You think of the big wins, the AVCA Coach of the Year awards, the four NCAA titles, and more when you hear the name John Cook. While the accolades definitely created Cook’s legendary legacy, it’s the little things, the attention to detail, that helped Coach Cook stay near the top of the pack for 25 years at Nebraska. So, just how much attention did he pay?

Well, fellow retired NCAA coach Kirsten Bernthal Booth, who coached at Creighton University for 22 seasons, revealed an anecdote that paints the entire picture. The veteran coach, who left to take on a position at League One Volleyball (LOVB) revealed how Coach Cook chose between standing and sitting during volleyball games based on feedback. Sounds almost outrageous, right?

“He evolved as a coach. I mean, a simple example fans would see is he used to stand,” Booth said in the clip from Nebraska Public Media’s upcoming TV special The Last Ride with John Cook. The former Creighton coach explained that John Cook may find she got some of the details wrong, but she heard that the 69-year-old started sitting down because his players told him.

“They didn’t really love him standing. A lot of us coaches say, ‘Tough, this is what I do,’ but instead, he began to sit. That might not seem like a big deal, but that’s a big deal. That’s listening, that’s learning,” Kirsten Bernthal Booth said in the snippet on YouTube. As trivial as that sounds, it’s these several little changes that endeared the coach to the players and helped him evolve.

And trying to evolve was something John Cook continued until the final days of his coaching career. “Even at this point in his career, he was still willing to adapt and to change,” said 2024 graduate Merritt Beason. “Sometimes he was stubborn. Okay. But he was willing to, like, adapt and really do anything for what we needed as a team,” the former Huskers star said in March. So who better to understand what needed to change going forward than Cook himself?

John Cook understood it was time

Coach Cook believed he did it all after years of changing, evolving, and refining his coaching style. It’s hard to argue against that as the volleyball coach barely had any NCAA or AVCA accolades left to earn. All he needed was to secure Nebraska’s future. So when he and NU’s athletic director, Troy Dannen, convinced Dani Busboom Kelly to join the new head coach, the 69-year-old stepped down.

“I feel like I’ve done the best job coaching of my career. That’s why it’s easy to walk away. I know I put everything I had into it,” John Cook told Nebraska Public Media’s Larry Punteney when they went to Wyoming to film the TV special. Despite always being willing to adapt, the 69-year-old knew the Nebraska Huskers needed a fresh approach, and that’s where DBK came in.

Six months down the line, even the Huskers see what Coach Cook was trying to do. “All love to John, but I think maybe we did need a little bit of a change,” outside hitter Harper Murray told HuskerOnline. The 20-year-old, who still shares arguably the closest bond with John Cook, didn’t hesitate to make this statement at the Big Ten Volleyball Media Days.

“Dani’s been able to bring that out of all of us. It’s been super fun. She’s open to more ideas,” added Murray, seeing DBK switch things around. Despite all his evolution, Kelly has brought some fundamental changes to how John Cook trains them. It may be safe to assume that the 4x National Championship-winning coach thought Nebraska needed such a change to win the NCAA title again.