KEARNEY — The college volleyball team that Kerri Slack usually drives one hour and 45 minutes each way from her home in Gibbon to watch play in Lincoln during the fall was going to be playing a lot closer to home, so she wasn’t messing around when it came time to getting tickets. Even when that meant leaving home at 4:30 a.m.
In March, when the tickets for the spring volleyball match Nebraska will play against Colorado State on Saturday at Kearney High went on sale, you had to be present to win.
So Slack left her home, which is about 15 miles east of Kearney, at 4:30 a.m. and was the first one in the parking lot at 5 a.m. Tickets wouldn’t go on sale for five more hours.
She sat in her car until a man showed up at about 7 a.m. with a lawn chair and got in line outside the Buffalo County Fairgrounds Expo Center. Then Slack stacked her spot in line also. And that’s where they sat in 50-degree weather until the door opened at 10 a.m. and they quickly got the four tickets each person was allowed to purchase.
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With only about 2,000 tickets up for grabs for the match, fans knew they must arrive early.
“The crowd started growing about 8 or 8:30 a.m. and the line went clear around, and then back over toward the other building across the parking lot,†Slack said. “There were people showing up right at 10 o’clock and you could see people coming in, and then they saw the line and they just drove right back out. It was crazy.â€
All the tickets were gone in less than 30 minutes, so many went home empty-handed. Slack said her employer was nice enough to let her have the morning off. This was a big deal.
“We’re huge volleyball fans. We actually have season tickets, and we just love to follow them,†Slack said. “I have a daughter (Ashlyn) who is 14 and she loves volleyball and we love to follow the team. She goes down to the camp at UNL, and then she actually goes out to Colorado State to volleyball camp as well, so it’s kind of cool to see both of those teams.â€
A self-described diehard NU volleyball fan, in case her 4 a.m. wake-up call didn’t already lead you to that conclusion, Slack said she’s impressed by all the work the players do to be successful.
“We were very fortunate to go to the national championship in Omaha in 2015,†she said. “Just the atmosphere there was amazing. We’ve been to football games, and that kind of stuff. Softball games and basketball games. But the volleyball game was just awesome.â€
So Slack will be there Saturday when 2,000-plus fans pack into the school's new gym. There is seating on four sides and the fans are right on top of the action. It could get loud once the Huskers take the court.
Most years since John Cook became the Nebraska coach in 2000 he’s taken the Huskers on the road for one spring match.
“We consider ourselves a state treasure, and so a state treasure just doesn’t sit here in Lincoln, or go to Omaha. It’s something we want to share with the entire state,†Cook said.
In recent years the Huskers have also added an open practice on Friday night before the match, because so many fans get turned away for tickets.
“It’s become a two-day event now,†Cook said.
During Friday’s practice, Cook had a microphone and explained to about 700 fans in attendance what the Huskers were working on, and answered a few question from fans.
One fan asked about the new assistant coaches. One is Kayla Banwarth, a former Husker and Team USA libero who is from Dubuque, Iowa. Cook asked if anybody in the crowd was from Dubuque. Banwarth quickly turned around to see if any were. They were not.
Banwarth got a couple of rounds of applause, including when Cook said Banwarth was the best passer in the world last year while playing for Team USA.
New assistant Tyler Hildebrand won’t be here this weekend. The Long Beach State men’s team he previously coached, and has worked with on a part-time basis since joining the Huskers, won a postseason match Thursday in California, and plays again Saturday.
Cook thought it was important for Hildebrand to be with Long Beach State.
“I just told him if you guys win Thursday, just stay there,†Cook said in an interview. “Of course he said no, he was coming back. That night he called Kayla, and his wife, and got their opinions. And then he called me back later and I said, ‘Tyler, I wouldn’t have told you that you could stay if I didn’t think it was the right thing.' He was struggling with it. He’s a super-loyal guy. He texted us today and said he’s already missing not being here for this.â€
During practice Cook told the crowd the Huskers were going to do his favorite drill, which is a competition between servers and passers. Cook told the players the winner got ice cream on Friday night. One Husker said, ‘Yeah right.’ Cook had just talked about the importance of nutrition.
For the players, playing in a high school gym takes them back to when they were in high school.
Cook used to be a high school coach in California. He doesn’t spend much time in high school gyms now, though. Most of the time Nebraska finds its players at club tournaments.
But if the Huskers have an in-state recruit, Cook tries to get to one of their high school matches, which creates a buzz when the head Husker arrives.
“I sit down and people don’t know what to say, and then they’ll eventually start coming up and kids will come up and want pictures, and people come talk to me,†Cook said. “It’s pretty cool. And I never have to pay. I always walk in and they say, ‘Hey, coach, come on in.’â€