Less than a year ago, it seemed coach John Cook’s stay at Nebraska would last at least for the next four years. After all, the veteran even signed a four-year contract extension with the Huskers last May. “Always dreaming bigger. Coach Cook has been extended through the 2028 season,” Huskers volleyball posted on social media. However, that dream came to an abrupt end on January 30.

That was when Coach Cook dropped a bombshell on Huskers fans, announcing his retirement. The news stunned everyone in the community, and even before they could recover from what they’d just heard, the Huskers announced Dani Busboom Kelly as the new head coach. However, almost a week after that fateful Thursday, Cook spoke about the family member who pushed the coach toward taking such a drastic decision.

The question John Cook didn’t have an answer to

Nebraska volleyball’s coach for the last 25 seasons, explained how his granddaughter had him at a loss for words. “I got a four-year-old granddaughter now who asked, ‘When am I going to see you?’… That starts wearing on you a little bit. They moved up to Wyoming during COVID, it’s been hard,” Coach Cook explained to Lincoln Arneal and Jeff Sheldon on the Volleyball State Podcast.

Cook didn’t have an answer to that question. But, he knew he wanted to spend time with his granddaughter. The 68-year-old knew he would get a second chance to watch his granddaughter grow up. And that his daughter Lauren is expecting another baby, Cook knew it was time to step away from coaching.

“I want to be around those grandkids and my kids,” added Cook.

Additionally, after winning four National Championships, John Cook knew he had nothing left to prove. So retirement had been on his mind since the 2024 season ended. However, a prophetic meeting with an old man at the unlikeliest place for a discussion on volleyball left Coah Cook stunned.

An uncanny conversation

Less than a week before retiring, John Cook vested Ord, Nebrask. The coach was preparing for the upcoming season and had traveled to discuss holding the Husker’s spring volleyball match in the small town. However, Grandview, an assisted living facility on Ord, invited the coach to visit some elderly volleyball fans. The residents were over the moon to meet with the coach. Some even recounted their experience of playing volleyball in the 1950s. However, just as John Cook was about to leave the facility, an elderly man approached the coach with a question that surprised him.

The elderly man asked Cook who the two-time AVCA Coach of the Yera’s replacement would be. While Cook replied that was something yet to be decided, the man knew.

“It’s going to be the Louisville girl,” said the man. While nothing else happened, Cook was flabbergasted. That’s because the transition process to bring Dani Busboom Kelly had already begun. Barely a week before traveling to Ord, Cook told Athletic Director Troy Dannen about his decision. As fate would have it, Kelly was in Nebraska to watch an LOVB match.

So Dannen and Kelly met shortly after John Cook asked Dannen to start the transition process. Things became even earlier because the foundation for Kelly’s transition had been laid when she signed up as Louisville’s head coach in 2017. “It was written into her Louisville contract, basically, that she’d be in line — without penalty! — to leave for her ‘undergraduate alma mater,'” revealed the Lincoln Journal Star’s Amy Just.

So with his successor secured, Cook looks forward to spending all this time with grandkids in Wyoming.