Omaha’s mix of vets, youngsters “super excited” for Pro Volleyball opener

OMAHA, Nebraska — They range from the seasoned veterans, like 36-year-old Bethania De La Cruz and 34-year-old Allison Mayfield, to volleyball kids like Brooke Nuneviller and Paige Briggs, who were born in 2000.

But young and old, it was like the day before Christmas here Tuesday morning as the Omaha Supernovas gathered for practice at the College of Saint Mary.

“This is epic,” coach Shelton Collier gushed. “To say I’m excited would be an understatement. 

“It’s an amazing opportunity, an amazing event, an amazing competitive opportunity. Also for fans all over the country, all over the world, this is going to be an epic event and we get to be part of it.”

That epic event is the inaugural match of the Pro Volleyball Federation, a new pro league that gets showcased Wednesday night in the CHI Health Center Arena when the Supernovas play host to the Atlanta Vibe. In a poll of the league’s coaches, Omaha was picked to be the favorite and Atlanta was second. 

“It feels like it’s been a long time coming and now our first game is tomorrow,” said Omaha setter Sydney Hilley. “It’s super exciting.

The first match, which begins at 7 p.m. Central and can be streamed on WatchStadium.com,  includes names any NCAA fan knows, sprinkled in with international stars and a few surprises.

Omaha boasts a Dominican Olympian in De La Cruz and Puerto Rican star setter in Natalia Valentin-Anderson, both of whom have excelled in Athletes Unlimited. 

There are NCAA champions in Wisconsin’s Hilley and Danielle Hart and Kentucky libero Gabby (Curry) Thompson and a multitude of former NCAA stars like Tori Dixon (Minnesota), Gina Mancuso-Prosoki (Nebraska) and Jess Schaben-Lansman (Iowa State).

In between you have a couple of Penn State products in Nia Reed and Kendall White to recent grads Maggie Cartwright (Arkansas), Sophie Davis (James Madison) and Paige Briggs (Western Kentucky).

So for middle Tori Dixon, the 6-foot-4 2016 and 202 Olympic alternate, this has been a lot of fun.

“I haven’t played in the States in a while so it’s fun being here and having all the amenities, like Target and Starbucks right down the corner,” Dixon said with a laugh. “But it’s really nice. They take great care of us here.”

Dixon joined Athletes Unlimited last fall. Her pro career after she left Minnesota in 2014 has taken her to Azerbaijan, Japan, Italy and China for four years before two seasons with Bolu in Türkiye.

She is clearly glad to be on U.S. soil. When the opportunity to play both AU and PVF came along, “I jumped on it. I was looking at options overseas and when this came up I took it, and being five hours from where I grew up (in Burnsville, Minnesota) is great.”

One of those kids, former Wisconsin middle Danielle Hart, 24, is glad to have Dixon as a resource. 

“Tori is best reading middle blockers in the world,” said Hart, who also played AU. “I enjoy watching her in the gym, just picking her brain on things and we’ve become close. She’s one of my first phone calls with any questions I have or things I’m feeling out. She’s been a great resource for me, especially through this team.”

Likewise, Hart’s old setter, Hilley, who also played AU, is thrilled to have another Badger. The entire team live in on apartment building with their own rooms.

“It feels like there’s a little piece of home with me, which makes it a lot more easy to be away from family and friends when I have her and can just walk upstairs and go in her room and hang out and it feels like college again,” said Hilley, whose Wisconsin undergraduate degree was in genetics and genomic and master’s was in applied biotechnology. Those did not go to waste: Hilley has a real job and works remotely. 

“I get to do both, which it pretty cool. I work for a medical diagnostics company and we work on developing amino acid tests that help people detect certain diseases or see if they have certain biomarkers. It’s pretty cool that I get to do both that and volleyball. It’s the best of both worlds.”

Hilley, who is from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, works for a worldwide company based in Minnesota. 

Nuneviller, the former Oregon star who played last year in Türkiye, is an outside hitter who has spent time in the USA gym as a libero.

“I think when I went overseas originally, I had a ton of adjusting to do the first couple of months with my head coach. He taught me a lot of things that I wasn’t necessarily comfortable with before, but it was a new style of volleyball and a very high level in Türkiye,” Nuneviller said. 

“I’d say for the first couple of months it really, really challenged me. I think I got a lot better in certain skills in volleyball, but I think getting over that mental hump and finishing the last half of the season really strong has prepared me for new professional seasons, for example Athletes Unlimited, the national team in the summertime, and now this new league in the States.”

All of which adds up a fun mix for Dixon.

“We’re probably one of the more experienced teams in the league,” Dixon said. “We have a good mix of some fun youth, who keep things exciting, and also we have the old guns, who have that reliable experience. I think it’s really important for a team to have both and we have that and it’s a really cool atmosphere to be around. You don’t notice the age difference because everyone’s really blended well and it’s been a lot of fun.”

That’s not lost on Collier, whose coaching resume includes long stints at Georgia Tech (11 years) and then 21 at Wingate before retiring in 2022.

“It’s a blast. We’ve got these veterans who have brought so much experience and leadership and savvy and we’ve these young guns here who are just out of college that just want to play and run and do well. The collaboration is awesome. They have meals together, they live together, they solve puzzles together, they watch TV together. Somebody in their mid-30s with somebody who just got out of college and the collaboration has been a beautiful thing to see.”

Not that the vets don’t have to guide the kids occasionally. 

“I’ve got to tell them how to do things,” Dixon admitted. “They might not have been professional athletes, but at the end of the day they know how to play volleyball, they know how to be good teammates, and that’s the most important thing.”

***

The Vibe, coached by Todd Dagenais, who left UCF to go to Atlanta, traveled Tuesday and was planning an 8:30 pm. practice. The Vibe, too, were working out at College of Saint Mary because the CHI Center was occupied Tuesday night for the Creighton-Xavier men’s basketball game.

*** 

As mentioned, Collier coached at Georgia Tech. His team his last year there, in 2001, included his Omaha assistant coach Laura “Bird” Kuhn and Lauren Steinbrecher. Steinbrecher, now the coach at James Madison, came to practice to see both her old Tech mates but also Davis, who was her star middle the past five years.

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