Nebraska volleyball match units world document for attendance at ladies’s sporting occasion

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LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s struggle tune begins, “There isn’t a place like Nebraska.” On the subject of volleyball, these phrases by no means rang extra true than on Wednesday evening.

The Cornhuskers laid declare to the world document for largest attendance at a ladies’s sporting occasion, with 92,003 filling Memorial Stadium for his or her volleyball match towards Omaha.

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The college took purpose on the document final spring when it introduced it will maintain a daylong celebration of a sport that enjoys immense recognition on this state of fewer than 2 million.

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“We took an opportunity by taking part in in Memorial Stadium, and to go for the document and break it … I don’t assume anyone might have envisioned that when this entire factor began,” Nebraska coach John Cook dinner stated. “It appears like an important accomplishment for this sport known as volleyball performed by ladies. It’s a state treasure. We proved it.”

The occasion started with an exhibition between in-state Division II powers Nebraska-Kearney and Wayne State, and was adopted by the Huskers’ three-set sweep of Omaha in a regular-season match. Nation artist Scotty McCreery carried out afterward.

The earlier attendance document was 91,648, set throughout a Champions League soccer match when Barcelona defeated Actual Madrid 5-2 at Spain’s Camp Nou Stadium in 2022.

Memorial Stadium’s official capability is simply over 85,000 for soccer, however that quantity was increased for this occasion as a result of there have been seats and standing room on the sector.

Although 91,648 was broadly acknowledged as the ladies’s sports activities attendance document, no less than one match on the unofficial 1971 Ladies’s World Cup in Mexico Metropolis reportedly drew 110,000 folks.

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The American document attendance for a ladies’s sporting occasion had been 90,185 for the 1999 World Cup soccer last between the US and China on the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California — the sport the place Brandi Chastain ripped off her shirt after scoring the decisive penalty shot for the U.S. win.

Nebraska has offered out 306 consecutive regular-season matches. (Wednesday’s occasion gained’t rely towards the streak as a result of it’s not being held on the group’s Devaney Heart courtroom.) The Huskers have led the nation in attendance each season since 2013, and eight of the highest 9 crowds in NCAA volleyball historical past are matches which have concerned Nebraska.

Nebraska has gained 5 nationwide championships in volleyball, and its program is likely one of the few in Division I ladies’s sports activities that turns a revenue —$1 million final yr, based on athletic division CFO Doug Ewald.

“It is a assertion on Title IX, and having two daughters of my very own, what Title IX has achieved for ladies’s sports activities is large,” fan Troy Pfannenstiel of Omaha stated earlier than the matches, referring to the 1972 U.S. civil rights regulation that prophibits discrimination on the idea of intercourse.

College Chancellor Rodney Bennett canceled courses for the day, and highschool groups from throughout a state stretching nearly 700 kms border to frame had been excused from courses to attend.

“You don’t assume you’re going to be a part of a world document occasion, and seeing how a lot everybody helps volleyball and needed to be a part of that document is superior to see,” Omaha’s Shayla McCormick stated.

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