The overriding theme from Big Ten Volleyball Media Day in Chicago was one of gratitude for the platform the conference gives to the sport. Nebraska volleyball has been at the forefront of driving up volleyball interest nationwide, and Dani Busboom Kelly, Bergen Reilly and Andi Jackson took their turn in front of the cameras on Monday to continue shining a spotlight on their sport.
Along that same line, the tagline for Nebraska volleyball this season is “welcome to the show,” and it’s appropriate for a team that is about to embark on a nationwide tour in nonconference play.
The Huskers will play in an NFL stadium in Texas, a professional hockey arena in Las Vegas and an MLB park in Chicago among other nonconference stops. No matter where they play, however, the Huskers strive to approach every match in the same way.
“We talk about it before every game, we really want to give people a show,” Jackson said on the Big Ten Network. “It might be a game where we just played the night before and we’re feeling really tired, but we know that people are traveling from all around the world now to come see us. We don’t care if we’re tired, we’re going to give them a show and we’re going to do what it takes to give back to the community and give back to our supporters.”
That’s the mindset the Huskers will carry into the 2026 season following a 33-1 2025 campaign that saw them sweep through the Big Ten for a third-consecutive title before falling to eventual national champion Texas A&M in the Regional Finals. They return most of their starters and a deep bench and were the unanimous pick among Big Ten coaches to win the league again.
“Obviously Nebraska is the kingpin,” Purdue coach Dave Shondell said. “Not only are they very talented, but they’re very angry based on last year’s final match of the season for them. We all know what they’re capable of doing, what kind of talent they’ve got … I think Nebraska has a target on their back. I’m not sure it’s going to be very easy to hit either.”
That target may weigh heavily on the Huskers’ backs, but they’re not shying away from the pressure. A national title is the one thing missing from this senior class’s resume, but they can’t change that until December. In the meantime, winning a fourth Big Ten title is one of the biggest motivators for the four seniors and their teammates.
“The pressure is definitely there, but I think we’ve earned the right to be in that position, and we’ve worked really hard these last three seasons,” Jackson said. “We know what it takes to win a Big Ten Championship. It’s not easy. It’s a really tough volleyball conference and every game is going to be a dogfight. Going into this season, we know what it takes and we’re not going to back down. We know that we have a target on our back, and a lot of people want to beat Nebraska. That’s very valid. We’ve won the last three. So we are not going to get complacent. We know that it’s not going to come easy, but it’s definitely our goal to go four-for-four.”
Busboom Kelly welcomes that pressure. She wants her team to embrace it, and she incorporates it into their daily routine, but she also takes steps to make sure it doesn’t overwhelm her players.
“It’s certainly a driving force in the way we play and practice and go about everything that we do on a daily basis, because you take a day off or reps off, it’s eventually going to catch you, and when something catches us at Nebraska, everybody notices, and we have to be prepared for that,” Busboom Kelly said. “We have to continue to work to combat getting complacent and letting that pressure hurt us. But for me personally, I really want to model what I want my players to feel and how I want them to act, and so it’s just making sure that we continue to enjoy the journey.
“We love volleyball. I’ve talked about to a lot of recruits, I want players that love the game. So that doesn’t matter if you’re playing in front of zero people or 92,000 — I want us to play with the same type of joy, and I want to come into the gym every day, practice or competition, in a consistent manner where they can feel that.”
Maintaining that love for the game is at the core of how Busboom Kelly structures her practices, and that effort resonates with her players.
“I think Dani also does a really good job of making practices fun; I said it last year when we first started working with her,” Jackson said. “I feel like there’s a fine line between having fun and not being productive, but I feel like at every single practice we can really be ourselves and have fun and laugh and make jokes as a team and even with the coaches. But we get so much done in that timeframe that it doesn’t even really feel like work sometimes. You’re dripping in sweat and you worked hard but you had so much fun.”
Busboom Kelly said one of the biggest differences heading into year two as Nebraska’s head coach compared to year one is the comfortability and familiarity between players and coach. That has allowed Busboom Kelly to fully embrace coaching the way that she wants to, which is another way in which she combats burnout and the fatigue of a long season.
“One of my biggest pillars of my coaching style is being collaborative,” Busboom Kelly said. “I want input from my staff and players. I take that to heart, and I think our players, they trust me enough, especially now going into year two, to say how they really feel and think. Then typically we can come to some sort of agreement from my experience as a coach what works best or what worked best in the past versus what they need and what they feel like they need. So I think collaboration is very, very key when it comes to a long season, and the season’s longer than it’s ever been this year, but I think that’s a good thing.”
Adding to the comfortability this preseason is a return to the Devaney Center after spending the spring practicing off campus during Devaney Center renovations.
“It still feels like home,” Reilly said. “I feel like I have a new appreciation for it after being in a different venue for the last eight months. And we were very lucky with where we were at. But I feel like it’s just a new appreciation, and it was already the best venue in the world, and I think it’s just even better now. But in general, I feel like it looks pretty similar. It’s very tall; they took out all the standing rooms. It’s just like, ‘wow, that’s a lot of seats.’ But it’s still feels like home.”
The renovations will push the capacity inside John Cook Arena north of 10,000, transform the bench seating into seats with chairbacks and cupholders and add new luxury sections for fans.
“It’s great,” Busboom Kelly said. “I do think the whole reseat, including the students, is eventually going to benefit everybody, and it’s going to make the atmosphere even better. I think it’s great that maybe different people get to come to our matches, especially students that you don’t have to buy the whole season. And I think it’s awesome that we can go out on a limb and do that because we know it’s still going to sell out even if it’s not the same people every single game.”
The consolidation of the student sections from the four corners to one centralized location behind one of the benches is a big hit with the players as well.
“I think it’s going to be so fun,” Reilly said. “I think it will make the atmosphere so much better, just having them all together. They can build off each other. They get to get in [the other team’s] heads in the third and fourth set, and fifth. I just think it will be so much fun having all of them right there … I feel like they would try and do cheers and chants and it’s hard to coordinate when you’re on the four different sides of the court. So it will be really fun to have them just all right in one spot.”
Nebraska led the country in both offense and defense last season, hitting a program record .351 and holding opponents to .129. To raise the bar even higher, the offseason focus has been on another phase of the game.
“I would say as a team one of the main things that we’re talking about right now is serving and being the best serving team in the country,” Reilly said. “I think we’re usually pretty good at offense, usually pretty good at defense, but how can we find a way to impact the other team with our serves and maybe just get a couple of easy points off of some aces? So I think that’s been a really big focus just in practice here at the beginning.”
With the age-based eligibility model taking effect in NCAA sports, Reilly, Jackson, Harper Murray and Laney Choboy each have the option to return for a fifth season in 2027. Busboom Kelly called it an “ongoing conversation” with her seniors as they and the program consider every factor surrounding that decision. For now, they’re focused on making the most of this season and leaving whatever comes next for the future.
“I think we just want to be really confident in no matter how the season ends, knowing that we left it all out there, and we really want to leave the season with no regrets,” Jackson said. “That’s not to say we have in the past, but we just want to know that we didn’t miss the mark on anything. We were intentional with everything that we did, whether that was in school, in lift, on the court, in practice. We just want to know that we did everything that was in our control and whatever happens out of our control is out of our control.
“So for the team, I would say that it’s just being really confident in who we are and how hard we worked and really trusting our training.”
