Thursday was a good day to rob the bank in Adams, Nebraska
That's what happens when your entire town is 37 miles north celebrating the newest Nebraska volleyball head coach.
According to the United States Census Bureau, the population of Adams, Nebraska, was 616 in 2023. On Thursday — during a midday welcome celebration for new Nebraska volleyball head coach Dani Busboom Kelly — the entire town (or at least what seemed like it) was 37 miles north at the Bob Devaney Sports Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
"If you're going to pick a day to rob the bank in Adams, Nebraska, today's the day," athletic director Troy Dannen said about the crowd.
Brandon Meier, Nebraska’s senior associate athletic director for marketing and multimedia, said the athletic department reached out to Freeman Public Schools last Friday about sending a couple of buses to transport interested individuals to Lincoln for the afternoon. The Freeman superintendent was more than happy to accommodate, providing an early dismissal for students.
The two buses Nebraska sent carried around 150 people from Adams to Lincoln, but a caravan followed. The number of individuals that made the trek totaled more than 700, well beyond the population of Adams.
Busboom Kelly — who was born in Cortland, Nebraska, and lived in Adams — grew up attending Freeman Public Schools. For the community, which not only showed up in droves but also in matching t-shirts, Busboom Kelly’s return was not something to be missed.
“Having Freeman here today, it’s pretty amazing,” Busboom Kelly said. “You know, it’s funny. I was joking that they got out of school at noon, so of course they’re all going to come. If they came, they got an excused absence.
“But just to see the support out there and hearing them cheer, they always support one of their own. It was a very neat moment.”
Nebraska made sure it was an event to remember too. For the 2,000 or so in attendance, there were speeches and videos and a lot of confetti. Nebraska staffers threw t-shirts into the crowd, featuring a cartoon caricature of the new head coach. Prior to the celebration, the Huskers played the 2006 national championship match — you know, the one Nebraska won with Busboom Kelly at libero — and the crowd cheered as if it was happening live.
Busboom Kelly entered the arena to R.K. Huskers by Tech N9ne, the one made possible because of retiring head coach John Cook. The lower bowl — which was filled on one side with those from Adams — yelled, screamed and held up signs with the Falcon mascot.
None of it had really hit Busboom Kelly until this moment.
“I hadn’t been super emotional, or I don’t know if it really had sunk in last week that I was actually the head coach here,” Busboom Kelly said. “I’m so familiar with Lincoln and this athletic department. (Dannen) was joking that I am more familiar with people here than he is with some of them.”
Busboom Kelly wasn’t just born and raised in Nebraska, of course. She played for Nebraska from 2003-06, and later coached the Huskers as part of Cook’s staff from 2012-16. She took the role as Louisville’s head coach in 2017, but Busboom Kelly always knew she wanted to return to the Huskers one day. So much so, she had a buyout clause in her contract that allowed her to leave for Nebraska without penalty.
Credit to Louisville’s athletic director for that one.
“(Josh Heird) did the right thing,” she said. “He talked about a lot of this, the right thing to do was almost like a reward. We’re going to honor or give you this great contract but we understand that Nebraska is a special place to you. We don’t want to close any doors for you.”
That meant when Cook was getting serious about retiring — which became really, really serious when Busboom Kelly planned to be in Omaha for a League One Volleyball match just a couple of weekends ago — the door was wide open for a return.
But was it the right time?
“You know the timing is always hard, like leaving a place that you love (and) I love Louisville,” Busboom Kelly said. “It's an amazing place to live and raise a family and an amazing athletic department. Someone said the timing is never perfect, but for me to be able to come home with a baby on the way, with all of our family here, and I’m not going to lie, my husband might have been freaking out a little bit, talking about two young kids without any help.
“So it was, you know, a little bit of God's timing that this is what our family needed.”
Yes, Busboom Kelly and her husband are expecting their second child this year. That means as she returns home, her support system — parents, friends, the entire Adams community — are ready and willing to help out. Whatever the new Nebraska head volleyball coach needs, they’ll make it happen.
Just like Nebraska made Thursday happen. It was a work day, as Busboom Kelly noted at the podium, yet over 2,000 people found their way to Devaney to celebrate her homecoming.
And 700 or so of those just happened to be from the community of Adams. They wouldn’t have been anywhere else.