Possibly as many as 90,000 volleyball fans are expected to fill Memorial Stadium tomorrow night for Volleyball Night, two volleyball matches (Nebraska-Kearney vs Wayne State and Nebraska-Lincoln vs Nebraska-Omaha) plus a concert by Scotty McCreery.
The preparation for the event has been intense. The field at Memorial Stadium is crowned (like nearly all football fields), so they had to start by building a low stage to level the field off, then put the volleyball court on it, plus set up the stage for the post-game concert. Former Husker player Matt Davidson, now an associate AD at Nebraska, has been in charge of the preparations, holding over 100 meetings. There are over 3500 on the event staff.
UNL has declared Wednesday an ‘instructional continuity day’, which means classes don’t meet in person and most buildings are closed. Only essential employees will work on campus tomorrow, others can work from home or take a vacation day.
This will set an NCAA record for the most fans to attend a women’s volleyball match, but I suspect it won’t last long, some team with a larger stadium (Penn State and Tennessee come to mind, they both have strong women’s volleyball programs) will likely top it within the next year or two.
When they first announced this some months ago, I was worried about contingency plans for bad weather, but it looks like it’ll be a warm but not excessively hot day, high expected to be about 89 in Lincoln. (We had 6 days of 100+ highs last week and it may hit 102 on Labor Day.)
Mike Nolan