Published Monday
December 18, 2006
Huskers accomplish goals of winning title and reaching their potential
BY CHAD PURCELL
OMAHA WORLD-HERALD
Get home, then bring it home.
It's what every player on the Nebraska volleyball team had been living for since that dark night of Dec. 17, 2005, in San Antonio.
Just get home, then we can bring it home.
Washington swept aside the Huskers' championship dreams last December inside the cavernous Alamodome. Picture some 8,000 fans outnumbered by a sea of vacant blue seats at an NCAA championship match. Imagine a picture-perfect season burning out like a flashbulb because of the 13 points NU couldn't score.
Talk about an empty feeling.
Omaha's first final four surely would be different. That became clear as a winter day in January, when college volleyball's season-ending 2006 showcase sold out in a matter of hours.
The stage at Qwest Center Omaha was set. The new dream became more clearly defined. Omaha and the Huskers' rabid red-clad nation were going to give this sport's premier week the College World Series treatment.
But could Nebraska round the bases and slide into home? Could the Huskers come up with enough hits to make it all the way to Omaha? Or would they strike out along the way?
"This team felt just an enormous amount of pressure all year long," NU coach John Cook would admit after his team's journey came full circle. "For us not to make it to Omaha, that just would've felt devastating."
The Huskers took their first big steps last spring by traveling far, far away from home. They ventured on an ambitious offseason trip to Japan and China, where they tested themselves against some of the top players in the world.
They were gone more than two weeks. It felt longer. And during those tough times when all they wanted to do was come home, all they had was each other.
When Cook and his players got back to Lincoln in June, all seemed well; all except for Christina Houghtelling's right shoulder. Houghtelling had arthroscopic surgery just a month after the Huskers returned, a development that would shelve one of the biggest hammers in Cook's toolbox for the rest of 2006.
Nebraska already had said goodbye to star seniors Jennifer Saleaumua and Melissa Elmer. How in the world would the Huskers navigate the road to Omaha without Houghtelling, the 2005 national player of the year?
Sarah Pavan promised that she wouldn't let Nebraska fail. But she wouldn't be able to do it alone.
The Huskers would need Omaha's own Dani Mancuso to take ownership of the starting spot left vacant by Houghtelling's absence. They'd need an All-America season out of Jordan Larson, the sophomore sensation from Hooper, Neb.
They'd need Cortland, Neb., product Dani Busboom - who had her handprints on 91 career wins as NU's setter - to put on a libero's jersey and put her heart and soul into playing a new position. They'd need 18-year-old redshirt freshman setter Rachel Holloway to quarterback the attack like a seasoned veteran.
It all happened. It all came together during the course of a 27-1 regular season in which NU surprisingly opened the year ranked No. 1 and emphatically remained atop the poll the entire way.
It all looked like it was going to unravel again when Minnesota overwhelmed Nebraska for a 2-0 lead in the Gainesville, Fla., regional final. But Nebraska hung tough and dug deep to stage perhaps its most pressure-packed comeback.
And it all came to a crazed crest on Saturday night in front of a record gathering of 17,209 in downtown Omaha. Pavan, Larson and company pulled away from No. 2 Stanford in a four-game victory that locked up NU's first national championship since 2000.
The Huskers' usual cast of characters shined bright in the most hyped match in NCAA history. Joining the party - and contributing in a big way against the Cardinal - were diminutive defensive specialist Rachel Schwartz, the fan favorite out of Lincoln East, and middle blocker Amanda Gates, a sophomore from Columbus, Neb., who'd been biding her time on the bench for months.
"You talk about the ultimate goal," Nebraska junior Tracy Stalls said. "Our goal we kept talking about was to max out our potential. We did, and that's the best feeling. Together, we did."
There's talk that what happened this week in Omaha - which gets to put on another volleyballapalooza at the end of the 2008 season - could mark a watershed moment in this sport's history. Whether that proves true can only be assessed in time.
But right now, at this moment, these 2006 Huskers deserve to be celebrated. They'll never know how much they'd be haunted by missing out on all of this; we'll never know what this weekend would have been like without them.
They got home, they brought it home, they brought down the house.
"They never really wavered the entire year, and they embraced it if they did," Cook said. "To win this here in Nebraska, with this group of people overcoming the obstacles to get here, this has to rank No. 1 for me as a coach."
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