TODD HENRICHS / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Thursday, December 8, 2005 6:00 pm
HOOPER — These are the tales that only a mom would tell. The sad thing, for their sons, at least, is they can’t even deny the stories. Not in a small town, where word travels faster than the walk from the bank to Don’s Barber Shop on a brisk December day.
“Did you hear? Jordan won the punt, pass and kick contest. Beat all the boys again this year,” goes one story.
“Whenever there was a pickup basketball game, she kicked all their butts,” goes another.
Welcome to Hooper, population 827, and hometown of Nebraska freshman Jordan Larson.
Here, in a valley just south of the Elkhorn River, no one is too surprised to see Larson playing a key role in her first season with the Husker volleyball team. She’s dominated the sports scene in town, since, well, as long as anyone can remember.
Even newcomers to town have heard the stories. Deirdra French was working out Wednesday afternoon in the community’s newly opened fitness center.
“All I know is the people in town sure are proud of her,” French said.
From the table crowded with coffee drinkers in the Shell gas station to the Office Bar and Grill, one of Larson’s favorite places to eat, Hooperites all seem to say the same thing.
Larson is a tremendous athlete, the best they’ve ever seen come through these parts, and someone who never, ever let success go to her head. That modesty is something that even Nebraska head coach John Cook noticed in a recruiting visit to rural Logan View High School during Larson’s career.
“I met all of her family, grandmas, aunts, uncles,” Cook said. “These guys are 90 years old and they live seven miles down in this town and five miles down in this town.
“The interesting thing was Jordan interacted with everybody. There wasn’t one person that she didn’t say hi to and connect with. It was amazing.”
Of course, that’s a way of life in a small town. On Wednesday afternoon, Jordan’s mom, Kae Clough, could be found pushing a shopping cart through the town’s main-street grocery, a place where you can order rulleplse from a state senator working behind the meat counter.
State Sen. Ray Janssen and wife Nancy of Nickerson have owned the store for nearly 30 years.
Down the block in the office of the local State Farm Insurance agent, a grandmother of Larson, Marlene Clough, is seated in a chair just inside the door.
“Jordan could have been Division I in anything she wanted,” says insurance agent Bob Wiesenberg, himself a former minor leaguer in the Minnesota Twins organization. “But volleyball is definitely her thing.”
Whenever the Huskers are on TV, Nancy Janssen says the townsfolk are usually at home and glued to the action.
Hooper is located a few miles north of Fremont, one of many small towns that dot U.S. 275 on the way from Norfolk to Omaha. A bypass will soon shift the road a few miles to the south of town, not far from where Larson lived for the last nine years.
The family’s brick home backs up to the town’s cemetery. Neighbors, the Wiesenbergs, say it wasn’t always a quiet place at night.
They recall evenings when Larson would repeatedly slap volleyballs against the door of the garage. Sometimes they’d here the thud as they watched the 10 o’clock news.
The Wiesenbergs’ son, Brian, graduated from Logan View in 2000, five years ahead of Larson. When both were younger, Larson would often ring the doorbell and ask Brian to come out and shoot baskets.
When he’d come in, Brian would always say the same thing, his parents recalled. “Someday, Jordan is going to be quite a player.”
Reach Todd Henrichs at 473-7439 or thenrichs@journalstar.com.