Todd Henrichs: Omaha No. 1 goal for seniors on NU volleyball team
www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/11/24/sports/doc45666dd02eaf2278319930.txtThey were diaper dandies, or in this case, diaper Danis.
Dani Busboom and Dani Mancuso, both Nebraska natives, arrived as freshmen at Nebraska back in 2003 as wide-eyed and wild as a pair of young ponies.
Each day, they would come bounding into practice just like they bounced up and down on the beds the first time the team checked into a hotel.
They sang on the bus, danced in the locker room, and on the volleyball court, they played hard and smiled wide. Nebraska fans who can remember them as untamed talents no doubt wish those smiles had never gone away.
But as Busboom and Mancuso face their Senior Night on Saturday, we are reminded that just like the smell of a new car, smiles fade with time.
Sometime in the next month, their volleyball careers will end, careers as Huskers marked not by individual honors, not yet by a national championship, but by flashes of brilliance, the heights of No. 1 rankings and the lows of having lost starting spots that they had so eagerly latched onto during that freshman year.
For all their successes, they’ve been hit over the head by disappointment and weighed down by expectation to the point that Nebraska coach John Cook had to remind them of all they had to be thankful for.
“We had a big talk, I’d say three matches ago,” said Cook, pinpointing the Texas A&M match that followed the top-ranked Huskers’ loss to Colorado. “I said, ‘You guys really need to enjoy this from here on out. You’ve got to enjoy every practice, every moment with your team. It’s going to be over soon.’
“I sensed that they were playing really uptight. I told them to have fun, enjoy it and soak in every moment.”
Flash back to 2003, one of those years for the history books in that Nebraska didn’t win a conference championship nor threaten to advance to the NCAA final four. Yet, Busboom and Mancuso this week talked only about how fun that year was.
A rebuilding year by any program’s standards, Busboom played as a fledgling setter, someone with all kinds of athletic ability and competitive fire but so little experience at the position that Nebraska became prone to roller-coaster rides of offensive productivity.
She was a setter for three years, playing in every match, but after Nebraska was outclassed by Washington in last year’s national championship match, Cook told Busboom he was moving her to libero for her senior season.
“She was not happy,” Cook said, “and she had a right not to be. But it’s a team game and we’ve got to do what gives us the best chance to win.”
For Mancuso, that meant playing only a mop-up role last season, that after she had been an every-match starter late in her freshman year and at times had played at all-Big 12 levels as a sophomore.
Mancuso might have faced the same fate this year were it not for classmate Christina Houghtelling’s offseason knee and shoulder surgeries. Given a second chance, many expected Mancuso to exude with the energies of her freshman season.
“Now, it’s not new,” she said. “We’ve been here for four years.
“But it’s still exciting. It’s still exciting to be with your teammates and get big kills and make big plays.”
Since struggling at Iowa State, producing nine kills against 11 errors, Mancuso has been on a roll reminiscent of stretches during her sophomore year. Over Nebraska’s last four matches, the Omaha Gross graduate has 42 kills, only nine errors, and is hitting at a .371 clip.
She entered Wednesday’s match at Kansas as a career .204 hitter.
Meanwhile, Busboom, who is closing in on Nebraska’s single-season record for digs, is a contender to be honored this weekend as the Big 12’s libero of the year.
Honors, however, won’t be the legacy left by Mancuso and Busboom. What will is the role they’ve played on teams that have spent 30 weeks at No. 1 in the national polls over the past three seasons.
From 1982, when the first volleyball polls were compiled, to 2002, the year before Busboom and Mancuso arrived at the Coliseum, Nebraska was ranked No. 1 a grand total of 38 times.
How many players out there go through an entire career never even being ranked in the top 25?
“Honestly, it may sound like a cliche, but as busy as we are, especially during the season, I don’t ever think, ‘Wow, we’re pretty damn good,’” Mancuso said. “We’ve been on top, but I also know the pressures and the struggles that come when you are on top and how to maintain that, you have to keep a balance and focus on what you need to.”
Together, Busboom and Mancuso have played for a national championship, played in a postseason classic — the 2004 NCAA regional final against USC — and still have the chance to turn volleyball on its ear by leading Nebraska into the first final four to be played in Omaha next month.
They’ve been dreaming about that since their freshman year, a time when “everything is cool,” Busboom said.
“Maybe it’s because there wasn’t any pressure,” she added. “Everyone just played so loose.”
Given what Nebraska faces in making it to Omaha, beginning Saturday with eighth-ranked Texas and having to win a regional away from home, wouldn’t it be great to stay young forever?
“It’s time to be ready to move on to another chapter,” said Busboom. “But I’m really excited to see what the end of the season brings.
“Hopefully, my career can end the way I want it to be.”
Reach Todd Henrichs at 473-7439 or thenrichs@journalstar.com.