Leo Adam Biga
Flatwater Free Press
At peace. That’s how Jordan Larson felt back in Lincoln after her fourth, and likely final, Olympic Games this summer. Her journey to tranquility started well before Paris, before capping an unprecedented career with the U.S. national team by winning silver, even before returning to her alma mater to help coach a championship contender.
“This last two years really has been a journey of pure reflection … of healing,” Larson said at an August press conference. “I’m soaking in the essence of what work has been done and now I just can enjoy the ride. …. To me that’s a sign that I’ve done everything I could in my power to be the best I could be and I can walk away with my head held high, that there’s nothing left on the table.”
Larson, 37, isn’t so much walking away as beginning a new chapter. She’s now in her second season as an assistant coach for the University of Nebraska volleyball team — the program she helped lead to a national championship as an All-American nearly two decades earlier. She’s also preparing for a professional swan song with a new pro volleyball league’s Omaha franchise.
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She’s doing it amid newfound honesty and transparency about her personal struggles with loss and loneliness.
“Everybody thinks that the path to success is linear and it’s not, it’s up and down,” Larson told the Flatwater Free Press. “But there’s ways you can work through it that actually make you better and more whole and help you understand yourself better.”
Larson’s emergence as a volleyball great at NU made her a contradiction: The poster child for “Nebraska Nice” with a competitive edge and fear-inducing attack. Before that, she was a rising prodigy in Hooper, a northeast Nebraska city home to roughly 850 people.
“Trying to grow up in a small community with eyes on a big stage is a very complicated place to be,” said Angie Hauptman, who coached Larson in high school. “She had a lot of self-discovery to do.”
Larson spoke openly about her challenges in an ESPN deep dive ahead of the Paris Games. She talked about feeling lonely as a child, about wanting friends, about being driven to succeed and not fitting in because of it.
“Has it been hard? Absolutely. But honestly standing here today I’m a better person for it, even amidst the heartache and all that. I had to go through those things for a reason,” she said.
The only child of parents who separated when she was young, Larson’s best friend and biggest cheerleader was her mother, Kae.
According to Hauptman, Larson inherited a key attribute from her mother: resiliency.
Whenever frustration hit, her antidote was to work harder.
“That’s the main goal for me in life – how can I become the best version of myself every day … it’s a constant conversation I’m having within myself of, ‘alright, here’s the scenario, how can I attack this to the best of my ability with what I know?’ And then if I make a mistake how can I learn from that (to) try and do better the next day?” she said.
Larson’s grit carried her to NU, and pulled her through a pivotal moment during her senior season. The Huskers had their sights on a second national championship in three years. Kae, diagnosed with cancer, had her sights on watching her daughter. The ESPN piece recounts the scene in the 2008 NCAA regional finals when those missions collided.
Kae traveled to Washington for the contest but felt too sick to watch in the arena. Larson told herself that her mom would see her play in person again. She served a clinching ace.
Kae did see her daughter play in person in the semifinals about a week later. And she saw her daughter graduate and begin her pro volleyball career.
When Kae died in September 2009, Larson lost her biggest believer, her staunchest supporter. Volleyball became her refuge.
Larson, highly sought across the globe, went from one pro club to another – Puerto Rico, Russia, Turkey, Italy, China. She suffered a different kind of loss six years later when her marriage to her college boyfriend ended in divorce.
She joined the U.S. national team in 2009, leading America to silver at the 2012 London Games and bronze in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. She became team captain in 2017, a role she filled at Nebraska for head coach John Cook, who called her the “captain of the captains.”
“She’s always been so strong and showed up in ways people admire even when it’s hard,” said Amanda (Gates) Sjuts, one of Larson’s Husker teammates.
In the 2020 Tokyo Games, the U.S. women won gold for the first time ever. Larson was named MVP.
“There’s nobody who does it better,” said Karch Kiraly, the U.S. women’s coach since 2012. “She’s the paragon, the model for what it means to pursue elite performance and mastery in every part of your life every single day.”
Nebraska volleyball was already a powerhouse when Larson arrived in 2005. But the program reached new heights during her career – a trajectory that has helped establish the state as a volleyball mecca.
Huskers stacked recent USA teams. Larson, a Nebraska Athletics Hall of Fame inductee, was joined by Kelsey Robinson Cook in 2016 and by Justine Wong-Orantes in 2020.
But Larson didn’t plan to compete for the 2024 team. She had retired, remarried and started her collegiate coaching career in Texas. When that marriage ended, Larson, burnt out, moved back to Nebraska.
Coach Cook encouraged her to reconnect with the program. Then he hired her to be an assistant in 2023. Larson couldn’t overcome the pull of competing in one final Olympic Games.
When she rejoined the national team in 2023, she told Kiraly that she was willing to do whatever needed – in whatever role – to make the team better, he recalled. She went on to prove that in Paris when she was benched.
“It’s a great tribute to Jordan that she stayed ready and did make us better,” Kiraly said.
Larson, who wished she would have killed more balls, said she was happy to help where she could. “But don’t get me wrong, sitting is hard.”
After a shaky runup to the Olympics, the U.S. team clicked at the right moment and made it to the gold medal match. They ultimately lost to Italy, a team that Larson said was “playing the best team volleyball that I’ve seen in a long time.”
Now, Larson is focused on the future.
She’ll be one of the marquee players on Omaha’s League One Volleyball (LOVB) Pro franchise when it begins its inaugural season in January.
LOVB is springing to action a year after the opening season of another pro league, the Pro Volleyball Federation. That league also boasts an Omaha franchise, the Supernovas, which enjoyed large crowds and ultimately won the championship.
“I think it’s going to be interesting to see how people respond to all this volleyball,” Larson said. “But I’m more than confident Nebraska will find a way to support it.”
More immediately, Larson has her duties on the sideline for the Huskers, a team hoping to avenge last year’s national title loss to Texas.
Larson said she received positive feedback after her first season, though she acknowledges it’s still on-the-job training.
“It’s evolving and I’m learning daily and asking John (Cook) a lot of coaching questions,” she said. “I think probing him kind of keeps him on his toes as well.”
Cook and current players say she’s already having an impact on the team.
“Everything’s just a little bit more smooth and a little bit more calm when Jordan’s there,” senior Merritt Beason told reporters in August. “She played at the highest level so she has pretty much seen it all at this point. It’s great mentorship and we continue to learn from her …”
As a player, Larson led by example. She said it was important to be real and honest in the ESPN piece – to show “that everyone is human and we all deal with things.”
“If it can help one or two people that’s great,” Larson said.
Just before the start of the Husker’s 2024 season, ESPN shared the story of another NU player: sophomore outside hitter Harper Murray.
Murray, like Larson, was honest about her struggles: the immense toll inflicted by social media, charges for driving under the influence and shoplifting, and her ensuing trip to a psychiatric emergency room.
Murray, who has been on her own healing journey, told reporters at that August press conference that she appreciates having Larson in her corner. “She’s taught me a lot when it comes to bouncing back after mistakes … the mental side.”
Larson said she wants the players to see her as an advocate, someone they can come to with anything. She’s also mindful of not crossing any boundaries as an assistant coach on a team led by a legendary head coach.
Kiraly, the U.S. team coach, and others see a bright career ahead for the four-time Olympian.
“She has a really strong passion for growing the sport and she understands … she can impact that,” said Sue Enquist, a softball coaching legend who works with the U.S. women’s volleyball team. “So I think you’re going to see her in the future coach, develop players but also expand and amplify the sport domestically and worldwide.”
For now, Larson intends to “rest” and enjoy the long-desired sense of community back in Nebraska.
“Honestly, I want to stay a little rooted. It’s been nice … being back in Nebraska to feel that sense of community,” she said, adding, “I’ve learned also that I can’t plan much, so I’m just being open to all possibilities as they come.”
The Flatwater Free Press is Nebraska’s first independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories that matter.
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Publish date : 2024-09-16 10:49:00
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