The Wartburg College football team is in Germany and will play a game this Saturday against the Franken Knights. Wartburg coach Eric Koehler says the week-long trip will have a number of benefits beyond football, including 10 extra practices that wouldn’t normally have.

Koehler also expects the trip to create some cohesiveness among the players are they participate in a new experience in a unique setting. Koehler says athletics and football are the vehicles that let them make the trip, but other than that, there’s not a lot of footbal stuff involved. He says it’s a chance to be immersed culturally in a different world.

Koehler says trips like these help build team chemistry. He says past experience shows the guys on the team that go on the trip are a much tighter knit group when they come back.