A Riverside native is making waves in the world of international sports.
Dana Rettke, who grew up in Riverside and graduated from Riverside Brookfield High School in 2017, is set to play in the 2024 Olympic Games.
USA Volleyball, the national governing body for volleyball, announced Rettke as one of 12 players who will compete at the Paris Summer Games later this year on the United States Women’s National Team. She and her 11 teammates were selected from 25 players who form the team’s “core group,” the team’s head coach said in a news release Wednesday.
The games will mark the Olympic debuts of 6-foot-8-inch middle blocker Rettke and three of her teammates; the other eight players were part of the team that took home a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Rettke started playing volleyball as a ninth grader at RB through the Triple Ace Volleyball Club in River Forest. She started her athletics career on the basketball court in the first grade, playing through her first years in high school and even considering playing in college.
She ultimately chose to play volleyball at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after a visit to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she practiced basketball with some Illini players.
“I just knew right then and there that I did not want to do that anymore,” Rettke told the Wisconsin State Journal in 2017. “I am taller than almost every women’s basketball player, but they have a bigger presence than I do. They’re big-boned and meant for physicality. I’m sure I could’ve done great, but I just knew it wasn’t for me anymore.”
Throughout her high school and college volleyball career, Rettke received several accolades and awards, including being named the Illinois State Player of the Year for high schoolers in 2016.
She was also named the Big Ten Female Athlete of the Year in 2020 and 2022, making her the first ever Big Ten student-athlete to receive the award twice in non-consecutive years. She is the third two-time recipient of the award and the fourth volleyball student-athlete to win the award.
While the 2024 Paris Games are Rettke’s Olympic debut, they will not be her first time playing volleyball internationally.
The Women’s National Team selected her for the 2019 FIVB Women’s Volleyball Nations League hosted by the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball, the international governing body for volleyball that is based in Switzerland. As part of the team, Rettke helped the U.S. win the gold medal, which was awarded at the final match of the league in Nanjing, China.
Later that year, she stayed on to compete in an international Olympic qualification tournament, helping the Women’s National Team earn their way to the 2020 Summer Olympics, where they went on to win the gold medal.
In 2022, Rettke started her post-collegiate career by signing on to play for Vero Volley Milano, a professional team based in Monza, Italy, that competes in the country’s highest volleyball league.
“If I had words, I [would] use them,” Rettke wrote in an Instagram story after she was announced as part of the Olympic roster. “Full of gratitude, love, appreciation to everyone who has helped me to this point. Dreams really do come true.”
