Lincolnite

She has a right to her feelings and opinions.  The statement about the phony smiles, hugs and high fives after every point are probably what did the most damage. 

I don’t agree for a second with Cook.  And I too would like to here the spin Dr. Osborne will put on this, if any.

This is pretty shocking, especially since I and probably most other people view the volleyball program as being a shining star for UNL. 

I’m especially disappointed in Cook.  Up to this point he’s been a model coach for all sports: he wins, his players graduate, and there is generally no controversy from his program.  For him to kick off the team possibly the greatest player in school history (!!!!) for some things she said in an interview is outrageous.  At most he could be disappointed in her, but she deserves far more respect than she was given. He should personally and publicly apologize to her, and offer to let her back at practice. 

I wouldn’t be surprised if the national sports networks pick up on this, since she was a ‘national’ player, and neither Cook nor TO want the bad publicity it’s going to bring.  There’s probably no template for damage control for a volleyball controversy, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out.  I wonder if TO thought the first program that would bring him stress would be the volleyball program.

I’m not quite sure why people are upset with Coach Cook? He didn’t write the article. And he didn’t force Pavan to do the interview. Regardless of that, let us not forget, regardless of how academically brilliant Ms. Pavan is and regardless of how amazing she is on the vball court, she’s still a young woman with a lot of maturing yet to do. I thought the article was yet another display of pointless journalism by the LJS. I felt the article cast Sarah in a very poor light, not the NU program or coaches. I think anyone who is a fan of Nebraska Volleyball knows she is reserved and didn’t like all the hooplah, why the article to prove it? Bottom line, when you are the NATION’S TOP volleyball player, like it or not, you are going to have to step out of your comfort zone and deal with the accolades and the attention.

I have a ton of questions about this article but when I first read the original article, to me, Pavan comes across as a real whiner.  “No one understands me” “no one acknowledges me”

In the article her father says:

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I’m a big fan of Coach Cook.  As I said earlier, he’s a model coach for a model program.  To ban Sarah from practice because of some things she said in an interview, effectively tarnishing her amazing career, is inexplicable.  I’m not saying he needs to be fired or reprimanded for this, I’m saying it’s incredibly disappointing.

I haven’t seen the story in the LJS yet, so I’ll assume you were referring to the DN.  Sure, it’s pointless journalism, but so is everything else the DN has done since Neal left there several years ago.  But you can’t blame pointless journalism for the stain the volleyball program now has to live with for a while.

To clarify the above, her banishment from practice tarnishes her career, not the comments in the interview.

Do you know for sure she’s been banned from practice? If she has, I look at it this way…he’s got to get his team focused for the spring schedule and for next fall, they don’t need this kind of distraction. Having her in practice to fire some spikes at the team would be very beneficial, but with all this fallout from the article maybe Coach Cook decided it’s best for the team if she wasn’t around. If it’s true, I agree that it’s disappointing because Pavan brought a lot to the program, but I am sure there is a lot going on in those offices and on that court that the general public isn’t privvy to and Cook took the action he felt was best for the team as a whole, which is more than Sarah did when she decided to give the interview. She didn’t received all those awards on her own, she had a supportive coaching staff and team helping her every step of the way. She should be thanking them instead of complaining about being uncomfortable and misunderstood.

The LJS made the choice to print the article. The LJS has a larger number of subscribers than Redwire.

I completely and totally agree!!!

There are definitely no positives to come out of this situation. Although its true that the article could have been some sort of vindictive and whiny strike by Sarah against the program, an aggressive move by the journos behind the story, or just the by-product of a badly thought out interview, the attitude a lot of people have voiced against Sarah is pretty telling.

Just in passing conversation with people I know at UNL, I’ve been pretty surprised at how brutal folks have been towards Sarah. Although I agree in principle that there is a required discipline and spirit that comes with the job of being a champion athlete, its no surprise that these kids are, in the end, not just robots for the UNL athletics program but actual people with real emotions.

I also think that the “stop reporting this story” line by Cook is pretty obnoxious to say the least. It will be interesting to see if this story actually develops, or if it just “goes away”.

If you’re going to be a head coach of any major program you have to be able to PROFESSIONALLY handle the media. People behaving like adults don’t threaten a journalist at the first whiff of criticism.

The other point I wanted to make is this…The NU athletic department is a PR nightmare.  I really thought that the problems would be shored up with the end of the Stevie P era, but I guess not.  Things consistently went wrong under Petey’s direction.  Leaks, denials, rumors, Bill Callahan, etc. 

What’s even more troubling, is that the reaction comes from the shining star that is the Nebraska Volleyball program.  Would Terry Petite do something like this?  Absolutely not.  What possessed Cook to do this?  Why alienate the greatest player in program history by kicking her off the team?

I am disappointed at how things have developed in regards to Sarah these past few days in “husker nation”. If she was the star player of the football team about to go into the NFL, this would be all over ESPN. The way Cook has disposed of her is just ugly.

Best of luck Sarah.

The thing she says the “phony smiles, hugs and high fives” are not phony to the rest of the team or they would do them.  I hated that stuff when I played baseball, the rally caps, the stupid made up handshakes we did, and the worst was the “magic bat” which was an old wooden bat one of the fathers had that was at the edge of the dugout and everyone touched it for luck before batting.  I hated that part of baseball, I always thought we should just play the game hard, but I played that game as well as the one on the field.  I never fit in with most of the players and didn’t hang with them off the field.  I definitly see where she is coming from.