Over the years, whenever John Cook and Dani Busboom Kelly happened to be recruiting in the same place, they made it a habit to get dinner together.
A few years ago, during one such meal, Busboom Kelly shared that she had negotiated a no-buyout clause for Nebraska into her Louisville contract. Cook took that as an indication of her desire to return to her alma mater, setting the stage for Wednesday’s events.
“She planted that seed and, and I knew that was her dream,” Cook said on Thursday. “I called her after Christmas, I don’t remember when, but I just said, ‘Dani, this is how I’m feeling. What are you thinking?’ And so we just started talking a little bit about it. And of course, it’s Troy [Dannen]’s decision, and he had never really met Dani, so all I did was say, ‘I think this is who should be the next coach here.’ I think if you asked Troy, I think Dani did a hell of a job convincing him of that.”
Busboom Kelly was back in Nebraska over the weekend to watch the LOVB match between Omaha and Madison, and Dannen took advantage of the coincidence to meet with Busboom Kelly for the first time to “get his ducks in a row” after Cook met with him to discuss potential retirement plans. He said he and athletic director/senior woman administrator Kristen Brown met with Busboom Kelly for three hours, and then talked with Cook and his protégé for another hour and a half.
“When she left and I kind of looked at Kristen and just raised my eyebrows, and said she’s everything I hoped and thought she’d be, and then some … She is intense, and I love her … She’s a winner. She’s focused,” Dannen said
Dannen kept the meeting under wraps — even the rest of the coaching staff was in the dark. On Monday, Cook informed Dannen that he was ready to retire immediately, and the AD got to work locking up Busboom Kelly, coordinating the announcements and taking care of everything else that needed to be done — all without letting the news leak out. Cook compared Dannen to the plate spinners he’s seen during his trips to China.
“I knew the state of Nebraska loves her, and you don’t hire somebody because of that, but we joke about this being a no-brainer,” Dannen said. “If Dani hadn’t been in Nebraska, if she hadn’t played at Nebraska, and if she wasn’t an assistant coach at Nebraska, she was the absolute right person to be the head coach of Nebraska, and then you add all those other things, and I couldn’t be more excited.”
Cook listed Louisville beating Texas in the 2019 NCAA Tournament, making the national championship match multiple times and reaching the final four as the host school while handling all the pressure that comes with it as Busboom Kelly’s major accomplishments at Louisville that proved she was ready to succeed him.
“She’s done one of the greatest turnarounds in the history of college volleyball,” Cook said. “Eight years, she’s been to three Final Fours, played for two national championships at a program that was a mess. … When she said she wanted to go into coaching, I said, ‘Dani, you’ve got to go away from here. And she went to some tough programs, Louisville, Tennessee … and then she came back here to coach, and we won another national championship, and then she’s gone on to Louisville. She bleeds Husker.”
Busboom Kelly taking Cook’s advice rather than staying in Lincoln for her whole Lincoln career was another selling point for Dannen.
“What she did was bet on herself, went out and took a head coaching job that had great potential, but hadn’t necessarily achieved at that highest of levels, and then had the success,” Dannen said. “Somebody who’s willing to bet on themselves, proven themselves, and then puts themselves in a position to come back with not just the experiences from Nebraska, but the experiences from everywhere else.”
While Busboom Kelly’s accomplishments at Louisville proved to Cook that she was ready for the Nebraska job, he knew almost two decades earlier that she was destined to be a coach.
During his farewell message, Cook recalled watching the Cortland, Nebraska, native at the state basketball tournament with Freeman High School. He said she was the first female player he’d seen shoot a fadeaway jump shot, and his thought was “Wow, this is an athlete.”
Cook recruited her as a setter, and she played three seasons at that position in a 6-2 system. During her junior season, the Huskers fell to Washington in three sets in the national championship match, finishing 33-2.
“I knew we had to make a change and go back to a 5-1,” Cook said. “So I called her in in January, and I brought her in the office, and I said, ‘Dani, we’re going to move you to libero.’”
Cook said her response was two words starting with the letters F and Y before she walked out of the office. He didn’t see her for three days.
“I finally called her mom on the third day,” Cook said. “I said, ‘Bonnie, I had a bad meeting with Dani. She wasn’t happy. I don’t know where she is, I haven’t seen her. Nobody’s talked to her.’ She goes, ‘She’ll be in your office later today.’ I’m thinking she’s coming in to quit, and there’s no portal back then, so you didn’t worry too much about transferring. And she comes in with a letter, and this letter talked about she was going to do everything possible to help that team. Whatever role that she was asked to do, she would do it.
“And that team elected her captain. The one year she played libero, she ended up playing great, we won the national championship and she was a great leader, and that’s when I knew she would be a great coach.”
Busboom Kelly has paid her dues both as a player and as a coach with assistant stints at Tennessee, Louisville and Nebraska before taking over her own program in Louisville. She understands what it takes. She knows what has made Nebraska so successful over the years, but Cook also wants her to steer the ship her way.
“I just think, being in this program, she knows what we do here,” Cook said. “She’s as familiar as anybody, but she has to put her own touch on it, which she will. She’s going to dress a lot better than I did. She is going to have more fun with our players, I think, than — well, of course, I got into Tiktok. I’ve watched her and talking coaching over the years with her, she has a way about her with her players — they love her, they have fun, they do fun things. I just she’s going to put her mark on it, but it’s still going to be Nebraska volleyball.”
A reporter asked Cook the one piece of advice he’ll give Busboom Kelly that he’s learned from his 25 years in Lincoln. He had to think about it for a moment before giving his answer.
“I’m going to tell her she’s got to trust herself,” Cook said. “She’s ready, she knows what she needs to do. Just trust herself, trust her instincts, and surround herself with some great people. That’s what I tried to do here, I tried to surround myself with people who could help me from all different walks of life. Coach [Tom] Osborne, when he was here, was unbelievable, and there have been other people in the community, in the state that I’ve surrounded myself with to help me be the best I could be and challenge me.”
Nebraska will re-introduce Busboom Kelly on Feb. 6 in a 2 p.m. ceremony open to the public at the Devaney Center.
