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KSU’s Homegrown Stars Return to Lincoln for the Ultimate Test: No. 1 Nebraska

Three different Wildcat volleyball players will be looking to stun the team they grew up loving and watching Saturday night.
Spencer Schubert|
KSU outside hitter and Lincoln-native Shaylee Myers is back in Lincoln this weekend, looking to upset the hometown team.
KSU outside hitter and Lincoln-native Shaylee Myers is back in Lincoln this weekend, looking to upset the hometown team. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

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“Home for the Holidays” is a common phrase this time of year, but for three players on Kansas State’s volleyball roster, even they might not have known they’d be home earlier than expected.

The Wildcats opened up postseason play in Lincoln Friday and escaped their opener with a 21-25, 25-17, 26-28, 25-22, 15-12 win over San Diego. After the thrilling five-set win to open the NCAA Tournament, the Wildcats now stare down their tallest task of the season – top-ranked Nebraska.

“You know, Nebraska is the best team in the country, and they’re going to be tough to beat, especially at home,” KSU volleyball coach Jason Mansfield said after his team’s win Friday over USD.

The common understanding this time of year is that coaching staffs need to scout three different teams as they enter the first and second rounds of the NCAA Tournament. However, for KSU, they seemingly limited it to two, considering a Long Island University upset of the unbeaten Huskers in the first round was just a bit of a long shot.

The Huskers swept the Sharks 25-11, 25-15, 25-17 Friday night after KSU’s win.

And how else to better prepare for the nation’s No. 1 team than by populating your roster with girls who grew up watching the Huskers? Kansas State senior setter Ava LeGrand played her high school volleyball at Papillion-La Vista South, and she said you don’t have to go too far past the eye test to realize that Nebraska’s the “real deal.”

“Nebraska is a great team,” LeGrand said in her postgame press conference following her team’s win over USD. “They’ve proven it all season, but I think we’ve got to focus on us. We have to be the aggressor from the start. I’m excited to see the scouting report, but I think it comes down to us – how we recover (overnight), how we get our minds right, things like that.”

Nebraska players celebrate a point against LIU in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
The top-ranked Huskers swept LIU in their NCAA Tournament opener Friday night. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

The Wildcats aren’t exactly scared of playing teams with rankings by their names. This season, they squared off with a nationally ranked opponent ten times, and they came out of that gauntlet winning half of them, including a sweep of then-No. 21 Iowa State on the road, a 3-1 win over then-No. 21 Baylor and a sweep of then-No. 20 Colorado.

Numbers don’t scare the Wildcats, and although San Diego may not have been nationally-ranked, USD was receiving votes, and it makes claiming a five-set win all the more rewarding for the gals in purple.

“There’s been times this year we’ve struggled to side out,” KSU volleyball coach Jason Mansfield said in his postgame press conference following the 3-2 Wildcats win. “We’ve been in that situation before where we’ve been up and the other team has come back. I think it says a lot about their composure. We’ve got a veteran group out there of a bunch of juniors and seniors that have played together for a while.”

Speaking of those seniors, KSU senior outside hitter/opposite Shaylee Myers is back home for the weekend. The Lincoln Southwest grad tallied a match-high 26 kills in the win on .328 hitting, and KSU needed every last ounce out of Myers for the team to advance to the second round.

“It was really fun, but really at the end we had to come together,” Myers said in her postgame press conference. “We knew it was do or die – really just trusting everybody on the team, trusting the coaching staff and just relying on that we know what to do and just pulling through with it.”

Myers admitted to doing that in her hometown made the win just a little bit sweeter as they now prep for a team that no one has been able to solve this season. Top-ranked Nebraska is now 31-0 after their tournament-opening sweep of Long Island University Friday night (25-11, 25-15, 25-17).

Nebraska Volleyball played on a newly designed court.
Kansas State anticipates their toughest road environment yet when they take on #1 Nebraska in Lincoln Saturday night. | Amarillo Mullen

Nebraska’s been the golden standard of volleyball as the lone unbeaten team atop the polls, but for a KSU volleyball team that will be sporting three players who hail from Nebraska in action, Saturday is fixing to be quite the experience.

“It’s such a great environment out there,” Myers said of getting to play in the Bob Devaney Sports Center in Lincoln. “I want to thank all our fans, our family. We live around here, so we got a lot of fans, but feel like there were also a lot of people who traveled from Kansas State, so that was really awesome to see a lot of purple in the stands. It’s an historic arena, they’re going to show it every time. Nebraska fans are amazing, so it was awesome.”

What KSU will need to do now is shake off a new level of nerves come Saturday night against the Huskers. The rust may be knocked off after a long, grueling match against San Diego, but the Wildcats will need to find another gear to upset the top-ranked team in the land. To do that, they’ll need to shed any nerves they may have left.

“We try really hard to keep everything the same – how we practice, how we prepare,” Mansfield said. “There’s no preparing for how you’re going to feel in the first NCAA match of your career, so I think there was some nerves and we weren’t quite ourselves, but I’m really proud of how we bounced back in the second set. We played like we wanted to play, and we’re flying around and we’re playing with passion, and I think that says a lot about their resilience.”

We’ll find out which team is more resilient Saturday night when Kansas State takes on No. 1 Nebraska. First serve is set for 7 p.m. CST and will be streamed nationally on ESPN+.

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Spencer Schubert
SPENCER SCHUBERT

Spencer Schubert is a born-and-raised Nebraskan who now calls Hastings home. He grew up in Kearney idolizing the Huskers as every kid in Nebraska did in the 1990s, and he turned that passion into a career of covering the Big Red. Schubert graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2009, and kickstarted what's now become a 17 year career in journalism. He's served in a variety of roles in broadcasting, including weekend sports anchor at KHGI-TV(NTV) in Kearney, Sports Director at WOAY-TV in West Virginia and Assistant News Director, Executive Producer and Evening News Anchor for KSNB-TV(Local4) in Hastings. Off the clock, you'll likely find Schubert with a golf club in his hand and spending time with his wife, 5-year-old daughter and dog Emmy.

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