When it comes to NCAA volleyball records, the Nebraska Cornhuskers always seem to find their way into the discussion. So Nebraska head coach John Cook noticed when the Purdue Boilermakers set a new Big Ten attendance record. The Boilermakers hosted 14,876 people inside Mackey Arena, the Purdue basketball team’s home, during their October 19 game against Indiana.

The historic match broke a two-decade-old Big Ten record set by Minnesota by quite a big margin. 10,927 fans showed up to watch the Illinois vs. Minnesota clash in 2004. So while appearing on Kicking Back with the Cooks, the Nebraska head coach revealed his intentions to break Purdue’s record next year. That’s because Nebraska will add a new venue in 2025.

While the Bob Devaney Sports Center is the home of the Huskers, the volleyball stadium doesn’t have the seating capacity to challenge the current record. Yet, the Huskers proved their ability to draw a crowd last year after hosting over 92,000 fans during their clash with Omaha. The August 30, 2023 clash at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, set a new world record for women’s sports.

So John Cook is confident that NU will break Purdue’s record because they’ll host select games at Pinnacle Bank Arena starting next season. “I sent off a text to Troy, our athletic director, and said, ‘Okay, game on. We got to break this.’ So next year we’ll definitely be going to PBA, so we can get that record too.” said the coach of the team on X.

The Bob Devaney Sports Center has a maximum capacity of just below 8,500. However, the PBA (also in Lincoln) can hold 15,500 spectators for a single match. This gives NU the opportunity to etch their names into the volleyball history book yet again. “We want to hold every record… I think our fans are fired up so we’ll have to play a big 10 match in the PBA arena,” added Cook.

However, John Cook’s confidence doesn’t stem from a single record from 2023. The Nebraska Cornhuskers have set multiple records since that fateful day at Memorial Stadium, and it doesn’t seem they’ll be slowing down anytime soon.

The Nebraska volleyball continues to make history in every aspect of the sport

The Huskers have proven that the world record was no accident several times since Volleyball Day in 2023. During their NCAA Championship final against the Texas Longhorns, 1.7 million people turned in to watch the Huskers. They retrained that momentum this year as they set another regular season viewership record in September 2024.

During their September 22 match against the Louisville Cardinals, the Cornhuskers swept the #4 ranked team. However, what made it historic was the fact that an average of 684,000 people tuned in to ESPN to watch the live telecast. The match set a new regular-season viewership record on the ESPN network. And then came the NBC milestone.

On October 19, 2024, the Nebraska Cornhuskers became the first women’s volleyball team to debut on NBC. Their clash against Ohio became the first of four scheduled matches that NBC will air until the end of November. “Yeah, it’s huge. I’m actually getting chills,” said assistant coach Jordan Larson while discussing the historic occasion. So it’s no surprise to see why head coach John Cook seems so confident about beating Purdue’s new Big Ten Conference record.