Because the Nebraska girls’s volleyball workforce strolled out of the tunnel for its most uncommon dwelling match, “Sirius” by the Alan Parsons Venture, the walkout track for the Nineties Chicago Bulls, blared over the stadium loudspeakers.
The musical alternative was symbolic, to make certain, nevertheless it might need really understated the aura surrounding the workforce and its large second. The Cornhuskers, five-time N.C.A.A. champions, had been about to surgically dispatch an overmatched opponent, the College of Nebraska Omaha, however that was a foregone conclusion. The one suspense on Wednesday was whether or not the match would set a file for the most-attended girls’s sporting occasion.
After the second set concluded with Nebraska nicely on its solution to a victory, the general public deal with announcer declared simply that: a reported attendance of 92,003 individuals. That broke the American file — 90,185, set on the 1999 Girls’s World Cup ultimate between america and China on the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. — in addition to the worldwide mark, set at an April 2022 Champions League match in Barcelona, Spain, between F.C. Barcelona and Wolfsburg that was attended by 91,648 individuals.
“I like volleyball,” mentioned Dylan Folda, a senior at Nebraska who attended the occasion, which additionally featured an exhibition match between two Division II applications in Nebraska. “They’re profitable right here, and so they’re all the time enjoyable to look at yearly.”
The occasion resembled a full-day celebration for the state of Nebraska. Followers packed downtown Lincoln earlier than midday and made their solution to Memorial Stadium hours earlier than the Cornhuskers made their entrance, many carrying indicators of assist for the workforce. Beer, which is often not offered throughout soccer video games, was flowing, and distributors surrounded the stadium, making an attempt to capitalize on the mania.
At a second when the dominant subject in school sports activities is convention realignment in soccer, Nebraska’s Volleyball Day served for instance of a rising realization amongst universities that investing in girls’s sports activities might be nice for enterprise.
An increasing number of athletic applications are seeing features from girls’s sports activities that problem the outdated notion that there isn’t sufficient demand to make girls’s applications financially sustainable. Now, enterprise alternatives have manifested, many occasions in gimmicky methods beforehand seen primarily in males’s sports activities (as an illustration, recall basketball video games performed on plane carriers).
The Iowa girls’s basketball workforce will host its personal out of doors occasion on a soccer area this October, a scrimmage in opposition to DePaul that can spotlight its star guard, Caitlin Clark. The Oklahoma softball workforce held a collection of intrasquad scrimmages final October, treating its dwelling crowd to a barrage of dwelling runs earlier than successful its third consecutive Girls’s School World Collection title.
In line with Patrick Rishe, the director of the sports activities enterprise program at Washington College in St. Louis, guidelines permitting athletes to earn money off their identify, picture and likeness, generally known as N.I.L., in addition to shifting societal views on gender fairness, have contributed to larger funding in girls’s sports activities, resulting in occasions like Volleyball Day.
Not each Division I college has the identical set of circumstances that will permit it to conjure what Nebraska has with its volleyball workforce. The state has no main skilled sports activities groups, and the soccer program for its flagship college enjoys a near-monopoly on school sports activities fandom. (Ask Husker followers about fair-weather followers of Creighton males’s basketball.)
In line with public data obtained by The Lincoln Journal Star, simply one among 522 girls’s sports activities applications at public universities in six main conferences — the Huge East, Huge Ten, Atlantic Coast Convention, Huge 12, Southeastern Convention and Pac-12 — turned a revenue in 2022. That one program was Nebraska volleyball.
In Lincoln, a right away catalyst for Volleyball Day was aggressive fireplace. The earlier attendance file for the game additionally belonged to Nebraska, nevertheless it got here by the use of a loss to Wisconsin within the 2021 nationwide championship match in Columbus, Ohio, which 18,755 individuals attended. Motivated by that defeat, and boosted by a loyal fan base and even the state’s governor, Jim Pillen, the varsity made a plan to interrupt not simply the N.C.A.A. volleyball attendance mark, however the file for all girls’s sports activities globally.
The seeds of the occasion had been planted all the way in which again within the early Nineties. At the moment, Husker soccer reigned supreme in Lincoln, and the workforce gained three nationwide championships in 4 seasons, forging a legacy that also resonates all through school soccer, and definitely for Nebraskans in all corners of the state. Husker followers pine for these days, because the soccer program has made three teaching adjustments since its final 10-win season and has not gained a bowl sport since 2015.
For followers at Memorial Stadium on Wednesday, Nebraska volleyball was greater than a automobile for getting into the file books: Supporting Cornhusker sports activities ran of their blood.
“It was similar to a household factor,” mentioned Zainab Funnah, a sophomore at Nebraska from Lincoln who’s a member of the monitor and area workforce. “I grew up watching volleyball, soccer, basketball, all the things in Nebraska.”
Trev Alberts, Nebraska’s athletic director, mentioned in an interview that the volleyball coach in these days wished to capitalize on the fervor for soccer, so Nebraska let many soccer followers into volleyball matches without spending a dime in the event that they confirmed their soccer tickets, with the occasions typically occurring in succession and close to each other in Lincoln.
However because the volleyball workforce continued to win — capturing its first nationwide championship in 1995, earlier than successful 4 extra within the new millennium — that free lunch vanished.
Now, good luck discovering volleyball tickets in Nebraska.
The demand has been resounding, and followers who need season tickets have needed to navigate an extended ready checklist. The Nebraska volleyball workforce has led the game in common attendance — greater than 8,000 — each season since 2013, when it moved to a brand new, bigger area, not counting the pandemic-affected 2020 season. Lots of its athletes have additionally benefited from loosened guidelines on endorsements.
In line with information from Opendorse, which tracks N.I.L. offers and endorsements, the common N.I.L. compensation per deal for ladies’s volleyball gamers within the Energy 5 conferences since July 2021 is greater than $3,000, with the Huge Ten main the way in which.
Although Opendorse doesn’t rank universities by common N.I.L. compensation, a spokeswoman for the platform mentioned the extent of curiosity in a given program is an inexpensive approximation for the way a lot gamers are making from N.I.L. Lexi Rodriguez, the Nebraska libero who drew the most important cheers throughout Wednesday’s pregame lineup bulletins, has offers with the tax preparation firm H&R Block and the rebates app Ibotta.
Even because the solar set over Memorial Stadium on Wednesday, the celebration wasn’t over, as a bombastic gentle and fireworks present turned the sky over Lincoln shiny crimson.
Nebraska doesn’t anticipate to make a killing off the one occasion. Alberts mentioned the varsity expects web income of $750,000 to $1 million from Volleyball Day, which it should share with the three different colleges that participated. There have been no speedy plans for an additional occasion subsequent 12 months, he mentioned.
However the match and its file crowd have drummed up curiosity in this system — curiosity that’s more likely to pay future dividends for each the workforce and the college.