Nebraska Volleyball: The Origin Story

When Title IX was enacted in 1972, the University of Nebraska volleyball program, like many across the country, received a fraction of the funding and attention given to the school’s mighty football program. The players had to organize a run from Lincoln to Omaha to raise money for uniforms. The women were asked to wait their turn to use the weight room. Today the Nebraska women’s volleyball team is one of the sport’s most decorated programs--with more career wins than any other program and five NCAA National Championships--and draws standing-room-only crowds at home games in the 8,000-seat Devaney Center.

Nebraska Volleyball is the first book to recount how volleyball took hold at Nebraska, through Pat Sullivan, the team’s first coach; through such early figures as Cathy Noth, a decorated player and later an assistant coach into the 1990s; through Terry Pettit, who coached the team for twenty-three seasons and led it to its first National Championship in 1995; and through John Cook, who took over as head coach in 2000. John Mabry highlights the small Nebraska towns that have sent some of the best players to the program and helped build statewide support for the team. Public television helped too, with its power to broadcast games early on and thus build a following across the state.

The success of Nebraska’s volleyball program is one of the greatest stories in sports. As Karch Kiraly, head coach for the U.S. National Women’s Volleyball Team, said: ＂If you want to learn about women’s college volleyball, your first stop has to be Lincoln, Nebraska.＂

John Mabry was the sports editor for the Lincoln Journal Star from 1997 to 2007. During that time he helped cover the Husker volleyball team at five NCAA final fours. He has written more than five hundred features for the Journal Star and the paper’s niche publications and is the author of Heart Felt: The Jenna Cooper Story. Jordan Larson led the Huskers volleyball team to the NCAA championship in 2006 and led the U.S. women’s team to an Olympic gold medal in 2021.