Nebraska women’s volleyball coach John Cook, who won four NCAA titles in 25 seasons with the Cornhuskers, announced his retirement Wednesday.
Former Nebraska player and assistant Dani Busboom Kelly will take over the Huskers program after eight seasons leading Louisville.
“It’s been a great run,” Cook, 68, said in a statement released by Nebraska. “I want to thank my family for their support … I’ve had the opportunity to work with some great coaches and staff over the years, and I’m forever grateful for how hard they worked and for how much they gave to Nebraska volleyball.”
Busboom Kelly, 39, was a key player for the 2006 Huskers team that won the national championship in Omaha, Nebraska. She was a setter and a libero during her college playing career.
She was Cook’s assistant in 2015, when Nebraska also won the NCAA title in Omaha. A Nebraska native, Busboom Kelly took over at Louisville in 2017 and went 203-43 with the Cardinals, leading them to the Final Four three times. That included national championship match appearances in 2022, when the Cardinals lost to Texas, and in 2024, when they fell to Penn State.
Busboom Kelly’s Cardinals won or shared the ACC title four times, and she was AVCA National Coach of the Year in 2021, when Louisville made the Final Four for the first time in program history.
Busboom Kelly agreed to a six-year contract with Nebraska, the school announced.
“The opportunity to come home to Nebraska is more than a dream come true,” she said in a statement. “A huge thank you to John Cook. I would not be here without his mentorship and support.
“I’ve gotten chills listening to the roars (for Nebraska volleyball) since I was 9 years old. Nebraska is the greatest place in the world to play volleyball and I am honored to be a part of it once again! My family and I can’t wait to get to work and bring more championships home.”
Cook, a San Diego native, began his coaching career at the high school level in California and then was a college assistant at UC San Diego and Nebraska before becoming head coach at Wisconsin in 1992. After seven seasons with the Badgers, he returned to Nebraska as associate head coach in 1999 and then took over the Huskers in 2000, when he won his first NCAA title. The Huskers’ other national championships were in 2006, 2015 and 2017.
Cook has led the Huskers to 12 appearances in the Final Four, including this past season when they lost to Penn State in the semifinals.
Cook won nine regular-season titles when Nebraska was in the Big 12 and five when the school moved to the Big Ten. His career head coaching record is 883-176 (.834), the fifth-best winning percentage all time for a Division I volleyball coach.
Cook was 722-103 at Nebraska, which is the best winning percentage (.875) for any Division I program over the past 25 years. He was a three-time AVCA National Coach of the Year. Under Cook, Nebraska produced five Olympians, three AVCA Division I National Player of the Year award winners and 72 AVCA All-Americans.
Nebraska also set the standard for volleyball attendance, consistently selling out its former home, the NU Coliseum (which held 4,125), during the first half of Cook’s career and then doing the same in the larger Devaney Center (8,300) when the team relocated there in 2013. Nebraska has sold out 337 consecutive regular-season home matches since 2001 and has led the nation in attendance every season since moving to the Devaney Center.
Under Cook, the Huskers also set a world record for attendance at a women’s sporting event on Aug. 30, 2023, when Nebraska faced Omaha at Memorial Stadium before a crowd of 92,003.
“For me personally, the greatest accomplishment in coaching is seeing former players go into coaching or other careers and taking the lessons they’ve learned from being a Nebraska volleyball player and applying it to their everyday lives,” Cook said.
“Lastly and most importantly, I want to thank the fans for always supporting Nebraska volleyball. I’ve always said to ‘Dream Big,’ and we’ve dreamed bigger than any volleyball program in the history of the world.”
