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Nebraska Volleyball to Host AVCA First Serve Showcase in August 2025

The AVCA First Serve Showcase appears to be making a trek to Lincoln to open the 2025 college volleyball season.

Austin Jacobsen

The Bob Devaney Sports Center has been sold out for every Nebraska volleyball match since the Huskers moved to the building in 2013.
The Bob Devaney Sports Center has been sold out for every Nebraska volleyball match since the Huskers moved to the building in 2013. / Nebraska Athletics

Nebraska volleyball fans may have a chance to see some of the country's best programs come to Lincoln to open the 2025 season.

As first reported by the Lincoln Journal Star's Amie Just, the AVCA website has posted on its events calendar the 2025 First Serve Showcase, listing Lincoln as the location. The event runs from Friday, Aug. 22, through Sunday, Aug. 24.

Per the AVCA website, the event will feature "8 of the nation's top collegiate volleyball teams" playing in the first six matches of the Division I women's volleyball season. The event schedule, however, features six teams and five matches:

Friday
• Team 1 vs Team 2
• Team 3 vs Team 4
Saturday
• Team 5 vs Team 6
Sunday
• Team 1 vs Team 3
• Team 2 vs Team 4

Kentucky volleyball and Nebraska volleyball fans cheered on their team during the AVCA First Serve Showcase at the KFC Yum! C
Kentucky volleyball and Nebraska volleyball fans cheered on their team during the AVCA First Serve Showcase at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville, Ky. on Aug. 27, 2024 / Sam Upshaw Jr./Courier Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The announcement page says tickets will become available sometime during the summer. The participating teams were not specified on the website as of Tuesday morning.

The Huskers were part of the 2024 First Serve Showcase in Louisville, Ky., where they opened their season with a 3-1 win over then-No. 9 Kentucky. It was a one-night, two-match event that also included Wisconsin and Louisville. All four programs reached an NCAA Regional Final this past weekend, with two of them advancing to the Final Four.

The venue in Lincoln was not specified on the website. The Bob Devaney Sports Center and Pinnacle Bank Arena have volleyball seating capacities of 8,309 and 15,290, respectively.

The Huskers hope to host a Big Ten match at PBA in 2025 to break the attendance record in a conference match set by Purdue on Oct. 19 with 14,876 attendees. "Next year we'll definitely be going to PBA so we can get that record too," head coach John Cook said in late October. "We want to hold every record. I think our fans are fired up, so we'll have to play a Big Ten match in PBA."

The PBA record for a volleyball match was set in 2016 when the US National team packed 10,213 fans inside the building. Currently, PBA has no events on its August 2025 schedule for the listed AVCA dates.

Nebraska has a long-standing tradition of volleyball attendance and fandom. In 2023, the Huskers hosted "Volleyball Day in Nebraska," playing in front of 92,003 fans at Memorial Stadium.

The Huskers are looking to earn their sixth national championship this weekend as Nebraska returns to the Final Four after finishing as the national runner-up last season.

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Austin Jacobsen
AUSTIN JACOBSEN

Austin Jacobsen is a radio broadcaster and former Sports Director in Central Nebraska. He has seen the Cornhusker state from all corners; growing up in the Panhandle, completing his college degree in Kearney, working in the rural Sandhills, and now residing in Omaha. Austin is a statewide, regional, and national radio award winner and can usually be found at a high school football field on Friday nights and tuning in to the Huskers wherever they travel. If he is not on the road, Austin enjoys movie dates with his girlfriend and their dog, Ava.

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