The Court Got Slick and Nobody Went Home: Nebraska and Missouri Sang at Wrigley

Husker fans, the first volleyball match ever played at Wrigley Field did not finish. And somehow it still turned into a night nobody there is going to forget.

The Big Ten suspended Sunday’s match between Nebraska and Missouri because of the weather — not rain, humidity. Moisture settled onto the court and made the surface slick, which in a sport played on dives and hard lateral cuts is not a nuisance. It is an ankle.

The conference said rescheduling at Wrigley is not possible, and that a decision on whether the match continues from the point of suspension will come later.

Then somebody started singing

Here is the part that matters.

With the match suspended and a ballpark full of people who had travelled to see it, Nebraska and Missouri started singing Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” together — led, from the Nebraska side, by middle blocker Andi Jackson.

Both teams. In a 112-year-old baseball stadium. After the thing they came for had been called off.

There was a dance-off too. And in the interest of the honesty this site is supposed to run on: Missouri probably won it.

That is not a consolation prize. That is a group of twenty-year-olds deciding what kind of night it was going to be, and a crowd deciding to stay for it.

Why this reads well

There is a version of Sunday where this is a sour story. Fans flew in. A first in the sport’s history got half-played. The conference statement is three paragraphs of the flattest language available to man — “despite best efforts and in collaboration with all parties.”

Instead the lasting image is two rosters who spend the autumn trying to beat each other doing Kelly Clarkson in the outfield.

Nebraska came into the night 4-0 and 12-0 in sets, having dropped nothing to anybody including Texas — and that is before you count the two exhibition wins at Spikes Under the Lights, which do not go on the record. That team is going to be judged on what it does in November. But you learn something about a group from how it behaves when the night falls apart, and this one chose to sing.

What happens now

The Big Ten has not said whether the match resumes from where it stopped, and it will not be at Wrigley. Nebraska is home from here: New Mexico on Thursday, then Baylor and Georgia Tech at the Devaney Center over the weekend.

Husker Nation, we came for a piece of history and got a different one. Not a bad trade.