The Nebraska coach, who has guided the Huskers to four NCAA championships, sat down with Art of Coaching before the season to discuss a variety of topics, including old-school volleyball training, the record-breaking stadium match and why serving drills are the most important part of practice.
Interview by Don Patterson
AOC: People are still talking about the stadium match you played last season that shattered the NCAA regular-season volleyball attendance record with a crowd of 92,003. What was the inspiration for playing volleyball where football is usually played?
J.C.: Well, the inspiration came out of competitive fire. We had held all the volleyball attendance records, and then Wisconsin broke our record when they went to Milwaukee to play where the Bucks play. We don’t have a building in Nebraska that’s big enough to break that record, so we knew that the only way we would get that record back was to go in the stadium. That started the conversation.
AOC: Organizing a volleyball match in a stadium can’t be easy.
J.C.: There were so many times when we were ready to punt it. But then everybody said, ‘We’re going to do this and make it work.’ I suggested we have a concert (after the match) just to make sure we got 25,000 people, so we had a little country western concert afterwards. But we ended up selling out in a day and had to add more tickets.
AOC: What were the challenges of modifying a football stadium for volleyball?
J.C.: The biggest challenge was, we thought we could lay the Taraflex court on the football field, but the football field has a nine-inch crown, so they had to come in and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a stage that was three feet off the ground so we’d have a flat playing surface. That was the big engineering challenge. It took six days of preparation in the stadium to get it ready. Fortunately, the football team was in Minneapolis that week.
AOC: That match has been held up as an example of what’s possible for women’s sports.
J.C.: If you look at women’s sports this year – softball, gymnastics, basketball, volleyball – there’s a huge uptick in ratings. I think the stadium match had a big impact in getting people to think that women’s sports are pretty cool.
SKILL TRAINING
AOC: You seem to be somewhat old school in your approach to volleyball training – heavier on reps and drills and not so invested in the idea that the game teaches the game.
J.C.: Well, there are all kinds of ways to skin a cat. I (originally) wanted to be a football coach, and I coached high school football for three years (in San Diego), and I had some great coaches that I worked with. Then, when I was an assistant volleyball coach at Nebraska, ’88 through ’90, I would go watch Coach (Tom) Osborne to see how they coached football. Football is all about fundamentals. It’s about breaking things down. They don’t scrimmage for three hours. So that was my foundation as a coach, and I really believe in that.
In 1996, when I was coaching at Wisconsin, I took the team to Russia. We were there for three weeks. By the end of the tour, I noticed that our fundamentals really went downhill. It was like we forgot how to play volleyball. Part of that was probably fatigue, but it also taught me that fundamentals have to be worked on every day. If you don’t, they’re going to go away. That’s what I’ve always believed, so we’re always going to work on fundamentals. We’re going to rehearse things with or without a ball.
Some athletes come (to college teams) with really poor fundamentals. I tell them, ‘We’re going to reinvent your game, and we’re going to start with: this is where you put your right foot, this is where you put your left foot, this is where you put your platform.’ We really break it down.
The other thing that I’ll share for young coaches is, I’ve tried to learn a lot of things (outside of volleyball). I took guitar lessons, got a coach. I learned how to fly, got a coach. Right now, I’m learning how to be a team roper – roping cattle and horses – and I’ve got a guy who’s coaching me. You just don’t go out and start roping steers. If you did, it would be a disaster. It took me a year before I roped my first live steer. I worked with dummies – moving dummies, stationary dummies – and I had to learn the right way to ride the horse. So all of those things are reinforcers for me that there’s a sequence that you go through to learn things. It’s step by step by step.
DOUBLES TRAINING
AOC: You’ve always recommended that indoor players play 2 on 2. What are the benefits?
J.C.: Our indoor team plays beach from January until the end of March. In the old days of volleyball, everybody did everything. What’s great about 2-on-2 beach is that the middle blockers get to do everything, so they love it. They’re all wannabe setters, and they get to set. The liberos get to hit. When do they ever get to hit indoors? So liberos love it. And setters get to do everything in addition to setting – hit, block, play defense.
(In indoor), they’re all specialized now. Thirteen-year-olds are specializing.
But athletes need variety. Playing 2 on 2 helps with that variety, keeps the freshness going and allows players to work on all the skills.
We took our team to Brazil last year, and I went and watched club practices, and everybody in Brazil is required to do everything. All the kids have to set, middle block … they all rotate and do all the skills. They’re developing really good volleyball players.
I’ve had a lot of talks with Karch (Kiraly) about (playing 2 on 2), and Karch is a big believer. And he proved it. He’s a gold medalist in indoor and a gold medalist in beach.
In San Diego in the ’80s, I was teaching at Francis Parker School and I started a volleyball club, and I would go down to Mission Beach to play volleyball. And Karch and the other guys (from the U.S. national team) would train from 8 to 12, and then they’d come down to Mission Beach and play beach volleyball all afternoon. It’s a great way to cross train.
The other thing we love about playing in the sand is you can play all day and not get sore. It’s easier on your body as opposed to playing on a Sport Court that is laying on cement.
AOC: You make a point of giving all your players setting reps. Should that be done at the lower levels of the game?
J.C.: I think so. At some point, everybody is going to have to set a ball in a match. How many times have you seen a ball go to a non-setter and they just gaff it because they’re not prepared? I’ve seen matches determined by some middle trying to set a ball at match point. We train everybody to set every day because at some point you’re going to have to set a ball.
CONDITIONING
AOC: Your program is known for being on top of conditioning. What advice would you give to coaches at all levels for getting their teams fit for volleyball?
J.C.: There are a lot of ways to answer that, but one thing is, the best players we’ve had at Nebraska have been multi-sport athletes in high school. So let them play other sports. If you run 800-meter track or high jump or play basketball or tennis, you’re conditioning your body in other ways and helping your body stay balanced.
In volleyball, you’re going to swing a hundred times with one hand, zero with the other. You’re going to get in a pattern and get out of whack. So what are you going to do to balance your body? If you’re not playing other sports, (you need) to be working with a strength coach or do a strength program. There are a lot of great programs around the country now. Kids need to take care of their bodies and make sure that they’re balanced and not get into patterns that cause overuse injuries.
SERVING
AOC: Serving is getting better and better in college volleyball, and serve receive doesn’t seem to be keeping up. Is serving more important than ever at all levels of the game?
J.C.: I tell our players every day that the most important drill we will be doing is serving. We try to do several different serving bursts during practice, so we’re not just doing it once and leaving it.
We learned a great lesson last season on great serving. Serving completely took us out of the Texas match. (Texas defeated Nebraska 3-0 in the 2023 NCAA championship match.)
The serving angles are coming from higher these days and the serves are tougher because the athletes are bigger and stronger. How can we get the passers to catch up? It’s tough. Serving has definitely become a big weapon.
In the men’s game, it’s been that way forever. They’re just bombing as hard as they can because they know that if all they do is get it in, the other team will probably side out at 90 percent. So the men have had that mindset, and now I think it has transferred to the women’s game.
ARMSWING
AOC: Tyler Hildebrand, your assistant at Nebraska and now associate head coach at University of Southern California, says arm swings should be taught differently at the juniors level. Specifically, he doesn’t like the emphasis on high elbows. Do you agree?
J.C.: I definitely agree. One thing that’s missing in this country are programs and certifications for young coaches (that cover things) like how you teach arm swings. You go to club or high school practices and you’ll see it taught all kinds of different ways.
There is a definite way that the elite athlete does an arm swing, and there are biomechanical studies that prove that there is a certain way to teach arm swings, so that should be a major emphasis in teaching young kids. Coaches need to be certified on it.
If you go to Brazil, everybody has the same arm swing. They’re teaching all the kids to do it the same way.
AOC: Injuries are an issue if arm swings aren’t done correctly.
J.C.: I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard, “She has a shoulder impingement.” That’s because the elbow is getting higher than the shoulder. You don’t see baseball players do that. You don’t see quarterbacks do that in football. So there are certain things that we should not be allowing our players to do.
PLAYING CLOSER TO THE NET
AOC: Tyler also says that younger players should play closer to the net – and be taught how to deal with the block – rather than setting off the net and hitting a lot of roll shots.
J.C.: That scares me. I know it bugged Tyler that I would blow the whistle in our practices when the ball got tight. But I don’t want to lose players. We lost a great player last year, Lindsay Krause, working on tight plays. She sprained her ankle and was out for the whole year. So now I’m spooked and wondering if we really want to spend time on this.
Last year, we had five freshmen. Well, those freshmen are not as good as the older players at tight plays. I think if you can train it safely, great. But to play 6 on 6 and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to throw everything tight,’ I’m not in support of that.
BIG TEN CONFERENCE DOMINATION
AOC: The Big Ten has become the dominant conference in women’s volleyball. What’s fueling the success?
J.C.: Everybody in the Big Ten has made a commitment to have a great volleyball program. When I was at Wisconsin in the ’90s, there were only a couple of schools that cared about volleyball. When we joined the Big Ten in 2013, there were a handful of schools that had made a commitment. By 2021, everybody had made a commitment.
You look at all the new facilities that have been built, the upgrades to the current facilities, the commitment to salaries and chartering … You have to keep up with the Joneses if you want to compete. They also made changes if coaches weren’t performing, an accountability similar to football and basketball.
I think another big part of it was when the TV package came in, Big Ten Network, and started televising Big Ten volleyball games. We used to have to beg for TV. Now, they’re trying to figure out which are the best matches and doing some very creative things – like putting them after football games. That has led to better ratings, and the more people watching, the greater the expectations. It’s so competitive now. You can’t take a day off in this conference. It forces you to try to be great every day.
THE PRO LEAGUES
AOC: We now have three indoor pro leagues in the U.S. In the past, pro leagues have come and gone. Is there reason for optimism that one or more of these leagues will succeed?
J.C.: There will be two teams in Omaha, and I’m really curious how that’s going to work out. If you look at history, there used to be the NBA and ABA in basketball and the NFL and AFL in football. Eventually, they merged. If we had to look into the future, maybe that’s where it’s going.
I think the biggest thing is that the leagues are creating opportunities for athletes coming out of college that want to have more of a normal life and not go overseas for nine months and be away from family and friends. There’s now an option. They don’t have to go to Romania or Russia or Poland to play pro volleyball.
ADVICE FOR UP-AND-COMING COACHES
AOC: What advice do you have for up-and-coming volleyball coaches?
J.C.: I love that question because I was an up-and-coming coach who had no clue. I wanted to be a football coach, and I got my first teaching job and they said I had to coach women’s volleyball. I had to go out and learn, so I called Charlie Brande, who had the best club program in the country in Orange County (California), and I asked him if I could come watch practice and talk to him.
What was really lucky for me was that Terry Liskevych and Marv Dunphy were coaching the USA teams in San Diego, where I was living, and I went and watched those practices. Next thing I knew, Terry said, ‘Hey, can you get a men’s team together so we can scrimmage you?’ So we started having scrimmages at Francis Parker, where I was teaching, and I learned a ton.
So one piece of advice is, be around great coaches. I have two younger assistant coaches now, and every spring they go to a gym. It can be a men’s gym, a women’s gym, an international gym. But they go somewhere to study and learn.
With the video that AOC does, you can also get great snippets of other coaches coaching. There’s no excuse not to learn. So that’s my biggest advice – be a lifelong learner. I continue to learn and get out of my comfort zone. I study other programs and try things. Some of them work, some of them don’t. But you’ve got to keep learning. That keeps things fresh and prevents you from burning out. And it makes it fun. That’s why we’re coaching, right? It should be fun.
John Cook puts a heavy emphasis on fundamentals with his Nebraska team.
Cook has won four NCAA titles as the Cornhuskers’ head coach.
Nebraska’s stadium match in 2023 drew a record 92,003 fans.
