On Wednesday, Jan. 30, the end of an era in college volleyball was signaled when the news that the University of Nebraska’s John Cook was retiring from his role as head coach. In his career, Cook, who had held the role of head coach at Nebraska for the last 25 years, was universally beloved by fans of the program and respected by all his competitors for his success and experience.
Cook began his coaching career in California at the high school level, even though his original goal was to coach football, before becoming a college assistant at the University of California San Diego and then Nebraska. After leaving Nebraska, he took a head coaching position at the University of Wisconsin in 1992. Seven seasons later, he returned home to Nebraska as associate head coach in 1999. He then took over the Huskers in 2000, winning his first National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) title that year. The Huskers won three additional national championships under Cook in 2006, 2015 and 2017.
Accompanying the national championships, when Nebraska was in the Big 12, Cook won nine regular-season titles and five when the school moved to the Big Ten. His career head coaching record is 883-176 (.834), the fifth-best winning percentage all time for a Division I volleyball coach. In his time at Nebraska, Cook boasted a record of 722-103 (.875), the best winning percentage for any Division I program over the past 25 years.
In addition to his stellar win-loss ratio, he had a remarkable ability to identify and develop talent. While Cook was in charge of the Huskers, Nebraska produced five Olympians, three winners of the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) Division I National Player of the Year award and 72 AVCA All-Americans. Cook’s talents lay in making the people around him better; for this reason, he was named AVCA National Coach of the Year three times.
Nebraska’s program thrived under Cook’s management, and the already diehard fans were given a reason to keep a close eye on volleyball. Under him, the standard for volleyball attendance was set. The team consistently sold out the NU Coliseum (which held 4,125), its former home, during the first half of his career and then did the same in the larger Bob Devaney Sports Center (8,300) when the team relocated there in 2013. Nebraska has sold out 337 consecutive regular-season home matches since 2001 and has led the nation in attendance every season since moving.
Cook’s incredible passion for the game was recognized and resembled by fans, and on Aug. 30, 2023, his Huskers set a world record for attendance at a women’s sporting event when they faced Omaha at Memorial Stadium before a crowd of 92,003.
Cook’s contributions to volleyball cannot be understated. The most significant example of this can be seen when looking at his coaching tree. When you are around as long as Cook has been, you go through many assistant coaches. Former Cook assistants in head coaching roles include Craig Skinner (Kentucky), Dani Busboom Kelly (Louisville/Nebraska), Chris Tamas (Illinois), Dan Meske (Louisville) and Dan Conners (UC Davis). Skinner, who assisted at Nebraska from 2000 to 2004, is now Kentucky’s winningest volleyball coach and the only coach in program history to win the national championship.
While Skinner’s success is notable, the name on the minds of Nebraska fans is Dani Busboom Kelly, who was named the new head coach just 20 minutes after the announcement of Cook’s retirement. Busboom Kelly, who was a Nebraska player from 2003 to 2006 and won a national championship during her senior year. She also served as an assistant coach for the program and was part of the coaching staff during Nebraska’s 2015 national championship campaign.
After leaving Nebraska, in 2017, she took over as Louisville’s head coach and went 203-43 with the Cardinals, leading them to the Final Four three times. That included national championship match appearances in 2022 and 2024. Busboom Kelly’s Cardinals won or shared the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) title four times, and she was AVCA National Coach of the Year in 2021 when Louisville made the Final Four for the first time in program history.
Busboom Kelly is a Husker through and through; a Nebraska native, she has become an instant fan favorite. Her dream was to come back and coach her beloved Huskers, a dream that was realized on Wednesday. She knew she wanted the job. An article from the Omaha World-Herald wrote that her contract with the Louisville volleyball team included a waiver of her buyout if she left to coach at Nebraska. She would have had to pay a $400,000 buyout if she left to go anywhere else. Busboom Kelly agreed to a six-year contract with Nebraska, the school announced. Her job at Louisville will be filled by another former Cook assistant, Dan Meske.
In reaction to the school’s decision to hire Busboom Kelly, Cook said plainly, “For me personally, the greatest accomplishment in coaching is seeing former players go into coaching or other careers and taking the lessons they’ve learned from being a Nebraska volleyball player and applying it to their everyday lives.”
An ever-present calming force on the Nebraska bench, Cook was a level-headed and innovative tactician. His years of experience allowed him to accurately assess weak spots in opposing teams’ service return and his flexibility when organizing his offensive rotations always kept opponents on their toes. His absence will leave a void that cannot be easily filled.
As a Nebraska fan myself, I know what Cook meant to the program’s fanbase. When I read his retirement announcement, I wondered if the program could ever be the same. The answer is that it won’t be, but that doesn’t mean it will be worse, just different. John Cook is a legend, and by comparison, Dani Busboom Kelly is just a fledgling, but she inherits the team that Cook left for her, and it is a strong one. All fans can do now is trust the process and support Cook’s decision to step aside; he’s certainly earned it.
In his final message to fans at his retirement press conference, Cook said, “Lastly and most importantly, I want to thank the fans for always supporting Nebraska volleyball. I’ve always said to ‘Dream Big,’ and we’ve dreamed bigger than any volleyball program in the history of the world.”
Even though he never managed to snag that desired fifth national championship, he felt that now, while at the top of his game, was the right time to step away from the program. “It’s better to burn out than fade out,” Cook said.
To those final remarks, there is nothing to say except “Thank you coach, for everything, and enjoy your retirement.”
