“I saw an article, and it said former Nebraska volleyball coach John Cook, and I thought, ‘Whoa! That sounds weird,’” said John Cook’s daughter and former Nebraska Husker Lauren Cook-West during the March edition of Kicking Back with the Cooks on the Huskers’ YouTube channel. And since that announcement, Coach Cook has hit his daughter with a bunch of surprises.
In fact, the former Nebraska Huskers coach continues to impress the entire volleyball community with impressive feats. The 69-year-old has been busy since his retirement, spending time with grandchildren, reinvigorating his love for rodeo and roping, and even making his debut as a volleyball analyst. Unfortunately, that last bit didn’t really please his daughter.
“Something else you’ve been up to that we haven’t touched on yet that I’m p***d about is your color analyst debut,” John Cook’s daughter said in a teasing tone on the latest edition of their podcast. “Because, of course, you do it better than me, and everyone is raving about how great you are,” said the former All-American volleyball player. While it was nothing more than some playful teasing, the question is: Why?
Well, Lauren Cook cleared that up herself. “Now I have some serious competition,” she told her father. Lauren Cook-West has been an analyst and color commentator for years now. While Cook-West doesn’t share too much information about her journey in volleyball commentary, we know that she was already part of the Huskers Sports Network by 2019.
The 2012 All-American has also played the role of a reporter, taking interviews and doing podcasts with her father. It’s a career path she chose after her volleyball days and never looked back. So naturally, she had to ask if John Cook plans to do the same. “Is this something you’re going to continue to pursue?” she asked, but her father didn’t have a straightforward answer.
John Cook is keeping his options open
“We’ll see where it goes in the fall, you know? There’s a lot of travel with that. So, I don’t know how much I want to travel,” explained Cook. And he was right. The former Nebraska coach had to travel to make his debut because he called Nebraska’s spring match with the Kansas Jayhawks at the Bob Devaney Sports Center. But that’s Nebraska’s home ground, right?
Well, John Cook has moved up to Wyoming to spend more time with his family, especially his grandchildren. In fact, it was his granddaughter asking, “When am I going to see you?” that became one of the key motivations behind his decision to retire. So, while Cook has been busy trying things he never got time for, those didn’t come at the expense of family time.
Credits: Instagram/Huskers Volleyball
And that’s another factor that Cook has also discussed during his interview with the Lincoln Journal-Star. “It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. We just have to work through what their plan is,” he said during the interview. However, if those plans involve the 69-year-old once having to spend most of his time away from his family, then Cook might have to rethink things.
Especially now, because the newest member of his family arrived barely a month ago. Who is that member, you ask? When John Cook left coaching, he revealed that Lauren Cook was expecting a second child, and on April 1, 2025, she shared the first image of her baby boy. “One week with our littlest love, Griffin John West,” she wrote on X. Safe to say, Cook didn’t retire from coaching only to miss seeing his grandkids grow up thanks to being a full-time commentator.
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