ADAMS — Lexi Holland has a not-so-secret weapon when she needs to motivate her players. The Freeman High School girls volleyball coach jumps 26 years in the past, to the district’s first state championship and one player in particular: Dani Busboom Kelly.
“Her jersey’s in our gym,” says Holland, who also teaches second grade in the district 30 minutes southeast of Lincoln. “We hang her picture up sometimes and (ask), ‘If Dani was here watching, how would you practice?’”
Busboom Kelly, a former Husker player who became the team’s head coach earlier this year, looms large in Adams, a farming community of 604 residents.. That was true even before she ascended to the top job with the perennial powerhouse in her home state.
Busboom Kelly’s mother, Bonnie Busboom, still recalls the group of t