Joined ESPN The Magazine after graduating from Penn State University.
Covers college football and college basketball.
DANI BUSBOOM KELLY started wearing blazers for her biggest volleyball matches long before she took over as coach of the best program in the country.
Back in 2019, years prior to her return home to Nebraska, Busboom Kelly, in her third year as Louisville head coach, laid out an array of Cardinal red jackets for her mother’s input.
Bonnie Busboom ticked off her approval until she disapproved. I don’t know what I think about that one.
She surveyed the red sequin blazer in front of her. It struck her as audacious, brash. Her daughter’s team at that time was fine but unremarkable. Certainly not accustomed to splashy wins or deep tournament runs. Should the coach be peacocking around in sequins?
I like it. But I don’t know about wearing it.
Busboom Kelly seemed on board with her mother’s logic. She told her team she wouldn’t break it out for a big match because she couldn’t tolerate losing in sequins. Until No. 2-seeded Texas came along in the third round of the NCAA tournament.
“Then she walked out with that red sequin blazer on,” Bonnie says. “And I just thought, ‘Dani Busboom, what are you doing?'”
Here’s what: She was putting Louisville — and her own head coaching bona fides — on the map.
The Longhorns were riding a 13-year run of reaching the regional finals; the Cardinals had never made the Elite Eight. Louisville put an end to both streaks that day, winning in five sets, and Bonnie tried to imagine what must’ve gone through Texas coach Jerritt Elliott’s head when he caught sight of that blazer. “He probably thought, ‘You little s—,'” she says.
That blazer meant something, is Bonnie’s point. The blazer was the point.
“It said, ‘I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of nothin’.'”
HERE ARE SOME things that Dani Busboom Kelly, by all rights, could be afraid of:
Taking over for a living legend: John Cook spent 25 years coaching volleyball in Lincoln, Nebraska, and much of that quarter century winning at historic rates — including four national championships — by the time he called it a career in January.
Taking over for a living legend at Nebraska: This volleyball program steeps itself in mystique and glory, and the relentless churn of expectations that come with both.
Taking over for a living legend at Nebraska in Nebraska: Busboom Kelly was born and raised in this place, just like her parents and their parents before them. And so on and so on. This was not a job relocation. This was a homecoming.
Dani Busboom Kelly, what are you doing?
IT’S THE EARLY days of November, and Busboom Kelly sits in her still-pretty-new office in the Devaney Center, contemplating why, exactly, these realities of hers are unique. Complex, even. But not, to her, all that daunting.
Over her right shoulder, a framed picture shows her in that sequin blazer, fist-pumping on the sideline in her Louisville days. Over her left shoulder, floor-to-ceiling windows overlook Nebraska’s home court. John Baylor, who has called play-by-play for Nebraska volleyball for three decades, calls that court the “Greatest Show on Taraflex,” and these days, it’s housed in the recently-christened John Cook Arena.
Busboom Kelly coaches under the bright lights of Cook’s name, which glow fluorescent above the Jumbotron, and a few hundred feet from his bronze likeness, thanks to the statue that was dedicated outside the arena in September. Sometimes she finds herself face-to-face with the man himself. Cook is now a Big Ten Network analyst, and he occasionally winds up interviewing his former — and Busboom Kelly’s current — players.
She works in his literal shadow. But she does not feel overshadowed.
For starters, if Cook is sacred here, then she is one of his most faithful acolytes.
“I lived this place firsthand my whole life,” she says. “I understand what he was doing every single day for our sport, for Nebraska. So it’s like, ‘Yeah, he deserves it.'”
Helping Busboom Kelly’s cause, of course, is that she has spent her first year back in Lincoln under a kind of reverse Murphy’s Law, where everything that can go right has gone ridiculously right. Her team is undefeated and sits unanimously ranked at No. 1; the Huskers didn’t drop a set for two months beginning in mid-September, a 48-set win streak that ended only a few weeks ago against UCLA. They’ve swept their way through the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament. Now they’ll take on Kansas in the Sweet Sixteen on Friday and, just maybe, face off against her old team, Louisville, in the Elite Eight.
But even short of the near-perfection Busboom Kelly has helped steer in Nebraska — and all the goodwill that engenders — she has a hard time seeing herself being cowed by Cook.
“I know him,” she says. “I’ve worked with him, and talked with him. For years.”
It’s awfully hard to feel intimidated by someone, or the shadow of someone, you know like that. Especially someone you once told to shove off.
The well-tread story goes like this: Ahead of Busboom Kelly’s senior season at Nebraska, Cook — in his sixth year as head coach — asked her to switch positions. The Huskers were fresh off losing a national title in 2005, were also losing their defensive specialist at libero, and had a young, talented setter named Rachel Holloway waiting in the wings. Holloway had been a starting setter and captain for the USA Youth National Team before committing to Nebraska; it made sense to Cook, then, for Busboom Kelly, a three-year starter at setter, to transition to the open spot. Busboom Kelly had zero warmth for the idea.
“Dani got pretty heated in the meeting and left, and I didn’t see her for three days,” Cook says. “She basically flipped me off and left my office. I thought she was gonna quit.”
Bonnie Busboom swears Cook is revising a little history here. He didn’t see Busboom Kelly for three days because it was winter break, she points out. He probably didn’t see anyone for three days. But she does offer, with a smile, that the two had a propensity for butting heads. Cook pushed Busboom Kelly, and she’d push him right back. She was a bit rebellious; he didn’t appreciate freelancing one little bit. The combination could be combustible.
“The whole thing was pride,” Bonnie says. “It was just getting beat out. Because, truthfully, Dani Busboom had never been beat out in anything.”
Busboom Kelly internalized the move to libero as a slight, which morphed into a dare. She decided she would be an elite libero — a position she had never played — and in about six months, she was. The Huskers won the NCAA championship in 2006 with Busboom Kelly anchoring their defense.
After graduation, she found a 9-to-5 office job in insurance didn’t quite take, so she decided she would be an elite volleyball coach. Busboom Kelly was so single-minded in her pursuit that she failed to mention to Lane Kelly — her husband now and longtime boyfriend then — that she had applied for an assistant coaching job at Tennessee, at least until she made the final cut. She went to Knoxville to interview and about a week later, when Lane came home from work, she told him she got the job and was heading south. “You can come if you want,” she said.
They went, and she found herself taping lines on the court and ushering feral cats out of the practice arena the team shared with ROTC. It was far from glamorous, even further from the trappings of Nebraska, but she knew she could do this and be good at it. Anywhere.
“It was about doing something on my own,” she says. “Without the Nebraska name, without that behind me.”
Assistant at Tennessee begat assistant at Louisville begat assistant at Nebraska begat head coach at Louisville, which turned into an eight-year clinic on how to author a program’s glow-up. She won 82% of her games in those eight years, nearly 90% in the last four. “When we came here in 2021 at Louisville and swept Nebraska, that wasn’t when I felt like, ‘Oh, I should be the next head coach at Nebraska’,” she says. “But it did create a bit of confidence. Like, ‘I can do this at a high level.'”
Cook watched all this unfold from afar, though never all that far. He hired Busboom Kelly as an assistant, then tried to hire her as associate head coach, once she departed for her second stint in Louisville. But long before he coached with her, then against her, Cook caught glimpses of the coach Busboom Kelly would become.
The first time Cook visited her in high school, on the farm where she grew up, 25 miles south of Lincoln, Busboom Kelly showed him the motivational quotes she had scribbled in marker along her bedroom’s cinderblock walls. “She was having big dreams, even back then,” Cook says. “She didn’t know it at the time, but she was already starting to get ready to coach.”
Their clash over shifting to libero? “That was part of her forming into what it means to be a coach,” he says. “Understanding sometimes you have to make tough decisions.”
Cook had long seen Busboom Kelly as a coach. Then he saw her as the only coach he wanted to take over Nebraska.
By last winter, Louisville had been pushing for Busboom Kelly to sign a new contract with a prohibitive buyout clause. (The contract she had in place had a buyout, but carved out an exception for one school: Nebraska.) He knew that she was expecting her second child, that the roots she had planted in Louisville were growing deeper. Cook had already begun pondering retirement and then, suddenly and urgently, the timing felt right for him. In part because of her.
Busboom Kelly was back in Nebraska for a professional volleyball tournament in January, and Cook facilitated a meeting between her and Nebraska’s athletic director, Troy Dannen. Within an hour of that meet-up, Dannen told Cook what Cook already knew: “She’s the one.”
THE DRILL, AS far as Rebekah Allick can tell, makes no sense.
Nebraska’s senior middle blocker doesn’t know where to go during a November practice, her teammates don’t either. A Huskers’ assistant coach resorts to yelling out the names of players and where they should be, but confusion abounds. Busboom Kelly, standing next to Allick, attempts to clarify.
Busboom Kelly: “Offense, you switch every five. Defense, every 10.”
Allick: “Wait a minute. You just told me the opposite.”
Busboom Kelly, embracing the absurdity of the moment, rests her head on Allick’s shoulder, and laughs. “Just give me a minute,” she says.
Dani Busboom Kelly, what are you doing?
It’s a minor bout of turbulence during an otherwise idyllic year in Nebraska volleyball. But with her coach’s head on her shoulder, Allick thinks to herself: “Dani’s human.”
“It’s an appreciation honestly,” she says. “Like, ‘Thank you for showing your humanness.’ I just feel like we can all breathe.”
The volleyball team has been so good for so long, so unyielding in its dominance, that it commands more than attention. It compels worship.
A sampling: Nebraska’s home sell-out streak dates to 2001, which makes it the longest streak in NCAA women’s sports history. This year, the Huskers lead the NCAA in average attendance (8,575); the second-highest average attendance in the nation belongs to … Nebraska, when it plays outside of Lincoln (8,151). Two years ago, they traded Devaney for Memorial Stadium for one night, and 92,003 people — a world record for a women’s sporting event — filled the football stadium for a volleyball match. In the 2022 fiscal year, there were 522 women’s athletics programs in the ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12, but according to the Lincoln Journal Star, only one that turned a profit: Nebraska volleyball.
The devotion to the program has been rewarded: five national championships; the most wins in NCAA Division I history; the only program to be ranked in every Top 25 American Volleyball Coaches Association rankings since the weekly poll’s introduction in 1982.
Nebraska volleyball is inevitable, a forever kind of greatness. Except Nebraskans have heard that story before.
“Ultimately, what I did not want to have happen to Nebraska volleyball,” Cook says, “is what happened to Nebraska football.”
The Huskers once had a football team with that forever kind of greatness. Then forever ended. As kind as this century has been to Nebraska volleyball, it has dispensed cruelty to Nebraska football, introducing something worse than mediocrity: irrelevance.
Busboom Kelly carries the weight of shepherding Nebraska away from that scourge of ordinariness. And she’s doing it in ways that feel strange, unorthodox. With lightness.
By the end of her time in Louisville, the Cardinals were dominating at a Huskers-like pace, but winning — at least at historic clips — was still a novelty, each victory merited a celebration. Here, at Nebraska, “I go into the locker room and it’s like” — her voice goes limp, her arms droop in a lifeless wave — “‘yay, we won.’ I want to make sure we’re still enjoying the journey.”
Lane, who played football at Nebraska, once attended a Southern Cal practice while visiting an old teammate back in the Pete Carroll days. Snoop Dogg was standing on the sideline, music blared — it felt like a party. It felt light. When Lane thinks of Dani Busboom Kelly the coach, he thinks of that day with the Trojans. Nebraska’s practices have their own flavor, but it’s light there too. Busboom Kelly has been known to show up with under-eye masks still on, the little half-moons stuck firmly in place.
“I would say playing for her feels very … free,” says Harper Murray, Nebraska’s star outside hitter.
Murray didn’t take to Busboom Kelly right away, which she says had everything to do with her attachment to Cook. The two were so connected that before Cook delivered the news of his retirement to the team in January, he called Murray into his office to tell her first. Murray couldn’t wrap her head around pouring herself into a new person the way she had with Cook. But glimpses of who Busboom Kelly was — and the big and paradigm-shifting ways she was different from Cook — chipped away at Murray’s resistance.
Cook was a CEO; at times he could be rigid and unrelenting. Though Busboom Kelly is Cook’s disciple, she is not his mirror image. She doesn’t view this enterprise with grave severity and self-seriousness, and that frees her to be joyful in the process, to allow laughter to creep into practice, even when mistakes are made. She’s open to taking risks, say, when she flouts conventional wisdom with a slew of player substitutions in any match, at any point. She can be emotionally vulnerable, like when she gave the Huskers the starting lineup for the first time and confessed that it was hard, that she wished she could put everyone out there. Murray remembers thinking then that she had only seen Cook cry once, at his retirement, and it was a strange but wonderful thing to be let in this way now.
That doesn’t mean Busboom Kelly doesn’t press them sometimes, or royally annoy them at other times, or doesn’t bring her own specific brand of urgency.
The daylight between those two demands has left her players unburdened. Because as much as they extol the privileges of playing this sport in this place, there’s a cost to it too.
“I want our team to feel the weight of the team,” Busboom Kelly says. “I don’t want our team to feel the weight of the state.”
BONNIE BUSBOOM PICKED up a phone call from her daughter in January.
“I’m doing it,” she said. “We’re coming home.”
News of Nebraska’s coaching earthquake — Cook’s surprise retirement; Busboom Kelly’s insta-hiring — had yet to go public, so Bonnie was sworn to secrecy. She called only her husband, Gene, who was 15 miles away working the family farm.
“Dani’s coming home,” she told him. (Gene, in a bit of Midwestern flair, responded: “Oh. Great.”)
A few days later, with the news set to break, Bonnie told a close circle of family and friends. She phoned Busboom Kelly’s childhood friend, Jenny Lempka. “She’s coming home.” She called another lifelong friend, Laura Francke. “She’s coming home.”
By the time the Huskers officially introduced Busboom Kelly as their new coach — only its fourth in program history — at a press conference in the first week of February, a healthy share of Nebraskans had worked themselves into a lather. That day, she was welcomed back to Lincoln in front of university brass and media and what, Nebraskans swear, must’ve been the whole of Gage County, where Busboom Kelly was born and raised.
The university helped her old K-12 school, Freeman, charter a pair of buses to the event; the school had to charter one more to meet demand. Andrew Havelka, the superintendent, made the trip and estimates the Freeman section was 500 strong — though he heard rumors of as many as 600 or 700. (A figure, it’s worth noting, that exceeds the 604-person population of Adams, Nebraska, the town that’s home to Freeman.)
The joke went that it would be a good day to rob the Adams Bank, though that would’ve been a real shame for Lempka, whose family has owned the bank that anchors Main Street in Adams for five generations. That’s how it works here. Everyone knows everyone else. Everyone knows Dani Busboom Kelly, or at least feels like they do.
“There’s not very many acquaintances,” she says. “It’s more like you kinda consider everybody family.”
Lempka left Adams for a stretch and joked that by the time she moved back, she could tell years had passed because she knew who drove which cars, and they were all driving new ones. Now she lives two doors down from Bonnie and Gene, who traded their house on the family farm in nearby Cortland, where Busboom Kelly grew up, for “city life” in Adams about a year ago. Havelka lives about five houses away. Gene used to coach softball at Freeman; Busboom Kelly’s sister-in-law teaches there now. Sheila Day oversees the Cortland Museum, stationed in a 142-year-old white clapboard house, and she’s family too. Day’s sister is married to Busboom Kelly’s uncle.
Day takes care to note the Busbooms’ long footprint in this town, which is preserved in the museum. There’s the museum’s new Busboom Kelly display, complete with a biography and photos of her Nebraska athletics lineage. Gerald, Gene’s father, is there too, palming a basketball in a black-and-white photograph of the 1951 Beatrice Times Dream Team.
Cortland is tiny, a village that was originally laid out in a corn field back in the 1880s and has the feel that not all that much has changed in the intervening centuries.
And so Busboom Kelly was a farm kid, like nearly all Cortland kids. Her family farm sits off State Highway 41, a mile-and-half down a dirt road, and a quarter-mile in any direction from their closest neighbor. The Busbooms farm corn and beans, and raise cattle too.
Busboom Kelly loved so much about that farm. The plot of land where she and her younger brother would play softball with Gene when he took a break from farming — if the ball landed in the hog lot, it was a home run. The pond on her grandmother’s land a few miles down the road where she’d take Lane and their friends for camping trips in college, breathers from Lincoln and what it meant to be an athlete there.
After Bonnie and Gene moved out, their son Ryan moved in, and a new generation of Busbooms will now grow to live and love the land. Busboom Kelly’s nephews are in her old room, where motivational quotes were once plastered on the walls. Her son, Boone, visits and likes to think the bulls on the property are his own.
In a post-match radio show this season, Cook took a brief break from volleyball to talk farming and combining. He may not be from Nebraska, but he earned his stripes in 25 years. Busboom Kelly chimed in to say her father had just wrapped up his harvest. Baylor, the play-by-play man, listened to their conversation and weighed in, “That’s the first post-match coach’s interview in the history of the sport where the head coach said, ‘My dad has the harvest in.'”
“It’s just … it’s moving,” he says. “If you grew up here, it moves you. You’re tied to the land.”
Busboom Kelly is not the first Nebraskan called back to this land. Scott Frost had his own homecoming here eight years ago. He, too, grew up in small-town Nebraska, went on to be a Husker, won a championship, then came back to lead his former team. He didn’t survive his fifth season as head football coach before being fired.
Busboom Kelly is not Frost, and the volleyball program she inherited is not the football program he did. About this is much, Cook is adamant: Frost simply did not come armed with the program-building experience that Busboom Kelly did. And by the time Frost returned home, Nebraska’s football team was in free fall. Busboom Kelly, on the other hand, was given the “keys to a Ferrari,” Cook says. That much was by design. He needed to set her up for success because he couldn’t abide a Nebraska football-like implosion; he couldn’t stomach another homecoming going up in smoke.
To be sure, it’s working out just fine so far for Busboom Kelly. But the specter of other homecomings gone wrong does not plague her.
“I feel like I am maybe a little bit different than a lotta Nebraskans,” she says. “I really could see myself being happy in a lot of places.”
She has roots here but doesn’t feel the need to be rooted here. And so coaching in Nebraska is not her burden. It’s her gift.
She and Lane loved their years in Louisville, enough that, after the whirlwind of coming home to Nebraska settled, she felt a twinge of something strange and unexpected: reverse homesickness.
“It was a weird feeling to process,” she says. “I’m home but I’m feeling homesick for someplace else.”
And yet, there never really could be someplace else, at least not now, and not without giving this Nebraska experiment a true run.
“If I didn’t do this,” she says, “it’d be the biggest regret of my life.”
On the family farm, there’s a rock formation in front of her childhood house. Etched onto the stone: “THE BUSBOOMS.”
She is tied to the land.
NOT FAR FROM that rock, back when the house was still Bonnie’s and Gene’s, a trampoline sat outside. Busboom Kelly would be out on the trampoline a lot, lying down, looking up at the stars at night. She couldn’t camp out on the grass because too many bugs would get her, so she’d take refuge on the trampoline, look up and think.
“Just appreciating what’s around her,” Bonnie surmises. “But thinking about whatever’s going on too.”
The trampoline is long gone, and Busboom Kelly hardly has any time for quiet reflection these days. She’s managing the No. 1 team in the country, and she has two boys at home — Boone, her toddler, and Jett, who was born just a few months after they came back to Nebraska.
“I think it’d be different if I was single, or even if I was just married without kids,” she says. “There’d be more time to sit and stew and overthink.”
Back when John Cook was hired 25 years ago, he heard from a slew of people who told him not to take the Nebraska job. What was he going to be able to do that Nebraska volleyball had not done already? He kicked off his tenure by going undefeated and winning a national championship in his first season, then added several more titles and historic dominance to their ledger along the way. So now, all these years later, that same question could be rightfully asked of Busboom Kelly. What could she possibly do?
“Maybe win back-to-back,” she says. “That hasn’t been done here. And there hasn’t been a dynasty.”
In all the decades Nebraska has been at the pinnacle of collegiate volleyball, there’s always been a handful of years between each championship. A moment, however brief, when this place that lionizes volleyball couldn’t lay claim to its crown.
“So I think that’s maybe something I could do.”
There’s no trampoline, no vast Nebraska night sky overhead. But she’s still appreciating what’s around her, still thinking about what’s going on and what is yet to come.
Dani Busboom Kelly, what are you going to do next?
LEXINGTON, Ky. — Seniors Ava Martin, Annalea Maeder and Kiara Reinhardt helped No. 11 Creighton Volleyball to a second straight Regional Final with a 3-1 win over No. 8 Arizona State on Thursday afternoon at historic Memorial Coliseum in Lexington, Ky.
Scores of the match were 26-24, 19-25, 25-13, 25-18.
Creighton led 10-7 and 11-8 early before Arizona State countered with a 7-2 run to take a 15-13 lead into the media timeout after back-to-back aces by Brynn Covell. The Jays regrouped, getting a kill from Jaya Johnson and two more by Reinhardt to move in front 20-18. The teams continued to trade 3-0 runs, as after falling behind 21-20, Creighton bounced back with three of its own to move in front 23-21 on Sydney Breissinger’s serve. ASU tied it up at 23-all before Johnson went line to earn the Jays a set point opportunity at 24-23. Noemie Glover put down a kill to extend the set, but a service error and Martin kill gave CU the 26-24 set. Martin owned seven kills in 11 errorless swings to pace a Bluejay offense that hit .333. Maeder dished 17 assists and Breissinger had six digs for CU. Glover topped the Sun Devils with five kills.
CU led much of the second set before a 4-0 Arizona State gave the Sun Devils a 17-14 lead. The Sun Devils led by two or more the rest of the way, closing out the 25-19 victory with back-to-back blocks to even the match heading into intermission. Martin had nine kills in the second frame and Breissinger 10 digs, but it wasn’t enough to offset six kills from Glover and five kills by Kiylah Presley. ASU hit .368 in the second set and would side out at at 70 percent clip.
The Bluejays bolted to a 9-3 lead to open the third set and stayed in control throughout, hitting .600 in a 25-13 rout. With all the focus on Martin, it was six kills from Kiara Reinhardt and three by Johnson that did the trick. Johnson served her first ace since October 17th to close out the set. The .600 hitting percentage was CU’s best ever in an NCAA Tournament set.
A pair of aces from Breissinger helped CU to a 3-0 lead to open the fourth game, and the Jays posted a second straight wire-to-wire victory. Martin’s 22nd kill to make it 15-10 at the media timeout tied Jaali Winters’ career NCAA Tournament record with 175. A kill from Reinhardt sent the Jays to their third Elite Eight in program history, and second straight.
Martin led CU with 23 kills, while Maeder had 56 assists and 16 digs. Reinhardt had 14 kills on .737 hitting, while Johnson added 12 kills of her own and Breissinger dug a career-high 20 balls. CU finished the match with 65 kills, 57 digs, eight aces and six blocks on .370 hitting.
Glover topped ASU with 17 kills on .517 hitting and Henry dished out 26 assists. Omaha native Faith Frame collecting a team-high 15 balls. ASU closed the match with 50 kills, 48 digs, 4 aces and seven blocks on .273 hitting.
With the win, Creighton (28-5) advances to play the winner of this afternoon’s Cal Poly/Kentucky match on Saturday night on ESPN2 for a spot in the Final Four. A start time for that match will be announced later this evening. The Big 12 champions, Arizona State ends its season with a 28-4 mark.
NOTES: Kiara Reinhardt set a program record by playing in her 12th career NCAA Tournament match, while tying another mark with her 11th NCAA Tournament start … Ava Martin became the third player in CU history with 500 or more kills in a season … Arizona State libero Faith Frame is an Omaha native and the sister of former Creighton Softball player Ensley Frame … Creighton has won 23 straight matches, tied for its second-longest win streak in program history … Creighton is now 20-14 all-time in the NCAA Tournament, including a 3-2 record in the Regional Semifinals … Creighton has won eight straight matches against Big 12 Conference teams, including a 3-0 mark this season … Creighton has won 28 or more matches seven times now, all since 2012 … Creighton Volleyball has joined men’s soccer (in 2002-03, 2011-12 and 2014-15) as the only programs in the history of Creighton Athletics to make back-to-back Elite Eights … Brian Rosen joined former men’s soccer coach Elmar Bolowich as the second head coach in the history of Creighton Athetlics to take his first team to the Elite Eight. Rosen also joined Bolowich as the only coaches in CU history to win his first three NCAA Tournament games … Creighton’s 89 victories since the start of the 2023 season rank third-most nationally, trailing only Nebraska and Pittsburgh. Arizona State entered the today fourth on that list with 86 victories … Creighton improved to 5-2 all-time inside Memorial Coliseum with its fourth straight win in the historic facility … Arizona State fell to 0-8 in Regional Semifinals … Ava Martin had five or more kills for the 110th straight match and 10 or more kills for the 27th consecutive contest … Ava Martin (1,630) passed Leah Ratzlaff (1,622) for third-most kills in CU history … Ava Martin led or tied for the Creighton lead in kills for the 26th match in a row … Annalea Maeder had her 15th double-double of the season … Creighton improved to 6-0 when taking a 2-1 lead in a match … Annalea Maeder reached 4,000 career assists late in the fourth set.
Arizona State Postgame Quotes
Arizona State Head Coach JJ Van Niel
Opening Statement…
“Hats off to Creighton, really clean volleyball. They put a lot of pressure on us from the serving line and we weren’t able to find the right answers.”
On the adjustment Creighton made in the third set…
“They just spun the rotation just slightly, and they were getting their really, really good servers on the line. They mixed up really well, and they got us in some trouble there. They were playing really clean volleyball, and we’re patient, and we block a ball, and they cover it, and they just kind of kept chipping away and chipping away. They’re really, really scrappy, so that was probably the big adjustment.”
On what surprised them about Creighton…
“Honestly, nothing. I mean, they played their game, and they’ve got some really nice players. Their middle we knew was going to be tough to stop, and 15 kills in four sets is pretty impressive. I thought we’d be able to get them in a little more trouble, which in the second set, we really did. We were getting them off the net, and it makes a big difference because then they have to become a little more reliant, but I don’t think there’s anything that surprised us. They’ve been playing great volleyball all year. They probably don’t get the credit because they’re not as tough of a conference, but they were really good in the preseason. I think in any conference, going undefeated is an impressive feat, and they did it, so I wouldn’t say there’s anything they did in particular was any different. They executed really, really well.”
Arizona State Student-Athletes
#5 Sydney Henry, S
On momentum going to the 3rd set…
“Yeah, for sure. There was definitely some momentum there and we made it known that we were gonna stay together and we were going to stay connected and we were going to use it in the third set. But like they said, Creighton came out, they punched us, but we wanted to punch back as well. definitely after that second set, we could use some momentum.”
On a defining moment from the season…
“There wasn’t one defining moment but I think we all kind of knew coming into this how bad we wanted to repeat this year and Noemie and I both coming in this year. We knew the history of ASU and I wanted to continue that legacy, so I think from the moment that we all stepped in there together, we knew what we wanted to do, how to get there, we knew it was going to take hard work and so I think just all along, that was the plan for us.”
#10 Noemie Glover, OH
On what was working for Noemie…
“I think Sydney was putting me in good positions to score. I think that was kind of the main reason that I’m able to find openings there, our passers were doing well to put the ball in good position, and then just seeing the floor and having diverse shot selection.”
On their successful season …
“I think in the summer, we did a lot of summer camps with younger players and I think just seeing how those players interacted with our younger people, being new people in the community, seeing how much the community cared for ASU and just volleyball in general. I think that kind of pushed the momentum throughout the season, you know, we’d see campers that came, they’d wear their shirts, and they’d just be so excited to, you, watch us play. I think that that is easy to play when you have like when people that are saying, you know, they’re looking up to you or they’re looking up to the team and just seeing how the younger players were interacting with our team in general, I think that that was just really fun to continue on and especially being at home and just being able to see all those kids from the summer and seeing what kids will come again this summer. I think that that was just really fun, and it’s a big momentum push for all of us.”
Creighton Postgame Quotes
Creighton Head Coach Brian Rosen
Opening Statement….
“First just congrats to Arizona State on an incredible season- a battle tonight. Yeah, their right sides are so good. The ESPN question at halftime was, their right sides are really good-what should you do to stop them? That was a good question. Our goal to stop them was to really ramp up service pressure and try to take them out and put them into tough situations as much as we could. I thought defensively, we made some great plays. We talked before this match, all kind of week in practice, that they’re gonna get their kills, you know, Noemie (Glover) is gonna bounce the ball on the floor somewhere and we got to roll that one back to them. So what can score is the tip, the role, the offspeed. And I don’t know if one did today. We were so good defensively on everything else. That’s what allowed us opportunities to transition and score. And then offensively, man, we were special good today. I thought all of our seniors were incredible. If these two aren’t high team all Americans, I don’t know what is. And I just thought we’re lucky to have them and everyone again stepped up. Like, Jaya (Johnson) made some humongous swings for us, even like she got blocked once at the end of, I think it was the third set, and came back and swung harder on the next one. I thought we had that mentality all match. They have a huge block. And I thought anytime any one of them got blocked, the next one came harder. Maybe with a little bit more angle. And so I just thought they showed incredible poise. We’ve shrilled at times this season to allow one point to be one point. I thought all match tonight, they were able to move on quickly to the next one. Our side out percentage was so good against a really good Arizona State team and just really proud of the group and what they’ve accomplished so far this season. And as Ava (Martin) prematurely put us into the finals, that’s the goal on Saturday too.”
On what adjustments were made to service pressure in the third set…
“Yeah, and that’s who we’ve been all year. I know they mentioned Adam (Kessenich), one of our assistants. Like, he works tirelessly on our serving system games, all those things that we serve every single day in practice, and we’ve talked since the spring about being the best serving team in the country. We make our team say it every day. It’s on every scattering report we have that we are the best serving team in the country and they passed way too well in those first two sets. And so, really talked about picking up the pressure, like going for it, and if you make an error, it’s okay. That’s how we are as a coaching staff. Nora (Wurtz) going on that big run in the third set, I think was almost like a relief for our team. Like she is the person that always goes on runs for us and she struggled on the first two sets to kind of get in a rhythm. So her going on that run, I think, allowed our team to be like, oh, here we go. And I thought everyone kind of relaxed and got a little more free in those scenarios. But yeah, I thought our first context on both sides were really good today.”
On the success of passing throughout the entire match…
“Oh, it was really good. The second set was the one set where we didn’t pass kind of to our level. We talked about it in the locker room and between those two sets, how we know we can pick up some of these. They did a really nice job working in some short (and) deep, and a couple of those got us. But I thought third set on, we really protect it, though. There was one late in the third set that Ava (Martin), like, went down under and got, and then I thought Anna (Maeder) made some special sets tonight. There were a few times where she was pushed like all the way across the net and was able to reverse balls to Jaya (Johnson), find Kiara (Reinhardt) in some tough situations to kind of hold their block because Arizona State’s a great scheme blocking team and I thought she did a nice job kind of going against the flow.”
On Ava Martin reaching the most kills in program history in the tournament…
“She just always gets it done. I was looking, they handed me a stat sheet in the second set. And I think she had like sixteen kills or something like that in the second set. I looked at Izzy (Ashburn), my assistant next to me, I was like, God, does Ava really have sixteen kills right now? Um, it didn’t feel that way. I knew she was playing well but, it didn’t feel like she already had sixteen kills and she kind of does it that way. Like, she’ll kind of get you, get you, get you. And then you know at 23-23, she’s going to get that one too. Those are the ones that stand out, but it’s all the points, like up to that, that she does such a great job. And again, she was on Glover (Noemie) a ton today, and that’s a big block. And I thought she did such a good job using low on the block and trying to tool off her points, work in the court, working some tips in. We were able to get the back row going too. So she’s just such a complete player and one of the best passers in the gym too.”
Creighton Student-Athletes
#5 Kiara Reinhardt, MB
On what it meant to win today …
“People kept asking us that at the beginning of the season, you guys’ lost Kendra, you guys’ lost Nora, but I think they really underestimated the girls that we have on this team right now. That was what I kept saying at the beginning of the year, I am so excited for some more girls who have had to take, kind of a backseat, obviously to some stellar athletes, but I just kept saying I am so excited for girls to find their role and to find their confidence, and that is what the nation is seeing right now too. So I am really just so proud of this team and how we’ve had a group of 17 who are stepping up and who are putting others before themselves and are just playing special good right now, and it’s been so fun and such a joy to be alongside them.”
On ASU tipping and rolling their blocks …
“I mean, yeah, our game plan was every time they tip a roll or shot at us, like, we have to take care of that and put the ball away. And so that’s something we’ve wanted to hang our hats on all year and that was just, again, super important for today’s game plan. So I think just as hitters like, when our defenders get a great day out of those, like, we’re just like, okay, it’s our time now. Like, let’s go, like, let’s go put the ball away for them. Like, it said, like, they make a great day on anything. We want to just, like, continue that point and finish that point for them. So, yeah, which I felt like we all fed off each other so well today.”
On Coach Rosen …
“Yeah, I think he’s just at a really good foundation and has just kept us so consistent. All year in just trying to, again, remember back to who we are, like, Craig Molleyball and Cate and Good is great enough to be anyone. And so I think he’s really helped reinforce that in us of like, going back there and we’re able to come out every match being able to be confident in ourselves and that our training that we do every single day in the gym is great enough and we can trust and lean in on that. And again, like the culture and the relationships we’ built here too, like, there’s so much to say that like, we can fall back on that and we can trust in that, and that we put in the work on the court and off the court to, to be able to keep pushing through and win another game.”
#24 Sydney Breissinger, DS
On if there was a specific adjustment they made during the game …
“That’s all Adam K. He’s calling our zones all the time and he does such an awesome job at it. We talked about mixing short and deep in like working depth against this team and that was something I think we were able to do and we worked that in a lot more and sets three and four just kind of keep them guessing and just really putting the pressure on them. We trust every single person to go back behind the line and put in a great serve, and that’s what we were doing.”
On if a certain player made a play to spark the team …
“Honestly, I think Sid had a lot of digs that were just like wow digs. And I think when you make some of those plays, especially after their right side’s going off and her making some of those digs really makes us hitters want to dig deeper and, you know, get a kill for that point. KR had some amazing deep corner swings that I mean; they’re just untouchable. I mean, you can’t do anything about it. I think there’s just a lot of little things, but I think our team as a whole played so well today, and we played together, and I think that’s really what won us this game and that’s what’s going to help us really go far is when we all lean on each other and play for each other.”
On potentially playing Kentucky the next match …
“I think they’re both just really well-balanced teams, and like, we love our matchup against teams like that. Like, we just believe in ourselves so much. But we try not to worry too much about what’s on the other side of the net. We focus so much on ourselves and so we’re going to go sit out there, we’re going to scout, we’re going to watch a little bit more, but our main focus is ourselves.”
#8 Ava Martin, OH
On winning with the team …
“It’s so fun, and we just keep going. We just want to keep playing because we love this group of girls, and it’s just so fun when we’re out there playing together. Obviously, winning is amazing, but we get to do it with each other. And I think that’s the big thing we keep going back to. Also, there’s a good amount of us that lost last year, and we’re all pretty hungry. We’re still upset about that loss last year and our goal this year is to make it to the final four. And so just taking it one game at a time and, I mean, that’s been our goal this whole season and so fighting for that final four.”
The University of Houston’s indoor track facility will be known as LLH Healthcare Indoor Track as part of a multi-year naming rights partnership announced Thursday.
In a joint statement, Live Life Healthy (LLH) Healthcare and UH said the partnership “strengthens UH’s commitment to providing student-athletes with world-class resources while highlighting LLH Healthcare’s dedication to advancing health, wellness and innovation across the Greater Houston area.”
The naming rights deal with UH’s nationally recognized track and field program joins TDECU Stadium and the Memorial Hermann Football Operations Center as university athletic facilities to enter a corporate sponsorship. Other facility names, among them Fertitta Center and Schroeder Park, are named after individuals or families.
“We wanted to do something different and outside the box with this partnership with LLH Healthcare,” UH vice president for athletics Eddie Nuñez said. “We believe this collaborative partnership between Houston Athletics and LLH raises the bar for health and wellness in our community and in our athletics department. This partnership also bolsters our historic track and field program and continues to improve the facilities needed for our track and field athletes to compete at their best. LLH is another great example of a valued partner who sees the whole picture plan and supports Houston Athletics in every facet from NIL to facilities.”
Installed in 2019, LLH Healthcare Indoor Track hosts thousands of athletes yearly for professional, collegiate, high school, youth and all-comers meets. The track includes a six-lane, 200-meter banked oval and an eight-lane straightaway for 60-meter hurdles and sprints. The installation also includes two horizontal jump runways with sand pits and two pole vault runways, boxes and pits.
“I’m so excited about the partnership with Live Life Healthy,” UH track and field coach Carl Lewis said. “It’s such an important message to people of all ages, and the support that we’re getting from the community is incredible. This partnership is going to benefit the entire City of Houston, not just the University of Houston.”
As part of the deal, UH athletes will collaborate with LLH Healthcare in a name, image and likeness (NIL) program to promote a “Live Life Healthy” initiative.
“Partnering with the University of Houston reflects exactly who we are: committed to elevating health, performance, and opportunity for the communities we serve,” said Zachary Rogers, CEO of LLH Healthcare. “Under the legendary leadership of Coach Carl Lewis, UH has built a culture defined by speed, discipline, and excellence.”
Lizzie Carr led the Kentucky Wildcats in kills with 11 on 15 attack attempts. She also led the team in blocks (six).
UK earned several American Volleyball Coaches Association awards for its performance in the tournament’s first weekend. Five Wildcats made the All-South Region first team.
LEXINGTON — No. 1 seed Kentucky volleyball defeated Cal Poly in three sets Thursday afternoon at Historic Memorial Coliseum to advance to the NCAA Tournament Regional Final.
Lizzie Carr led the Wildcats in kills with 11 on 15 attack attempts. She also led the team in blocks (six). And Kassie O’Brien led UK with 31 assists.
Kentucky will battle No. 3 Creighton Saturday night for a spot in the Final Four in Kansas City, Missouri. It’ll be the Wildcats’ fourth Elite Eight under head coach Craig Skinner.
UK earned several American Volleyball Coaches Association awards for its performance in the tournament’s first weekend. Five Wildcats made the All-South Region first team: Carr, Brooklyn DeLeye, Eva Hudson, O’Brien and Molly Tuozzo. This tied the program record from 2020-21.
Hudson, an outside hitter, was named AVCA Region Player of the Year. O’Brien, a setter, was named AVCA All-South Region Freshman of the Year. And Skinner earned his fifth AVCA All-South Region Coach of the Year honor.
Click here for how to watch the match.
Coverage during the match:
The Wildcats will battle the Creighton Bluejays Saturday night for a trip to the Final Four.
The Wildcats are on an 8-0 scoring run as they look to clinch a fourth Regional Final appearance under coach Craig Skinner.
Another ace for UK (this time by libero Molly Tuozzo) clinches another set. Kentucky is holding Cal Poly to a hitting percentage of 18.8%. Lizzie Carr leads the Wildcats with eight kills (with a 63.6% hitting percentage), tying her with Cal Poly’s Emma Fredrick (with a 23.5% hitting percentage) for most by any player so far in this match.
Kentucky responded to a 3-0 scoring run by Cal Poly with a 3-0 run of its own, prompting a Cal Poly timeout. Eva Hudson has five kills to go with Lizzie Carr’s six (and 100% hitting percentage). Emma Fredrick has eight for Cal Poly, followed by Kendall Beshear’s seven.
An ace from Trinity Ward clinched the first set for Kentucky. Middle blocker Lizzie Carr leads the Cats with five fills and a 100% hitting percentage.
UK has 11 kills so far, as Eva Hudson and Lizzie Carr have three apiece. Emma Fredrick for Cal Poly leads all players with five of her team’s 10 kills.
If UK beats Cal Poly this afternoon, the Wildcats will take on the Bluejays Saturday for a Final Four berth.
No. 1 seed Kentucky versus Cal Poly will start 30 minutes after No. 3 Creighton vs. No. 2 Arizona State, which is scheduled for 1 p.m.
Buy Kentucky volleyball tickets here
No. 1 seed Kentucky versus Cal Poly will be broadcast live on ESPN2 30 minutes after the conclusion of No. 3 Creighton vs. No. 2 Arizona State, which is scheduled for 1 p.m. at Historic Memorial Coliseum.
Authenticated subscribers can access ESPN2 via TV-connected devices or by going to WatchESPN.com or the WatchESPN app.
Those without cable can access ESPN2 via streaming services, with Fubo offering a free trial.
If UK defeats Cal Poly, the Wildcats will take on the winner of the No. 3 Creighton Bluejays vs. the No. 2 Arizona State Sun Devils in the Lexington Regional Final this weekend. Here’s a look at the tournament schedule:
Regionals: Dec. 11-14
Semifinals: Dec. 18 at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri
Championship: Dec. 21 at T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri
Dec. 4: Kentucky 3, Wofford 0 (NCAA Tournament First Round)
Dec. 5: Kentucky 3, UCLA 1 (NCAA Tournament Second Round)
Dec. 11: Kentucky vs. Cal Poly (NCAA Tournament Regional Round)
Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at ptitus@gannett.com and follow her on X @petitus25. Subscribe to her “Full-court Press” newsletter here for a behind-the-scenes look at how college sports’ biggest stories are impacting Louisville and Kentucky athletics.
Nebraska track and field will open their indoor season by hosting the Husker Holiday Open on Friday, December 12 at the Bob Devaney Sports Center Indoor Track. Events are set to begin at 10 a.m. (CT).
Husker Holiday Open Meet Information
Host: Nebraska Date: December 12 Venue: Bob Devaney Sports Center Indoor Track Start Times: 10 a.m. (CT)
Live Video Live Results
2025 Season Preview The Husker Holiday Open is the first chance to watch the Nebraska track and field team return to competition after a strong 2025 season. Head Coach Justin St. Clair led the Husker women to a sixth-place finish at the Big Ten Indoor Championships while helping the men to a 12th-place finish at the NCAA Indoor Championships.
On the men’s side at last year’s NCAA Indoor Championships, the Huskers earned three indoor USTFCCCA First-Team All-America honors and six total. The Husker men finished fifth at Big Ten Indoor Championships, highlighted by two conference champions: Tyus Wilson (high jump) and Adria Navajon (Heptathlon). The NU women placed 20th with 11 points at the NCAA Indoor Championships, producing two First-Team All-Americans as well as six total All-Americans.
Nebraska continued the success during the outdoor season with the women claiming fourth at the Big Ten championships and the men earning fifth. The women, powered by top-eight finishes from Maddie Harris and Jenna Rogers in their respective events, tied for 26th at the NCAA Championships. The men tied for 35th in the team standings, led by Keyshawn Strachan and Arthur Petersen finishing fifth and seventh, respectively and Tyus Wilson securing sixth. The men and women combined for 13 All-America honors throughout the outdoor season.
Nebraska’s Returning All-Americans and Big Ten Champions A four-time First-Team All-American and 2024 Olympian, Till Steinforth placed fourth in the long jump at the 2025 NCAA Outdoor Championships. The school record-holder in both the decathlon and heptathlon, Steinforth set the Drake Relays decathlon record, scoring 8,265 points.
The senior from St. Thomas, Jamaica, Rhianna Phipps is a five-time USTFCCCA All-American, earning second-team honors in the triple jump at the NCAA Indoor Championships with a personal-best mark of 12.98m (42-7). Phipps is also a four-time placer at the Big Ten Championships, most recently earning bronze in the indoor triple jump.
Two-time NCAA Champion, 2024 Olympian and six-time All-American, Axelina Johansson owns the shot put school record. The senior from Hok, Sweden, won her second gold at the Big Ten Indoor Championships, throwing 19.31m (63-4 ¼) improving on her school record and the Swedish record. Johansson is redshirting the 2025 indoor season.
A 2024 Paris Olympian, Mine De Klerk earned Second-Team All-American honors at the NCAA Indoor Championships (17.15m, 56-3 ¼) placing 10th. De Klerk grabbed a fifth-place finish in shot put at Big Ten Indoor Championships, throwing 17.46m (57-3 ½). She improved upon her No. 3 mark in school history after recording a career best 17.87m (58-7 ½) at the Nebraska Tune-Up.
Junior, Berlyn Schutz, finished 24th in the 1500m (4:16.15) at the outdoor NCAA Championships to claim an honorable mention award. The Lincoln native competed at both the indoor and outdoor track and field Big Ten Championships. Schutz currently holds the 1500m school record (4:11.01) and the 3000m record (9:14.22).
Returning sophomore from Kansas City, Mo, Desire Tonye-Nyemeck claimed his first career All-America award after finishing 11th and clearing 2.15m (7-0 ½) at outdoor NCAA Championships. Clearing 2.17m (7-1 ½ ) set a new personal best and helped him to claim ninth at the NCAA West Prelims. As a freshman, he moved on to compete in the Big Ten Championships where he cleared 2.06m (6-9).
Reigning Big Ten silver medalist Dyson Wicker holds the second highest pole vault in school history (5.55m, 18-2 ½). The sophomore from Heath, Texas earned Second-Team All-American honors at NCAA Indoor Championships, as the highest freshman finisher in 11th. Wicker finished seventh at Big Ten Outdoor Championships clearing 5.29m (17-4 ¼).
Finishing 10th at his first NCAA Indoor Championships, Mason Kooi claimed his first All-America honors with a jump of 2.16m (7-1). The junior placed ninth in the high jump competition at Big Ten Outdoor Championships with a mark of 2.06 (6-9). At the Big Ten Indoor Championships, Kooi posted a jump of 2.16 (7-1) to take home sixth place.
Springfield, Mass. – December 11, 2025 – The Springfield College women’s volleyball program had two student-athletes named to the 2025 American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Division III Women’s Volleyball All-America Teams following another outstanding season on Alden Street.
Leading the way for the Pride were junior setter Tori Colosimo (Fairport, N.Y.) and junior middle blocker Jodi Saelua (Mililani, Hawaii), who were both named AVCA All-America Honorable Mention selections. This is the second All-America honor for Colosimo, who also garnered the award in 2023, while this is the first career selection for Saelua.
Under the direction of head coach Moira Long Springfield went 23-8 this season and once again earned an at-large berth to the NCAA Division III Championship Tournament. This marked the third straight season, Springfield was represented in the national tournament among the 64 best teams in the country.
Colosimo started in all 31 matches as a junior and recorded 927 total assists (8.83 per set) to go along with 81 kills, 57 aces, 41 blocks and 249 digs. She was named the Most Valuable Player and to the All-Tournament Team at the season opening Joel B. Dearing ’79 Volleyball Classic after recording over 100 assists, 13 kills, nine digs, and six blocks over three matches and became the ninth student-athlete in Springfield women’s volleyball history to eclipse 2,000 career assists. Colosimo was also recognized with New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) All-League Second Team honors and a spot on the AVCA All-Region I Team.
Saelua had a breakout junior season, making a name for herself as one of the best middle blockers in the league and the region. Saelua started in all 31 matches this fall and totaled 237 kills and a hitting percentage of .361 to go along with 104 total blocks. She ranked 20th in Division III in hitting percentage and in the top-60 nationally in blocks per set. Earlier this season, Saelua was also recognized with New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) All-League Second Team honors and a spot on the AVCA All-Region I Team.
Sign up for free today to receive the latest news about your favorite Springfield College Athletics program directly to your email here.
For the latest on Springfield College Athletics, follow the Pride on social media on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Be sure to tune into all Springfield College Athletic events
With the indoor season underway, the SIUE men’s and women’s track and field program is heading into competition with excitement and ambition.
One of the newer faces on the roster, graduate student Norman Mukwada, joined SIUE after competing at Florida A&M University. Mukwada is a sprinter who mainly competes in the 200- and 400-meter sprints. Mukwada said his transition into the team has been good, in part due to the hospitality.
“It’s a different environment and new people, but we work together, and I really love my teammates,” Mukwada said. “We support each other so we can achieve what we want to achieve. It’s about togetherness.”
Freshman Olivia Hansen is an international addition to the team. Competing in hurdles and sprints, Hansen will take on her first Division I season after previously competing through private club programs in Sweden.
“Here, I finally have a team to compete for,” Hansen said. “That gives me a higher purpose, and I want to do everything to benefit the team.”
Hansen said that, for her first season, she has set big goals for herself. She hopes to break 58 seconds in the 400 and reach the mid-8-second range in the 60-meter hurdles.
“I do track because I enjoy it,” Hansen said. “My results don’t define me as a person. If I work hard, I’ll get good results, but I want to find joy in what I’m doing.”
Returning Cougars like senior Konrad Sacha are reacclimating themselves to the indoor season. Sacha said indoor is more technical due to the tighter turns and shared lane racing in events like the 400-meter sprint.
Last season, Sacha ran several events, including the 60-, 200- and 400-meter sprints, as well as the 4×400 meter relay. Sacha’s 400-meter time at the Ohio Valley Conference Indoor Championships was 49.2 seconds.
Sophomore sprinter Darrelle Rice has been focusing on both her mental and physical health leading into this season. Rice is coming off a strong indoor season with personal bests of 8.13 seconds in the 60-meter hurdles and 26.4 seconds in the 200-meter sprint.
“I’ve dealt with injury, but I refuse to let it define me,” Rice said. “I plan to come back strong.”
Men’s and women’s track and field head coach Marcus Evans said he believes his opening meet will serve as a benchmark for the team, no matter how experienced.
Evans said that the key to the beginning of the season is confidence and support. Despite track being a mainly individual sport, he said his teams pride themselves on being there for each other. Evans said he wants his teams to be the loudest
With training through a period with final exams, Evans said student-athletes are encouraged to communicate needs as they balance the student-athlete schedule.
“The student side is always going to come before the athlete side,” Evans said. “There’s no competition more important than graduating.”
Evans said the program is looking to be on podiums and be national qualifiers.
“We’ve gone from near the bottom of the standings to one of the best finishes in school history last year,” Evans said. “We want to keep pushing forward. Anything can happen at a conference championship.”
For now, the Cougars are focused on their first meets of the season, competing hard, learning where they stand and returning ready to grow.
SIUE’s next meet is the Alexis Jarrett Invitational on Jan. 6 at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.
