A college volleyball match in Lincoln, Nebraska, claims the attendance record for a women’s sporting event. According to the organizers, a total of 92,003 people attended the match between the local team and the Omaha team. That would mean breaking the attendance record set in a Champions League match between Barca and Wolfsburg for women in March 2022, which brought together 91,648 spectators.
The local team had been preparing for months to achieve the record. They chose to play at Memorial Stadium, the Huskers’ football stadium, with a theoretical capacity of 85,000. Since it was a volleyball game, however, there were also spectators on what would be the playing field in a soccer game. The program included several games and finally a concert by Scotty McCreery, a country singer who won the American Idol contest in 2011, something like the American Operation Triumph.
Nebraska is one of the least populated states in the United States, with less than two million inhabitants, and Lincoln is the second largest city, with 293,000. This implies that the equivalent of a third of its population gathered at the stadium to break the record. Across the state, classes were canceled to facilitate attendance.
“We took the risk of playing at Memorial Stadium, and going for the record and breaking it. I don’t think anyone would have imagined it when all this started,” said John Cook, Nebraska’s coach, in statements collected by AP. “It is a great achievement for this women’s sport called volleyball. It is a state treasure. We have shown it.”
Nebraska has won five national volleyball championships, but where they are unbeatable is attendance. They have led it every season since 2013 and recorded 8 of the 9 largest crowds for a women’s college volleyball match. However, last September, the Badgers, Nebraska’s historic rival and the team that defeated it in the 2021 national championship, broke the attendance record for a regular season game with 16,833 people in Madison, Wisconsin.
It was an affront to the Nebraska team, which has posted a “no tickets” sign in 306 consecutive regular-season games on the Devaney Center court, the volleyball team’s usual home. The American football team, for its part, has filled the stadium 389 consecutive times.
Nebraska set out to not only break that record, but to go all out and achieve a world record. The idea arose to include a concert as a teaser, but even before any performance was announced, 82,000 tickets were sold in three days, at a price of $25 for adults and $5 for children.
The American record for attendance at a women’s sporting event had been 90,185 in the 1999 World Cup final between the United States and China at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena (California), when the locals became champions in the penalty shootout with the goal decisive by Brandi Chastain.
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Source: EL PAIS
