Nebraska Cornhuskers volleyball breaks girls’s sport world attendance document with match at soccer stadium

NCAA volleyball matches usually happen in arenas seating 15-20,000 followers. However Wednesday night time, an introduced crowd of 92,003 turned out to see the College of Nebraska host a volleyball match towards the College of Nebraska-Omaha at Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium, the common residence of the College of Nebraska soccer group.

It was the biggest crowd ever to see a girls’s sporting occasion in historical past.

Nebraska received the match 25-14, 25-14 and 25-13.

“This can be a once-in-a-lifetime alternative,” sophomore center blocker Bekka Allick stated at a press convention earlier than the match Tuesday. “It truthfully leaves me speechless… It is laborious to understand 94,000 folks.”

The earlier world document for attendance at a girls’s sporting occasion was 91,648, set throughout a UEFA Ladies’s Champions League soccer semifinal in 2022 between Barcelona and Wolfsburg.

Wednesday’s crowd additionally shattered the document for most individuals to see an NCAA common season volleyball match, set when Wisconsin performed Florida final September in entrance of 16,833 followers at an ordinary enviornment. Nebraska had beforehand held that document 
and received it again Wednesday by opening the highest-capacity construction on campus and within the state: Memorial Stadium.

The match was introduced in February as a part of “Volleyball Day in Nebraska” with tickets occurring sale in April. In three days, greater than 82,000 tickets had been offered, sufficient to seat greater than 4% of Nebraska’s complete inhabitants.

Nebraska volleyball’s success

Nebraska volleyball has constructed a legacy as storied because the Cornhusker soccer group, profitable 5 nationwide championships, the newest in 2017. The American Volleyball Coaches Affiliation ranked them 4th within the nation heading into Wednesday night time’s match towards in-state rival Omaha. 

“Nebraska followers by no means stop to amaze me,” Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts stated on the time. “We knew the curiosity on this match could be extraordinarily excessive, however to promote out Memorial Stadium is really exceptional.”

“In every single place I’m going on the town, all over the place you go, persons are speaking about this,” Head Coach John Prepare dinner stated Tuesday. “To see that place packed, there isn’t any approach to put together for it.”

Previous attendance data

The Cornhusker volleyball program has damaged attendance data earlier than. In 2021, they battled Wisconsin for a nationwide championship earlier than 18,755 followers, the biggest crowd to ever see an NCAA volleyball match. Nebraska additionally has the NCAA girls’s sellout streak document at 306 straight regular-season matches.

Memorial Stadium’s official capability for soccer is 83,406, however extra seats had been obtainable at area degree for volleyball Wednesday night time. The most individuals to ever see a girls’s sporting occasion within the U.S. was 90,185 in the course of the 1999 Ladies’s World Cup Closing between the U.S. and China on the Rose Bowl.

“I hold flashing again to when the soccer group performed within the Rose Bowl,” Prepare dinner stated. “I can nonetheless vividly keep in mind that complete scene, the entire match… That was a giant second for girls’s sports activities and it actually shot soccer up. And that is one other nice likelihood for that to occur for the game of volleyball.”

As for Wednesday, Prepare dinner stated he and his group are attempting to soak all the pieces in.

“I am simply making an attempt to personal every second,” Prepare dinner stated, “As a result of it is all new to me too, I have never been by this.”

“The most important factor is we simply do not need to disappoint,” Allick stated. “[Nebraska Omaha] is a respectful competitor and so we need to give them our greatest shot as properly. However the different factor is we do not need to take one second with no consideration.”

“We do not know when that is going to occur once more, if ever,” Allick added.

The match was broadcast on the Huge 10 Community.