Sarasota Christian football begins partnership with Kraków Kings

An uncommon partnership began with an unusual connection. Jacob Spenn had long dreamed of something like this, but even he was blown away by how it happened.

Knowing the right guy cascaded into an exchange of global proportions.

“A crazy chain of events transpired,” Spenn said.

Before he took the job of Sarasota Christian athletic director and founded the school’s football program, he worked and coached at Cypress Christian in Houston, Texas. He often conversed with a friend doing missionary work in Spain about taking his student-athletes abroad.

Spenn wanted to break them out of the private-school bubble. He understood their privilege and sought to give them perspective.

Still, dreams were just dreams for a while. They finally evolved into action days before Christmas 2024.

His missionary friend knew a guy who knew one of the coaches for the Kraków Kings. The two ran into each other at a wedding in the United States, and just like that, Spenn found himself on a plane to Poland in March 2025.

Less than a year later, there stood Robin Volkmar, head coach of the Kings’ U19 team, on the Blazers’ turf during a muggy September afternoon.

“This doesn’t just happen. This is cool,” Spenn said. “People that have really only one thing in common, which is a game, and (the connection) was just instantaneous.”

The Sarasota Christian head coach emailed his team with an open invite to visit Poland in June, right after the end of the school year, not knowing what the reception would be like. He wound up taking 13 players, along with three coaches and three parents.

Their voyage across the pond marked the formal first step in what Spenn and Volkmar hope will be a partnership for years to come.

Naturally, plenty of football was on the itinerary, with practices held each night and a scrimmage on the final day. But the Blazers in attendance saw the Kings’ impact transcend the gridiron.

“I wasn’t necessarily intrigued about the football aspect, because I didn’t know I was going to come back up until very late,” said junior center/guard Jakob Lester. “We get there, and (we realized) this was a big deal. You thought it was going to be a small thing, but no, you’ve got a whole community.”

Photo by Jacob Spenn

The Kings, founded in 2007, are a professional American football club and non-profit organization sending teams to compete in the Polish Football League, which has operated since 2021. They consist of three programs — seniors, juniors and flag football.

Volkmar’s U19 squad “Kings Young Blood” is a member of the PFL Juniors Southern Group as one of 10 teams distributed evenly across two divisions. He’s served as their head coach on a volunteer basis since Dec. 2023, but once played defensive end for the Kings for over six years.

It’s a perpetual struggle for him to find other teams to play friendlies with or scrimmage against during preseason preparation. 

Sarasota Christian came along at the perfect time. Not only did the team help solve that problem, but they offered an exchange of knowledge, showing Polish kids what’s possible in this game they share a love for.

“When his kids came and started practicing, I just noticed what a high football IQ they had, and how quickly they picked up things,” Volkmar said. “For my kids to see that it can be like this, and that they can develop this football IQ, this was a big thing.”

Through such interactions, and conversations with Volkmar, the gravity of who the Kings are really began to sink in.

The sport is believed to have first appeared in Poland in 1999, with the beginnings of a team in Warsaw. The first game, though, wasn’t held until 2006 following the formation of the now-defunct Polish American Football League in 2004.

In Kraków — a population of over 800,000 — the Kings offer the only organized football in the entire city. That makes them a magnet for kids who get inspired by NFL Europe games or Netflix documentaries and dig around online to learn about Volkmar’s squad.

Those who do join are fully invested. They go out of their way on a regular basis to give their all.

“My players have to be here every day. And then they have to walk from there to there to here,” Spenn said. “(Volkmar)’s got guys that are riding public transportation for an hour to get to practice. That’s a different level of commitment.”

Photo by Jacob Spenn

Noah Spenn is one of several Sarasota Christian athletes who enjoys the luxury of a short commute. It allows the junior safety/wide receiver to focus on football first and foremost, never having to worry about how he’ll get to the field.

He took that for granted until he returned from Kraków.

“It was definitely a little shaking. I live 10 minutes away, I drive here for practice,” said Noah Spenn. “But to hear the stuff they go through and the struggles they have, yet they’re still at practice, going through it (and) working hard every day. That just hit me.”

A week-long experience in Poland didn’t just mature athlete perspectives. It was the collaborative element which excited the two coaches as lifelong students of the game themselves.

For Volkmar, the resources available can’t possibly compare to Jacob Spenn’s. With football still in its infancy internationally, European coaches like himself have to think outside the box to best inform themselves on teaching strategy and technique.

That makes his budding relationship with Sarasota Christian rather valuable.

“We have the opportunity here to get to know each other’s cultures, but there’s also a knowledge transfer,” Volkmar said. “In Europe, we have a bunch of great coaches, but the knowledge we get is limited. It really depends on who is often coincidentally living in the same place and interested in coaching football.”

What’s next for the two programs isn’t yet set in stone. Volkmar’s trip to Sarasota last week was merely an exploratory visit, with hopes of bringing some of his players in the coming year.

They’ll continue to connect over WhatsApp and share film on Hudl, but until they meet again, the Blazers and Kings will have to grow from a distance.

Social media is their gridiron until they clash helmets once more.

“The number of kids from Poland that follow me and our school on social media is hilarious,” said Jacob Spenn. “And most of them, I actually know who they are.”