LINCOLN, Neb. -- She missed the biggest event in her hometown again. But these things happen when it's time to be a college volleyball star.
Nebraska outside hitter Mikaela Foecke -- whose last name is pronounced FECK-ee -- is from West Point, Iowa, which has hosted the annual Sweet Corn Festival every summer since 1952. It's a four-day celebration of Iowa-ness, with carnival rides, bands, bathtub races, water fights, a horseshoe tournament, a tractor pull, an arts and crafts show, 5K and 10K runs and a parade.
And, of course, massive consumption of sweet corn. The whole town gathers before the festival to shuck upwards of 18 tons of corn. So, yes, before she became a Cornhusker, Foecke did a lot of corn shucking.
"It's pretty crazy," Foecke said. "It's a town of about 900, and it multiplies by a lot during the Sweet Corn Festival. There's lots of visitors, and all the family members who don't live in West Point anymore come back for it. It's basically a big reunion."
However, this year's festival was held Aug. 11-14, and defending national champion Nebraska had started volleyball practice. So, like last year, Foecke had to rely on reports from her mom about how things went.
"She lets me know who she's seen, who came home, who was the Sweet Corn Festival queen," Foecke said.
The athletic queen of West Point already had been crowned, though, and her reign is ongoing. Foecke came to Lincoln in 2015 as one of the country's most coveted recruits. She showed a knack for the big points early on, and that carried all the way through the national championship match in December.
Foecke had 19 kills in a sweep of Texas in front of an NCAA-record crowd of 17,561 mostly red-clad Husker fans in Omaha, Nebraska. She was named the most outstanding player of the volleyball championship.
"I just love the big moments; I'm not going to lie," Foecke said. "When you hear the fans screaming, and you want that point so bad for your team, and you know the game's on the line, I'm not going to let my teammates down.
"You have to go after it and play fearlessly. I hope that's the mentality I have, and a lot of that is attributed to my teammates. Because you can't swing fearlessly if you don't believe your teammates are going to have your back."
So how many times has she seen that championship match, or highlights of it?
"None," she said, smiling. "I think that if I re-watched it, it wouldn't be as good as it is in my mind.
"But every athlete probably has that one game where he or she can always pull from that. The national championship -- just the feeling of the crowd and the way we all played together -- is something I want to work for every game."
We can assure her if she ever does watch the final, it will be really good. Nebraska avenged a 3-2 loss to Texas near the start of the 2015 season. It was shortly after that early-September defeat, in fact, that Nebraska coach John Cook made two key position changes. He switched All-American Kadie Rolfzen to the right side, and put Foecke on the left.
Kadie's twin, Amber, already had changed from outside hitter her first two seasons to middle blocker for 2015, so there was a lot riding on everyone adapting well to reach their stated goal of an NCAA title.
"I think we continued to get better all season, but we didn't make it click until after those two losses at home to Minnesota and Wisconsin," Foecke said, referencing back-to-back defeats at the Devaney Center on Oct. 23-24. "Then it was like, 'OK, we've got to kick this into gear if we really want to make our words reality.' We worked harder than we had before. We started getting to know each other, not just the obvious things, but the deeper things."
She means the Huskers truly started to understand the complexities of their strengths and weaknesses, and the best ways to complement each other. They didn't lose another match, closing out the season winning 16 in a row.
With so much back -- including the Rolfzens, Foecke and setter Kelly Hunter -- plus key additions both from transfers and the freshman class, the Huskers are preseason No. 1 and have a realistic hope of accomplishing a first for Nebraska: repeating as national champions.
The program has won four NCAA titles overall: in 1995, 2000, 2006 and last year. Cook was head coach for the past three. He was pleased with the way Nebraska played in 2001 when trying to repeat; the Huskers made the final four before falling in the semifinals to a Logan Tom-led Stanford team that won the title.
The end of the 2007 season, though, was a disappointment. The Huskers were mega-talented, bringing back all their stars from the 2006 championship. Yet they were swept in a regional final by Cal.
"They were a great team on paper, but they were not a great team when it came to crunch time," Cook said. "And that's what this team has been working on and figuring out this summer: How they can be great at crunch time."
Foecke, who was second on the team last year in overall kills (386) and kills per set (3.09), should be a big part of that. Hunter, who as the setter knows her teammates' pluses and minuses very well, basically says Foecke is so good, "she's ridiculous." But Hunter thinks Foecke can be more vocal this season.
Foecke is also making the improvements you'd expect from a big hitter entering her sophomore year: getting stronger, diversifying her offense, and ramping up her serve receive and defense.
At 6-foot-3, she relied on natural ability throughout high school. At Nebraska, she's had access to top-notch strength training, and the results are obvious.
"I'm hang-cleaning and squatting things now that I would have looked at last summer and thought, 'Wow, I'm never going to get there,'" Foecke said. "But it's all a process, and each day you keep getting better and striving to work harder."
For a kid who showed hogs and always had a daily list of chores, hard work is routine. An animal science major, she wants to be a veterinarian, preferably for large animals. But she probably has a lot of volleyball to play before she's practicing as Dr. Foecke.
"She's gotten stronger, quicker, more explosive," Cook said of Foecke's work during the summer. "Hopefully, that's going to allow her to go to another level as a player."