10 more days and the LOVB Omaha will kickstart its inaugural season at LOVB Houston. The practice sessions are underway and the tickets are being sold as hotcakes. Altogether, everything is set to welcome the League One Volleyball squad from Nebraska. But before the squad’s first game takes over every discussion, here’s a fun fact. In LOVB Omaha, Lexi Rodriguez will share the volleyball court with someone who used to be her predecessor in the Huskers.

Yes, Justine Wong-Orantes is one of the top liberos of all time in the US women’s volleyball circuit. The California native will show up in LOVB Omaha, guarding the same place that she once did in the Nebraska Huskers, US National volleyball team, and Mizuno Long Beach. But hold on! Justine has a long story of climbing through the ranks and collecting gems.

How were Justine Wong-Orantes’s initial days in volleyball? 

Born on October 6, 1996, Justine Wong-Orantes started as a setter in her high school in California. Those days, Los Alamitos High School had a revered position in the school volleyball circuit in the USA. Justine took it forward. In her high school stint, the California native achieved the most number of victories in Los Alamitos’s history.

And she didn’t just stop there, her brilliance on the court helped the Griffins take the sectional championship in 2011 and amass a record stand of 34-5 in 2012. The volleyball circuit in the USA soon got to know about Justine Wong-Orantes’s entry into the realm. The same year, she did something bigger. 

In 2012, Justine played a crucial role in leading her club team, Mizuno Long Beach, to victory in the Under 16 Junior Olympics national championship. She also came as a superpower in beach volleyball. Proof? Justine Wong-Orantes represented her team in the 2011 FIVB Beach Volleyball Swatch Youth World Championships in Croatia, where she and her partner Sara Hughes ended up in a tie for ninth place.

And that’s still not all. At just 12, she became the youngest known athlete to achieve an AAA CBVA rating. The achievement came through her triumphing in an AAA beach tournament alongside her partner, Summer Ross. And in 2013, Justine joined the Nebraska Huskers. Where—surprise, surprise—she once again achieved some remarkable feats.

What did Justine achieve with the Nebraska Huskers?

Justine Wong-Orantes ended her collegiate volleyball career with the Nebraska Huskers in 2016. The final day of her collegiate career came with the NCAA Volleyball Championship semifinal against Texas. Justine had failed to win the game. But she ended the season with some phenomenal numbers.

In the regular season game against Penn State, Justine crossed Kayla Banwarth’s record of 1706 career digs at Huskers. Ultimately, Justine ended the season with a whopping 1890 digs. And the record remained unbroken for eight years before Lexi Rodriguez shattered it last season. But she didn’t just stop there, as she has another record—one that is still standing high.

In 2016, Justine established a Nebraska single-match school record by achieving 35 digs during the victory against Minnesota in the regular-season game, breaking the former record of 34 held by Maria Hedbeck since 1993. In the previous three years, her fireworks remained almost the same. 

In 2015, Justine Wong-Orantes earned a stellar chance to tour Europe as a part of the first-ever Big Ten Foreign Tour team. In the same year, she became the fastest Husker to cross the 1000 digs in Nebraska’s history. She took only 75 games to touch the milestone. Meanwhile, the Huskers grabbed the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship title the same year. 

But this is not where the list ends!

What were Justine Wong-Orantes’s honors and awards in Huskers? 

In her four-year career with the Huskers, Justine Wong-Orantes had almost every existing college honor for a volleyball player. Here’s the list:

• AVCA All-American First Team (2016)
• AVCA All-American Third Team (2015)
• Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year (2015, 2016)
• All-Big Ten (2016)
• NCAA Championship All-Tournament Team (2015)
• PrepVolleyball.com All-America First Team (2015)
• Nebraska Female Athlete of the Year (All Sports, 2016-17)
• AVCA All-North Region First Team (2015, 2016)
• All-Big Ten Honorable Mention (2015)
• espnW National Player of the Week (Oct. 7, 2015)
• Lexington Regional All-Tournament Team (2015)
• Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week (Oct. 5, 2015; Oct. 19, 2015; Oct. 24, 2016)
• Nebraska Invitational Best Libero (2015, 2016)
• Ameritas Players Challenge Best Libero (2015, 2016)
• Academic All-Big Ten (2014, 2015, 2016; Beach-2016, 2017)
• Ameritas Players Challenge All-Tournament Team (2014)
• Marcia E. Hamilton Classic All-Tournament Team (2013)
• Big Ten Sportsmanship Award (Beach, 2014)
• Nebraska Scholar-Athlete Honor Roll (Fall 2013, 2014; Spring 2014, 2016, 2017)
• Tom Osborne Citizenship Team (2017)

Justine wasn’t just making it big in college though, she went global. And made waves—some big ones at that!

How did Justine perform in her international career? 

In 2016, at the onset of the Tokyo Olympics cycle, Justine Wong-Orantes was playing for the Huskers. She was nowhere close to the elite volleyball program. But in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, she helped the national team claim the gold medal. Moreover, she took the title of Best Libero in the contest. Apart from that, in the same year, Justine claimed the title of Best Libero in the FIVB Volleyball Nations League. The cherry on the cake? Her team swept the gold medal. 

From 2017, when she completed her studies in Nebraska, until 2019, she practiced at the USA Volleyball facility in Anaheim. The stringent preparation didn’t allow her to participate in any matches outside of the international season. This brush-up helped her a lot to make up for her performance in elite volleyball. The effect continued to the 2024 Paris Olympics, where she represented the US women’s national volleyball team. She ended the contest by winning the silver medal. 

Apart from this, Justine Wong-Orantes has been playing professional volleyball since 2019. In LOVB Omaha she will play as the Foundational Athlete, with her former Huskers mate and national team member Jordan Larson. Now, Lexi Rodriguez will join her in the league. Are you counting the days until you can watch these magical players once again on the court? We sure are!