Nebraska volleyball director of operations Lindsay “Wisch” Peterson called the players in to meet at the Devaney Center on Jan. 29 under the pretext of a revenue sharing discussion. When the Huskers arrived, they instead received life-changing news: John Cook was retiring.
“We all thought we were going to get a bump,” Rebekah Allick said. “It’s the year of hope. Andi [Jackson] and I have this joke. It’s the year of hope, good things are happening. I’m a Catholic, Jubilee Year, so I’m excited, man, and then an atom bomb …. We thought it was just going to be a business type of meeting, most likely a breakdown of the schedule. Sometimes those types of changes happen, so it’s easier to have everyone present. Wisch apologized about lying.”
During the same meeting, Cook and athletic director Troy Dannen told the players Nebraska had already found their next head coach: Dani Busboom Kelly. Setter Bergen Reilly described the meeting as a “roller coaster of emotions.”
“We found out within a span of two minutes that coach was leaving and Dani was coming, and so it was a lot of sadness that Coach was leaving, but also just appreciation for what he has done, for our time with him,” Reilly said. “And then 30 seconds later, we found out we have Dani. I think we all knew that that was just the perfect fit, and so we were super excited right off the bat. But it was tough. It was feeling a roller coaster of emotions in a short period of time. But now that we’re here and we have Dani here, I think it’s just a lot of joy and excitement for the future.”
After hearing the news, the players retreated to their locker room to discuss things among themselves. Five minutes later, they emerged and told Cook and Dannen they were committed to supporting Busboom Kelly. The transfer portal opens for 30 days following a coaching change, but Nebraska hasn’t lost a single player to this point.
“We talked to him for a little bit, Troy talked, and then we all just collectively agreed, let’s just go take five minutes, and when we went into our locker room, we just talked about this is a roller coaster of emotions, but we’re going to get through this together and how do we support Dani in the way that she needs to be supported?” Jackson said. “It’s going to be all 13 of us and our support staff and Dani all together, and so we just wanted to really make sure that we were all on the same page, and we were going to do what it took to support Dani and support each other during this big shift.”
Cook said sharing the news would be especially difficult for one player. He called Harper Murray in before the rest of the team to tell her individually and give her time to process. The two have forged a deeper connection over the past year as Cook helped Murray navigate through her legal troubles and emotional turmoil following the end of her freshman season.
Murray said at first, she was mad at Cook for calling her in during her day off, but her emotions shifted dramatically after she arrived.
“I sat in his office and I just I had never seen the look on his face,” Murray said. “I thought something bad had happened, and he had to be the one to tell me. Obviously, he ended up telling me that he was retiring, and I just burst out in tears. He’s done a lot for me, and I honestly was in shock, but I think I process things pretty fast and then I start to go into denial a little bit. I called my mom after I met with him, and I just sat up in his office area for an hour until the team got to the gym and we had to go meet with them. So I had a little bit of time to process.”
Murray said it was really hard for her at first, and she was upset for the first couple days after he shared the news. However, the trust she developed with Cook allowed her to move forward with confidence.
“I trust Coach with Dani, and I believe that he’s going to put us in the best position possible to win, even if he’s not here,” Murray said. “I think that makes us all feel a little bit better, that we trust him and we know that he’s not just going to hand us off to somebody he doesn’t believe is going to set us up to be successful. We talked in that meeting about how we’re going to support Dani in the way that she needs, and we also talked about how we’re going to respect her and respect Coach’s decision and respect Dani because she’s earned that respect the past eight years at Louisville. So we’re excited for Dani, obviously, but it’s just been a whirlwind of emotions. We’re excited, and it’s awesome that we have Dani here.”
Allick said she took the news pretty hard as well, bursting into tears multiple times before making it home that night. As a native Nebraskan, she appreciated how much Cook embraced the state and community. She respects his commitment to tradition and has incorporated many of his mantras into her daily life and prayers. She acknowledged change is hard, but her fear quickly changed to relief. When Busboom Kelly called the players for their initial conversations, she told her new coach “I’m happy it’s you” — a feeling her teammates share.
“She’s from here, she played here, she knows what it takes, and that’s something that, unless you’ve played at Nebraska, you don’t really know it,” Reilly said. “So she can coach with that in the back of her mind. And obviously, she took Louisville from where it was however many years ago to national championships in a pretty short period of time, and so she has proven herself as a coach and just obviously, as a player, as an athlete.
“She’s just a Nebraskan, and you can tell. I’m not a Nebraskan, but I can kind of pick them out, and you can tell that she’s just a Nebraskan at heart. She even cared about Nebraska while she was at other places, and that just shows a lot about how she’s going to coach us and how she’s going to care for us.”
Busboom Kelly didn’t get much time to spend with the players prior to her introductory press conference outside of video calls and a brief in-person meeting the day after the announcement, but her message to the team was simple.
“The values are going to stay the same, but there are going to be some different things that we do,” Busboom Kelly said. “I’m excited to give them a little bit of change, while also keeping so many things the same, because there are so many amazing things that have worked for so long, but to put a little spin on it will be a lot of fun.”
For two and a half decades, Cook has been a guiding light for the Nebraska volleyball team, striving to get the most out of his players. Though he’ll still be around the program in 2025, he’ll be providing motivation in a different way as Busboom Kelly takes the helm.
“Obviously, a lot of us wanted to win a national championship with Coach, but I think the way that we can reframe that in our head is now we can win one for him,” Murray said. “I think that’s the best way to approach this year. We can win one for Coach, we can win one for Dani, we can win one for all the little girls that look up to us in Nebraska and around the country. I think that’s how we need to reframe it for this year …
“Now we have the opportunity to win a national championship with Dani and carry on Coach’s legacy.”
