The offseason has been a grind for preseason No. 1 Nebraska volleyball, and the Huskers will soon get the opportunity to put their work on display under the bright lights as they head into the 2026 season at the end of the month.
“It’s been a grind, but in a very positive way,” Andi Jackson said at the program’s local media day on Thursday. “We’ve worked really hard. We have a lot of attention to detail, so I think the small things we’re taking very seriously. Not that we haven’t in the past, but we’re really honing in on the small things and making sure that we’re just doing good at all the little things, both on and off the court.”
Bergen Reilly used the same word — grind — to describe what their practices are and will continue to be as they progress throughout the season.
Laney Choboy serves during Nebraska volleyball practice. Photo by Brandon Tiedemann.
“We make it hard on each other, which is great,” Reilly said. “We all leave drenched in sweat every day. Whether it’s our morning practice where it’s supposed to be a little more chill — it’s never more chill because we’re going at it. So it’s been really fun, and you know that every day everyone’s coming in and giving 100%. We talk a lot about how we have to learn a lot in our gym because there are going to be a lot of games where maybe we won’t learn a ton, and so we have to learn how to win, how to lose, how to go through that adversity in our gym, so that when it comes up in games, that we’re ready for it.”
For the second consecutive season, the Huskers did not lose anyone to the transfer portal as three freshmen arrived to replace the four outgoing seniors. After a 33-1 season in which the Huskers swept through the Big Ten and led the nation in both hitting percentage and opponent hitting percentage, Nebraska will look to build on that success and make a deeper run in the 2026 postseason.
“It would have been sad to see somebody leave after last year,” Coach Dani Busboom Kelly said. “The people that media or other programs threw out could transfer, it’s like, well, those players are just hitting their stride, and they’re going to get chances. If they love it here, why would you leave? Because I do think they believe with my coaching style that they’ll get a chance, and we’re all going to get a chance, and their role will be meaningful.”
However, despite the significant continuity with five starters plus both liberos returning, the head coach is looking at year two leading the program as a completely new challenge, and determining who sees the floor on a daily basis could be even more difficult than it was in year one.
“It honestly feels a lot different this year for me,” Busboom Kelly said. “Maybe it’s because I was so new last year and had a lot going on, but this feels a little bit different. I don’t really look at last year like, ‘OK, where are we continuing from last year? What are we doing piggybacking off last year?’ It feels like a new team.
“We still have great depth, but I think the margins are even closer this year than they were last year as far as starters, non-starters, who’s going to contribute and what kind of roles players are going to carve out. I think our staff, we’ve been together now a year and a half, and a little more cadence, and it just feels different.”
Nebraska entered the 2025 season ranked first in the AVCA Coaches Poll, and Busboom Kelly made it clear how much confidence she had in her team’s talent by revealing she was one of the coaches who pegged Nebraska No. 1. The Huskers will head into the 2026 season ranked first as well, but it won’t be much of a talking point in the Cornhuskers’ gym this season.
“We’re not really talking about it this year, probably as much as last year,” Busboom Kelly said. “It means less, I think, to this group this year than ever because it’s the way we finish. So we haven’t talked about a lot, but it always feels good that other programs are recognizing us and the work we put in.”
The Huskers lost one of their emotional bellwethers and one of their most vocal athletes with Rebekah Allick moving on to the professional ranks, but Busboom Kelly has seen a collective effort from her four seniors — Laney Choboy, Harper Murray, Reilly and Jackson — to fill the void.
Bergen Reilly speaks during Nebraska volleyball’s local media day. Photo by John S. Peterson.
“Andi and Bergen, I think they both really took jumps with their leadership roles, but Laney and Harper are great leaders too,” Busboom Kelly said. “Our whole senior class is pretty vocal, and they’ve done a good job of letting each other be vocal at appropriate times, which I think is really unique. Whether they’re captains or not, named captain or not, you can’t really tell who’s a captain, which I think is really important, especially when you have such a great senior class. So they’re all leading in different ways and being vocal at different times.”
Busboom Kelly did not share a timetable for naming team captains, though Jackson and Reilly carried the title alongside Allick last season.
Whether or not this is the final season for the four seniors — as they could all choose to return for a fifth season following the implementation of the age-based eligibility model — Busboom Kelly’s message for the group is simple: make the most of this opportunity.
“They’re pretty motivated, but I also think they’ve felt disappointment for three years in a row, so I don’t think the right method to go about that is just hammering home winning or leaving legacy,” Busboom Kelly said. “It’s more leaving and feeling great about what you did here. Jordan Larson’s been helping us a little bit as sort of a consultant, and she talked about you can win or lose at the end of the year, and it might feel terrible both ways. So you want to make sure that how you leave and how we end the season feels great.”
While none of the four seniors have given a definitive answer about their future, Reilly said she’s grateful for the time she’s shared with her classmates in Lincoln.
“We’ve been through it all together, and there’ve definitely been highs, there’ve been lows, but I think it’s great for us,” Reilly said. “We kind of say we we’re like sisters, and as a team, we want to be like a family. But especially us four, we’ve been together so long, so it’s really cool just seeing how we can interact and how we can push each other and hold each other accountable, because we know that we all are coming from a place of love, and I think that’s how you want a team to be. I think having all four years together has really helped us as a class because those relationships can just grow and deepen, and that really just shows on the court too.”
Other Notes:
>> Busboom Kelly shared how the “five-for-five” model has impacted the way she approaches recruiting and roster management thus far.
“It hasn’t impacted us recruiting yet, just based on who we already recruited for the next couple years,” Busboom Kelly said. “It will, I think, more in this next cycle. But for roster management, I think it’s great for this team. We were probably going to redshirt some players, and now we don’t have to, and so you can get them experience. I think it’s awesome, at least for us this year; I might not say that next year or when people transfer and you think a team’s going to be down, and all of a sudden they pick up a grad transfer. So who knows in a couple years?”
The Huskers will carry 16 players into the season, two shy of the limit. However, nearly all of them were among the top-ranked prospects in their recruiting classes, and managing all that talent isn’t easy. That is the blessing and the curse of recruiting at the level Nebraska has for so long.
“I don’t think you’re going to keep everybody happy every day; that’s just reality,” Busboom Kelly said. “But if, as a coach and as a staff, we can be honest and truthful, I think that helps. Players can read right through you if you’re not. So being authentic, and then making sure everybody gets a fair chance in practice, and we talked about that a lot last year is we don’t play a lot of A side, B side, or starters, non-starters, and that’s by design. I want us to go hard in practice. I want to see what players do with each other, and you want to put the core out there that you know can win together with this group. It’s not necessarily about a stat line. It’s like who makes each other better and who’s giving each other confidence every day to be great.”
Busboom Kelly’s willingness to lean on her bench and give her reserves opportunities to see the floor throughout the season is one way in which she keeps her whole team motivated and engaged throughout the course of the long season.
“I think she’s very transparent about that kind of stuff and really talks to us about it before the games, or after games, or even before practices, like what her idea for the game is or stuff like that,” redshirt sophomore Skyler Pierce said. “But it’s really nice to have a coach that’s willing to do that and kind of give us those opportunities, because when you go on for the first time, it is nerve-wracking and you kind of don’t know what to expect your first couple times. But once you get used to it and you’re getting more opportunities, it definitely builds your confidence off the court so then when you get on the court and get those opportunities, you’re kind of more used to it, which is nice to have a coach that does that.”
>> While the coaching staff and most of the roster remained the same, Busboom Kelly did make a key addition to the program by hiring Sean Smith as director of volleyball player performance and development in late June. Busboom Kelly previously worked with Busboom Kelly at Louisville from 2018 to 2023.
“Sean’s so awesome,” Jackson said. “He is a great strength coach, obviously, but he’s also just a really good person. He’s very easy to talk to, and you can just tell from day one that he’s in our corner and he wants the best for us, and he’s going to do what it takes to help us excel both on and off the court, which we all really appreciate … We’ve been with him for a while now, and it’s been awesome. We go really hard at lift, and not that we didn’t before, but it’s just it’s a different program …
“He’s so awesome, and we love working with him. I hope you guys get to talk to him, because he has so much knowledge. He’s cool. He’s really cool to talk to because he’s just very friendly, and he’s just great to talk to. So he’s awesome. We love him.”
>> Reilly shared what the dynamic is like between the players and Busboom Kelly is like now that she has a full season back in Lincoln under her belt.
“I think everything is just a two-way street with her, and I think she had it that way last year too, but everyone’s just a little more comfortable this year,” Reilly said. “It’s always collaboration, there’s always communication. It’s never really just like, ‘Hey, go do this.’ It’s like, ‘Hey, what did you think there? What did you see there? So I think that’s really beneficial for all of us because we can tell her what we’re seeing, she can tell us what she’s seeing, and everyone can kind of learn from each other there. So I think just the comfortability is a big, a big difference.”
