On Aug. 30 the University of Nebraska women’s volleyball team made history. The team had the most people in attendance at a women’s sporting event ever.
The climb in volleyball’s importance in Nebraska goes all the way back to the 70’s when coach, Terry Pettit, led them to their first NCAA championship win and when John Cook took over the team, he expanded their fan base. When the basketball stadium at the university was open, he took it and renovated it to hold 8,000 people, where they continuously sold the stadium out.
The rivalry between Wisconsin and Nebraska started with a championship game in which Wisconsin beat Nebraska, who had already had five championship wins; it continued when Wisconsin broke the record for attendance at a women’s NCAA volleyball game. The game was held at the University of Wisconsin’s basketball stadium and had a total of 16,833 people in attendance.
In an effort to beat this record, the athletic director at Nebraska suggested using Memorial Field, their football stadium. The head coach, John Cook, was in fear that they were dreaming too big and said he would only agree if there was a musical act that could incentivize people to buy tickets to come to see the game. Before the musical act was announced, the tickets were put on sale; in the first three days, there were 82,000 tickets sold. At this point, they had already broken Wisconsin’s record, but more tickets were still being sold.
They were approaching numbers that would break women’s world records. The record for a women’s sporting event was previously held by the women’s World Cup finals in Spain in 1999; that game had 90,000 people in attendance.
By halftime, it was announced that there was a total of 92,003 people present at the game, creating a new record.
