While most Monroe County residents witnessed the spectacle of the 2024 Olympic Games held in Paris, France, on the TV at home, one local family made it a trip of a lifetime for their nephews.

Brad Siedle and his wife Melissa Siedle, along with brother Jacob Siedle, took their nephews Kaden and Kanen Augustine across the Atlantic Ocean to see the Olympics in person. 

Jacob spoke to the Republic-Times to describe their time in Paris.  

He said his brother Brad – who had already attended four other Olympic Games – was in charge of getting the tickets, which, along with the trip were high school graduation presents for the Augustines.

Kaden graduated in 2023, while Kanen graduated this past spring. Both were key members of the 2023 Gibault Catholic High School state championship basketball team.

Jacob said securing tickets was a matter of entering a lottery on the official Paris Olympics website, since each country is only allotted a certain number of tickets to attend the various events.

Once a person is notified of selection for a particular event, Jacob said there is an official after-market ticket situation in which people have the opportunity to try to swap tickets to match their event time with the team they wish to see.

For the Siedles and Augustines, they were given the opportunity to see Olympic beach and indoor volleyball games.

They spent a week in Paris from July 27 through Aug. 3.

Brad and Melissa left Monroe County with Kaden and Kanen, and the Augustines were surprised by their uncle Jacob in New York when he joined the party prior to the trans-Atlantic plane flight.

Jacob said it was a “cool experience” for the Augustines, and it was their first time traveling outside of the United States.

It was also unique for Jacob, who was attending his first Olympics while his brother was attending his fifth.

Jacob said as he described was “surreal,” the beach volleyball games being played on a court just outside of the Eiffel Tower grounds.

“You would be watching volleyball and then look up to the left, and there’s the Eiffel Tower,” Jacob recalled.

The locals spent most of their time at the beach court. Unfortunately, both the men’s and women’s U.S. teams failed to medal in this year’s Olympics.

They also got a chance to see a few indoor games, where Team USA fared much better. The women lost to Italy in the final for the silver medal while the men beat the Italians to secure bronze.

While they weren’t watching the games, Jacob said there were plenty of other Olympic-themed events going on in Paris. 

The group went to several fan festivals and visited “houses”,while they weren’t at the events in person.

Jacob said they visited the Netherlands house – each house is created for fans of specific countries – and had a particularly good time at the Irish house.

Another highlight for the locals was happening to be positioned at one point just mere feet away from American rap music icon Snoop Dogg, who was selected as an Olympic torchbearer and then served as an NBC correspondent throughout the games.

Jacob added that the whole event was very organized, and while not engaged with Olympic activities, they took time to do some more traditional sightseeing and tourism in the City of Light.

Jacob said after the experience, everyone is now looking forward to attending the 2028 Summer Olympics which will be held a little closer to home.

Those games will be held stateside in Los Angeles, Calif., and will feature the return of popular American sports such as baseball and softball as well as the debut of flag football.