Harper Murray Opens Up About Nebraska Volleyball Journey

Junior outside Harper Murray has taken on the role as a face of college volleyball. With more eyes on her and No. 1 Nebraska volleyball than ever, Murray sat down with Ana Bellinghausen for an exclusive interview on handling the pressure, her growth as a person and the outside hitter’s ultimate goals in her final two seasons.

Q: How has the transition been to Dani Busboom Kelly?

A: I feel like for us, it’s been hard at times. But I think overall the staff and the athletic department did a really good job of making it smooth for us. I think we all knew going into it if this were to ever happen with John, Dani would be that person. I feel like the volleyball world knew that too, so it wasn’t a shock.

But it’s been really smooth for us for the most part. It’s obviously an adjustment, figuring out how Dani likes to run team dynamics and culture, but overall it’s been great.

Q: It’s rare to have a coaching change with zero players transferring out. Why is that the case?

A: I feel like, just, that attests to the culture and the tradition that John built here over the past 24, 25 years. I feel like we all trusted him to replace him with someone like Dani, and we all trusted that he would put someone in his position to make us successful. And we all knew that Dani would be able to do that.

And I also think Dani has an amazing reputation in the volleyball world. She’s done so much at Louisville and we all saw that happen. We’ve played Louisville in the past. We’ve seen what she’s been able to do with their program. So I think it was easy for us to trust that she’d be able to bring us success, too.

Q: How often do you get to stay in touch with Coach Cook then?

A: I texted him last week if he wanted to get dinner, but he’s in Wyoming doing whatever with his horses. So when he gets back into Lincoln, I’m sure we’ll do something. But yeah, he’s caught up in being a grandpa right now. He’s focused on that.

Q: I want to go back to the Dream Team Camp for you and when you first stepped on the campus at Lincoln, what caught your eye? What do you remember about that?

A: I remember coming in eighth grade, and at the time, I don’t remember realizing how big Nebraska volleyball was. Obviously, the past few years volleyball has grown as a whole.

But I remember coming here and I came with Ally [Batenhorst], [Kennedi Orr], Lexi [Rodriguez], Rylee Gray and all of them, and I remember just loving them to death. They kind of took me under their wing and I hung out with them the whole camp.

They were already committed, but I remember taking pictures with them. They were signing balls for other campers that were there, and I remember seeing them and being like, ‘I want to play with them.’ And Jaylen [Reyes] mainly did the recruiting for me. SoI got really close with Jaylen and then later on, formed my relationship with John [Cook].

I remember leaving and crying on the plane back to Michigan because I knew I wanted to go there. And of course, you get really caught up in the recruiting process, and one day you might want to go somewhere, the next day it’s another school, the next day you get another offer and you don’t know.

But I think in the back of my head, I knew the whole time I wanted to be at Nebraska. And I look back now and I’m like, I knew the moment I stepped on that plane to go home.

Q: And you still have that letter that John Cook wrote you after Dream Team Camp, right?

A: It’s in my room. I don’t remember exactly, but the last part of the letter says that red looks good on me, so I remember that.

Q: Is it crazy to think that you’re a junior now?

A: Yeah. So old. I feel so old.

When we practice, some of the freshmen will stay and get extra reps and I’m like, that’s such a freshman thing because I feel like I’m kind of at the age where I might not get any better as a volleyball player.

It’s more about how I can strengthen my mental game and [be a] leader and be more consistent and [be] smarter.

I feel like volleyball skill kind of goes away over time and that’s kind of how it goes. But I feel like I’m at the point where I’m just trying to grow in other aspects.

Q: How much would you say you’ve grown as a person when you think back to even a year ago?

A: A lot. Sometimes it’s hard for me to put into words.

I feel like I think about it multiple times a week. There are little situations where I’m like, I wonder what Harper a year ago would have done or what Harper a year ago would have said. And I think the growth that I’ve been able to make as a person has made myself proud.

But of course, the people around me, I’ve realized how important the people around me are in my success and how important it is to surround yourself with people who make you a better person.

Q: What does the support from Nebraska fans mean? I know after last offseason, you weren’t sure how you’d be received, necessarily, by the fans, but it’s been overwhelming.

A: Yeah, I think in the back of my head, I always knew that Nebraska fans would be supportive.

That’s kind of what our culture is based off of, whether that’s the volleyball program, the team, the coaches or the fans. You can feel the love from everyone; the stadium game is a perfect example of that. It might not seem like that big of a deal, but in the grand scheme of things, no other school can sell out a football stadium.

So I think there were just little things along the way. Even as a freshman, I had to just go back to and remind myself, the fans here support me.

They support our team, they support what we do and they want us to succeed. So I think at times it was hard to remember that. But looking back on it, I feel like I should have not even worried about it because everyone was so loving and welcoming.

Q: Have you surprised yourself in your success at all, or was this a plan the whole time?

A: Well, this was the plan. My plan was always to be a successful volleyball player and be at a school that can win a national championship.

Of course, when you’re younger that’s always a goal, and you don’t realize how big of a deal it is until you’re older and you start accomplishing it. So it’s been something that I’ve still had to think about and recognize that I was. I wanted to do that and I’m doing it now.

So I think sometimes I take it for granted for sure.

Q: You worked with the grief center here in Lincoln to kind of help kids in a similar situation to yours, with the loss of your father at a young age. How important is that for you to be a light to those people, too?

A: I think that was part of my growing process over the past year. I wanted to give back.

I wanted to show another side of me that people don’t necessarily see on social media. SoI wanted to be able to bring it to that platform. And I, of course, have the platform to do it.

So I met with my mom, and I thought it’d be a great idea to go there and give back to them, because I’ve been in their shoes and I know how they feel and I know what they’re going through.

I feel like that makes a really good connection between myself and the community, and that’s exactly what I wanted.

Q: Do you feel like you embrace your platform and kind of being one of those faces of college volleyball now?

A: I feel like I have, and sometimes it can be hard.

You forget the pressure that it comes with. But I think I try to have fun with it and I try to be myself on social media. Sometimes it might not be what people like, but I think that’s kind of the point.

I don’t want to apologize for who I am.

So I think social media is a great way to do that. I’m not going to guard myself and I’ll always try and be myself, and social media is definitely giving me the platform to do that, and I’ve let other people into my life doing that.

Q: I know we’ve seen the negative part of social media too. Every day, athletes get that. But have you tried to find the positives in social media?

A: I feel like after last season, I almost heard the worst of it and it didn’t even affect me anymore.

And of course, that’s not how you want to end up being able to cope with it. But for my situation, that’s how I was able to push through it. I saw the worst, I know the worst, and nothing can faze me. Nothing can hurt me anymore. And of course it’s not ideal, but that’s how that’s how my story went.

And that’s OK, because now I came out stronger and now I’m able to look past it, and now I can help other people.

Q: I talked to John Cook about this, to have just the pressure to win at Nebraska. He’s told me himself, if we don’t win a national championship, sometimes it feels like a failure to fans. How do you take that and how have you changed your perspective around that pressure?

A: I agree, I think when we don’t win a game, if we don’t beat Wisconsin, if we don’t beat Penn State, if we don’t make it to the national semifinal, it’s a letdown to the fans. And that’s kind of a blessing in disguise because of course we want high expectations and we have that for ourselves.

But when we don’t achieve it, we know we’re letting a lot of people down within ourselves, too. So I think it comes with a lot of pressure.

But at the same time, we have to flip it and we have to figure out a way to look at it in a good light and be grateful that we have so many people that want us to succeed and believe in us.

So I think over time, every year, it’s hard to flip that switch, especially when you’re in the thick of it in the middle of Big Ten season. But I feel like we’ve always been able to get through it.

Q: Do you think back to your freshman season and you’re like, how did we get to the national championship game with all those freshmen?

A: Yeah, I think about it all the time. I completely feel like I completely blacked out my freshman year.

I barely remember the stadium game. I remember warming up. I remember after the fireworks and then during the season, I feel like there’s only a few amount of games that I really remember, which is weird.

I don’t know why, but it is crazy to me that we made it that far, and almost our whole starting lineup was freshmen.

But after the season, of course, I think it really gave us a lot of confidence going into last season because we made it to the national championship and we were returning a whole lineup that wasn’t changing.

So I think it gave us a lot of confidence for sure. But I also do think it was kind of bizarre.

Q: How have those experiences, losing in a national championship and losing in a semifinal, fueled you and this team for these upcoming seasons?

A: Of course you have regrets. When you lose a game, you always have regrets, and you’re always going to look back and think about what you could have done differently.

But I think the main thing that I’ve taken out of it was that it’s not all about the volleyball. Last season, I had to put so much more work into my relationships with my teammates and the people around me than anything else.

If we won or we lost, I didn’t care, but I wanted to make sure that me and my teammates had respect for each other and we cared about where we were going to go.

So I think the main takeaway that I’ve taken since I’ve been in Nebraska is how important the relationships are with your teammates and the people around you, because at the end of the day, there’s more to life than volleyball, and that’s something that’s taken a long time for me to realize.

But I’m at that point now, volleyball is supposed to be fun, and that gets overlooked a lot of the time.

Q: How badly do you want to win a national championship for Nebraska?

A: That’s always been a goal.

Bergen [Reilly], Laney [Choboy] and Andi [Jackson] and I have always told each other coming into college that minimum we were going to win two. Minimum.

And we told John that too. So maybe we need to redo this and tell Dani our deal. But we’ve always told each other that, so it’s always been a goal of ours.

Q: Would you say it’s one of the deeper teams you’ve been a part of in terms of the competition you guys have in the gym?

A: Yeah, Dani likes a big team. So we have 17 girls. There are so many people.

We play a lot of six–on–six and it gets really competitive. But that’s the standard in our gym. We like playing six–on–six, we like going at each other, we like competing, so it’s been fun.

But I think there are a lot of people in a lot of different positions that could easily all step up when the time is needed, so it’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be an interesting lineup for sure, just because none of us know how it’s going to go with so many girls.

Everyone’s working their butt off. Everyone. Everyone wants to be on the court, and that’s exactly what you want out of a team. So it’s competitive, but it’s been really fun for us.

Q: When this is all over at Nebraska for you these next two years, how do you want to be remembered as a Cornhusker?

A: I think I want to be remembered simply as someone who is just a good teammate. And of course, each person has their “why”.

It’s something we all talk about. We were actually just sharing all of our whys the past few weeks, and mine was for my teammates.

I want to be someone who does it for the person next to me. And last year I wrote Lexi [Rodriguez’s] number on my finger and I’m still going to continue that.

So I think I want to just be remembered as someone who is a good teammate and is loyal to the people around them, because I like to think I’m a pretty honest person, and I really cherish my relationships that I’ve made here.

And I want people to know that there’s more to volleyball and there’s more to life, and there’s more to relationships than anyone knows, so you have to take advantage of that.