After turbulent years, Nebraska great Jordan Larson is ready to 'enjoy the ride'

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.

She's doing it amid newfound honesty and transparency about her personal struggles with loss and loneliness.

"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," Larson told the Flatwater Free Press

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 the northeast Nebraska city of Hooper.

"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 Olympics. She talked about feeling lonely as a child, about wanting friends, about being driven to succeed and not fitting in because of it.

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.

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 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 Games and bronze in the 2016 Games. In the 2020 Tokyo Games, the U.S. women won gold for the first time ever. Larson was named MVP.

"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," said Karch Kiraly, the U.S. women's coach since 2012.

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 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 John Cook, who called Larson the "captain of the captains," encouraged her to reconnect with the program. Then he hired her to be an assistant in 2023.

Larson couldn't overcome the pull of the Olympics.

When she rejoined the national team in 2023, she told Kiraly that she was willing to do whatever needed 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.

The U.S. team ultimately lost in the gold medal match 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. 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 ..."

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.

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."

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