The NCAA Volleyball Thread

The inaugural club season is over. Was so much fun. Ended our last tournament 2-2, won our groups on tiebreakers and then went to the gold bracket where we got fucking demolished by a national team lmao.

Was really fun. The amount of growth and skill progression was awesome. My Libero is likely gonna start varsity as a freshman and my OH1 and 2 setters/RS will likely play significant time. Would not have said that before club started but they made huge leaps.

 

I think I’ve read there’s some outfit down in Arizona that funnels SW players to us as well.

 

You need 2 RS in a 6-2, but you’d assume they’ll move Jurevicious to OH

 

Gross

 

Adam Sandler movie love interest ass name if there ever was one.

 

We are definitely switching to a 6-2 (Which I support fully just based on how good Flynn looks).

 

Yeah modified 5-1 is the term. My daughter Sets/hits RS so that’s kinda what we run, I treat it more as a true 6-2 except for one rotation.

 

UCLA is a blue blood, don’t want them getting elite again

 

Psu might repeat with Martin now

 

It’s a free article I believe.

 

Spoiler

Growing up, Virginia Adriano learned how to speak English in school just like the rest of her Italian classmates. She could have left it there and had a passing knowledge of the language, but upon her mother’s insistence, she stuck with it and worked to speak fluently.

Adriano watched videos and practiced speaking English with others. She also used it to communicate with her foreign teammates while playing professional volleyball for Bergamo during the last two years.

The importance of the language increased earlier this year when Nebraska reached out and began recruiting her to join its volleyball program. Now she will fully immerse herself in English along with playing volleyball as a Husker.

“My mom was very, very passionate about (English),” Adriano said. “She was very into teaching her kids, because they're going to use it in the future, and it's going to be helpful for them.”

The Huskers announced Adriano’s commitment last week. She visited the U.S. Consulate General in Florence on Tuesday to complete her visa paperwork. She said everything is complete and she is waiting for the proper documents before booking her flight to the United States. If all goes according to plan, she will arrive in Lincoln by early June.

As a 6-foot-5 opposite, Adriano joins a Nebraska team that reached the national semifinals and returns three All-Americans. She will add to the attacking firepower for the Huskers.

This past season, she averaged 2.39 kills per set with a .385 hitting percentage as a reserve for Bergamo, which finished eighth in the 14-team Serie A1 league, widely considered the best professional league in the world. She went off for 21 kills in the season finale. Last year, while playing for Volley Hermaea Olbia in Serie A2, she was among the league leaders in points scored while hitting .384.

Adriano called playing in Serie A1 an incredible experience. She faced seasoned professionals and Olympians every week.

Bergamo played the eventual league champion, Prosecco Doc Imoco Conegliano, four times – twice in the regular season and twice more in the playoffs. Adriano said playing against Brazilian superstar Gabi, the league MVP this year and the best outside hitter at last year’s Olympics, was an honor.

“When you play against them, even though you want to win, of course, you will learn from them in the same moment,” she said. “If you make a mistake, you learn from what they do because they are the best.”

She grew up in Pino Torinese, a small municipality southeast of Turin and comes from a family of athletes. Her father played volleyball professionally in the third-tier league, and her mother was a swimmer. Adriano’s older brother played basketball when he was younger, but recently got into volleyball.

She has friends playing volleyball in the United States, but she never thought she would follow that path. However, her world changed in January when Nebraska assistant coach Jaylen Reyes reached out to start the recruiting process. Soon after, Adriano began the paperwork process with the NCAA to determine her eligibility. Even though she was unsure if she would make the jump, she wanted to keep her options open.

“It was a very long, tiring process of filling out all the forms, but it was worth it in the end, because I decided to do it,” she said.

While she weighed her options for a few months, Adriano always leaned toward taking the opportunity. She had to get comfortable with moving halfway across the world and living so far from her family and friends. By the end of March, she was ready to take the plunge.


She was initially hesitant to go because of everything she would lose, like the opportunity to train with the Italian national team. Still, she was also excited about what she would gain.

“It was a hard decision, of course, because it's going to change me,” she said. “At first, I was very scared, but I felt like it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Throughout the process, Reyes talked to Adriano about what Nebraska was like. He sold her on the sellout crowds and the structure of the program. She was impressed that Nebraska drew 8,000 people for its home spring match, more than almost all the arenas in which she played in Italy.

She’s had the chance to exchange a few messages with her future teammates at Nebraska but is looking forward to meeting them in person in a few weeks and starting the next chapter.

Adriano was also blown away after learning about the Volleyball Day in Nebraska match, where the Huskers filled Memorial Stadium with 92,003 fans. Even after seeing pictures of the event, she almost didn’t believe it was real.

“It was just a wave of red people, like only red. Everybody was wearing the red shirt, and it's incredible just thinking about it,” she said. “I cannot even actually wrap my head around this thought. I saw that they are one of the most supportive (fan bases) in the U.S. Everybody told me the program is just something special. I can't wait to go there and start this.”

While still mulling her decision, Adriano also talked with her setter at Bergamo, former Purdue standout Ashley Evans, who reinforced what Reyes said about the Huskers’ standing in the United States and the overall college experience. Evans told her how she grew as a player and person at Purdue, and the college experience changed her.

“She said to me, ‘I think it would be best for you. It's the best decision you can make,’” Adriano said. “There's no place like Nebraska. It's how they do it. There is nowhere else. Even though she had a beautiful experience at Purdue. She told me it was one of the best periods of her life.”

While the volleyball discussions helped her decide, Adriano’s primary objective in signing with the Huskers is to continue her academic pursuits. She knows she can’t play professionally forever, so she wants to ensure she has a solid Plan B.

Adriano enjoyed studying fashion design in high school and plans to do the same at NU. While she dabbled in online courses during the last two years, a virtual program was not beneficial for her program, and she looked at it as a year wasted in her educational journey.

“For me personally, it was something that I really wanted to do because I liked what I studied,” she said. “I would love to get a good education and I want to continue what I stopped in high school, because I really loved what I did here. … I can say that I got the best opportunity I could ever get, and from Nebraska, I learned that it is one of the best volleyball programs in the U.S. I'm honored that I got this chance.”

After getting her degree, Adriano would like to return to Italy to continue to play volleyball in her home country. She has played for several youth national teams, winning the U23 and U19 European Championships and finishing second at the U21 World Championships.

She hopes that playing for Nebraska can help springboard her to more success in her home country.

“If I come back here to Italy to play pro,” she said, “it would be the most important thing I could ever wish for myself.”

 

Weird. This put me into semi panic that I had a Huskers illustrated sub I didn’t know about but it doesn’t have me logged in.