Nebraska volleyball game aims to set new attendance record in women's sports
The University of Nebraska is about to set a record not only for women's volleyball but women's sports.
The Cornhuskers are hosting Nebraska-Omaha at Memorial Stadium, the school's famed football stadium that seats over 85,000 fans. Yet according to athletic director Trev Alberts, Nebraska believes that it can reach up to 95,000 fans for this intra-state affair.
Should the game fill up all the stands, Nebraska vs. Nebraska-Omaha would not only be the most attended volleyball game by far, but it would also be the most attended single-day women's sporting event of all-time. It would surpass the 91,648 fans who watched Barcelona take on Wolfsburg in a UEFA Women's Champions League match in April 2022.
In a well-detailed article for USA Today, Paul Myerberg spoke with members of the team and their athletic department about the flurry of logistics involved in staging this historic event, as well as what it means for women's sports around the world. Yet one particular wrinkle of this game comes from a rivalry with a school that's not even involved in the match.
Alberts and women's volleyball coach John Cook both said a major motivator for playing this match at Memorial Stadium was to one-up fellow Big Ten rival Wisconsin.
Per Myerberg, the Cornhuskers co-own with Wisconsin the overall NCAA volleyball attendance record (18,755), set when the two met in the 2021 national championship game in Columbus, Ohio. But the Badgers set a new regular-season record (16,833) in a match against Florida last September, sneaking past the previous mark (15,797) set when Creighton hosted Nebraska one week earlier.
“The attendance record for volleyball belongs in the state of Nebraska," Alberts said in April.
"Wisconsin, being as competitive as they are, went and took one of our attendance records away," said longtime Cornhuskers coach John Cook, who has won 659 games and four national championships since taking over the program in 2000. "So we’re like, ‘How are we going to get it back?’"
Women's volleyball has been on the upswing for several years. In December, Rachel Bachman of the Wall Street Journal wrote about attendance and viewership records for the college game as well as the rise of participation at the high school level. In the past, volleyball would only catch the attention of the mainstream audience during the Olympics. However, between the WNBA, NWSL, the launch of a new pro hockey league and a Women's World Cup that set global attendance and viewership records, women's volleyball appears to have left its own imprint in mainstream sports.
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