into a routine also helped ease the nerves, as they arrived in Fiji on a Sunday and went straight to work the next day. Monday through Friday, they assisted teachers at a local primary school in the mornings, jumping in to help wherever they could. In the afternoons, from about 3 to 5 p.m., they ran a sports education class with other volunteers for children at a park, easily the most fulfilling part of the trip.
“They (the students) are so precious and treated us with so much respect,” Croft, who studies biology and chemistry, said. “They didn’t use our names at all – they called us madam. They were super energetic and always down to have a good time. They love sports and just want to be active.”
Gernold said, “They want to be everyone’s friend. They would hug us all the time. They are so curious about meeting new people. They were sad to see us leave, and we were sad to leave them.”
Gernold, Croft and other volunteers organized different activities for the students each day. Along the way, they introduced them to some sports they had never played before.
“Rugby is popular in Fiji, so we played that sometimes,” Gernold said. “We also played basketball, soccer, and they really loved kickball. They hadn’t played kickball before, so that was a big one for us to teach them. We just had so much fun doing that.”
They had to sneak in some volleyball, too, of course. While they didn’t have a net, they still found ways to teach the fundamentals of the game through basic drills.
“They liked volleyball a lot, particularly the spiking aspect of it,” Croft said, laughing. “They liked that a lot more than the passing.”
Outside of their duties in classrooms and at the local park as sports education instructors, Gernold and Croft spent time bonding with volunteers from around the world, many of them their age. They returned home with connections from Los Angeles, Arizona, London, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, to name a few places.
“We all are in similar spots in life, so it was cool to talk about differences,” Gernold said. “We talked to a bunch of people from Australia, and their school year is different. They were on spring break during the trip, and we were on our summer vacation. That’s just one example of how we got to learn about what life is like in other parts of the world.”
Additionally, the program affords its volunteers to have the weekends off, which allowed Gernold and Croft to explore. They crammed in quite a bit during their lone free weekend, including a cave exploration tour, ziplining and enjoying the clear turquoise waters Fiji is acclaimed for.
“It almost looked fake,” Croft said. “The water is so beautiful there.”
Those perfect blue waters symbolize the trip well.
“I had been out of the country before, but not for this reason,” Croft said. “I don’t work with kids very often, but with my background as a student-athlete, I felt more comfortable teaching sports. It was a good opportunity to try something new.
“...Right when the trip ended, we were like, ‘Okay, where to next?’ I think we are going to do this again. It was perfect.”
Gernold said, “We were getting to travel, but we were also able to experience a whole different culture firsthand through living in a neighborhood and working with the local kids. It was basically like we were living there for two weeks. We are teammates and roommates, so we are already really close, but I feel like this experience pulled us even closer together. We experienced everything new together for the first time. It was great.”
