Dani Busboom Kelly’s hiring sparked joy in Husker nation. It meant even more in Adams

ADAMS — Lexi Holland has a not-so-secret weapon when she needs to motivate her players. The Freeman High School girls volleyball coach jumps 26 years in the past, to the district’s first state championship and one player in particular: Dani Busboom Kelly.

“Her jersey’s in our gym,” says Holland, who also teaches second grade in the district 30 minutes southeast of Lincoln. “We hang her picture up sometimes and (ask), ‘If Dani was here watching, how would you practice?’” Busboom Kelly, a former Husker player who became the team’s head coach earlier this year, looms large in Adams, a farming community of 604 residents. That was true even before she ascended to the top job with the perennial powerhouse in her home state.

Busboom Kelly’s mother, Bonnie Busboom, still recalls the group of trick-or-treaters the Halloween after her daughter led a once-flailing University of Louisville program to its first of two NCAA championship appearances.

“That’s the year they were Louisville volleyball players,” Bonnie Busboom said.

Now that she’s leading the preseason No. 1 Huskers? It’s hard to escape talk of DBK, as she’s known, in her hometown.

“We use her a lot in our gym, and I think it’s just good motivation,” Holland said. “Chase your dreams because you never know where they’re going to take you.” A pig pen full of poop Laura Kroese Francke and Busboom Kelly had plenty in common growing up just outside of Adams.

The lifelong friends each possessed a strong work ethic tied to their farm-kid roots. Among young Dani’s many chores: rounding up pigs for castration. (She was spared having to perform the procedure.)

“(I remember) going into the pig pen and getting full of poop,” Busboom Kelly said. “I remember doing that and mowing the yard, the chores that are stuck in my brain. Mowing took four hours.”

They also shared “the love for sports and competition,” Francke said. They were teammates in all the sports they played. Francke was behind the plate for the town softball team. Dani was one of the pitchers.

“When she’d come pitch, (it was) a little bit different speed coming at me. She was good.”

When she committed to play volleyball at Nebraska, a photo of a smiling Dani flanked by her parents ran in the Lincoln Journal Star under the headline “NU’s fab four.” Coach John Cook told the newspaper that Busboom Kelly had a good chance to play as a freshman.

That senior year, she scored 27 points to help the Freeman girls win a state basketball championship and then won a state title in hurdles.

“Growing up, you always knew about Dani Busboom,” said Holland, the Freeman volleyball coach. “(You) followed her game, followed what she was doing, so it’s fun being here and getting to show the girls her legacy.”

That legacy included two NCAA championships with the Huskers: 2006 as a player and 2015 as an assistant coach. Busboom Kelly, who worked as an assistant at the University of Tennessee and the University of Louisville before joining the Husker coaching staff, seemed a logical successor to Cook when the time came.

Then Louisville called. The many miles separating Adams, Neb., and Louisville, Ky., didn’t diminish the hometown excitement when Busboom Kelly landed her first head coaching job after the 2016 season. Neither did the scope of the challenge before her: The Cardinals had finished that season with a 12-18 record.

By year three, the team made it to the Elite Eight. Then, in 2021, she coached Louisville to a perfect 28-0, becoming the first woman head coach in NCAA Division I history to lead her team to an undefeated regular season.

When the Cardinals advanced from their second straight Final Four in 2022 to the national championship game in Omaha, Freeman elementary students sent a video recorded in the same school gym where Busboom Kelly once played.

“C-A-R-D-S. Cards! Good luck Coach Busboom Kelly!” the students scream.

The video went viral on Twitter. The longer DBK’s successful Louisville tenure lasted, the more attached she became to her adopted home.

“Louisville’s a really fun city and it really fit my personality and my husband’s personality,” Busboom Kelly said.

Only once in her eight years as the Cardinals’ head coach did she miss the Kentucky Derby, the city’s signature sporting event, and that was because she had just given birth.

Bonnie Busboom sensed that growing attachment.

“I was worried that there was going to be less and less chance of her coming back,” she says.

That attachment was nearly locked in. A clause in Busboom Kelly’s sixyear contract extension signed after the 2021 season required Busboom Kelly to pay Louisville a buyout fee if she took another job, with one exception — Nebraska.

But after making it to the national championship match in 2024, the Cardinals wanted to extend Busboom Kelly’s contract again. This time, there’d be no Nebraska exception.

“I knew if I’d signed the contract with Louisville, I’d be there for at least a few more years minimum,” Busboom Kelly said. “Maybe forever.”

As contract talks progressed, a stunning development started rapidly unfolding behind the scenes 700 miles away. Keep it quiet Busboom Kelly was back in her home state on Jan. 24 watching a LOVB Omaha match when she ran into Cook.

One day earlier, the longtime Nebraska coach had informed Husker Athletics Director Troy Dannen that he planned to retire. The two men started talking about a transition plan.

At the LOVB match, Cook suggested Busboom Kelly get to know Dannen. “That’s when I knew that John was getting more serious about retiring,” she said.

The two met the next day. Bonnie Busboom recalls her daughter saying the meeting was positive, “but she didn’t say, ‘I’ll be the next coach.’” On Monday, Dannen offered Busboom Kelly the job. The announcement came on Wednesday.

Back home in Adams, the family “had to keep it really, really quiet those few days,” Bonnie Busboom said. “Luckily, it wasn’t too many days.”

Few were as relieved as Francke, who had made several trips to Louisville during her friend’s time there, including during the 2024 Final Four in Louisville, where both the Cardinals and the Huskers played. When Nebraska lost to eventual champion Penn State in the semifinals, there was no question about who the Franckes were backing.

“Just like myself and so many of us who knew Dani growing up in our small community, we will always support our own,” Francke said.

The email landed in the inboxes of the Freeman school secretaries at 10:51 a.m., Jan. 31 — two days after Busboom Kelly’s hiring.

The university was willing to send two chartered buses to Adams for Busboom Kelly’s Devaney Center welcoming ceremony Feb. 6, and needed to know how many people would be interested.

On an already hectic Friday, the email was forwarded to Freeman Superintendent Andrew Havelka.

“We joke after the fact that if you have it be about Dani and invite the community, ‘Be careful what you wish for,’” Havelka said with a laugh.