History will be made in the NCAA women’s volleyball championship game on Sunday when No. 1 seeds Penn State and Louisville take the court at 3 p.m. ET on ABC.

Since the tournament began in 1981, no woman has won the NCAA head coaching title. That will change as either Dani Busboom Kelly of Louisville or Katie Schumacher-Cawley of Penn State will win the championship.

It would be Penn State’s eighth title, moving the Nittany Lions closer to Stanford’s record of nine. It would be a first for Louisville and the ACC.

Many eyes will be on who is at the KFC Yum! takes the court in Louisville. Center: Will Louisville fifth-grader Anna DeBeer play? The outside attacker injured his ankle at the start of the fourth set in Thursday’s 3-1 semifinal win over Pittsburgh.

Their absence could have been devastating for the Cardinals. DeBeer is one of the most experienced players in this Final Four and had 14 kills, 35 receptions (with only 2 errors) and 9 digs before leaving the match.

But freshman Payton Petersen stepped in and played very well, and the Cardinals finished with a win over the No. 1 overall seed Panthers. DeBeer leads the Cardinals in kills per set (3.37) this season. Busboom Kelly said Louisville will do “everything we can to get her on the court, but we have a great team behind her.”

Schumacher-Cawley said Penn State will prepare as if DeBeer were going to play: “As a senior and here at Louisville, I think if she has the ability to compete, she will.”

Louisville also participated in the 2022 NCAA Finals, where it lost to Texas. This is Penn State’s first finals since winning its seventh title in 2014, and Nittany Lions players say they believe they are getting the program back to where it belongs.

There’s a lot at stake on Sunday, so here’s what to watch for the finale.

Will DeBeer play?

With Louisville up 2-0 in the fourth set against Pitt on Thursday, DeBeer slid to the middle of the court to form a block with teammate Phekran Kong. She jumped with Kong, hands outstretched. She came down with Kong, but DeBeer’s right foot landed on Kong’s left heel. Her ankle turned to the side.

The referees immediately stopped the game and DeBeer lay on the field for a minute before he was helped to the sideline and then off the field. Without them, Louisville stepped on the gas. The Cardinals led 9-5 when she returned to the bench.

She told Busboom Kelly that she wanted to get back in the game. But when she tried to jump, it hurt.

Louisville never relinquished the lead that DeBeer gave and secured its place in the title game on Sunday with a 22-17 victory. After the final point, DeBeer limped onto the court to celebrate, but stayed out of the Cardinals’ dogpile.

DeBeer attended practice in Louisville on Friday – on an electric scooter. She didn’t participate.

If she can’t come on Sunday, the graduate student and Louisville native will be difficult to replace. There aren’t many people on the planet with her combination of talent and experience – she has 277 career kills in NCAA tournament games alone.

“It’s an ankle injury, so I think it’s kind of an everyday problem,” Busboom Kelly said Friday. “The extra day (between the semi-final and the final, which used to be Saturday evening) gives us hope. I think if we played (Saturday) there would be no hope.”

How much history is being written?

Those who don’t follow volleyball may be stunned to hear that no woman has ever won the NCAA head coaching title. One reason is that there are more male coaches, particularly at prominent Division I programs. The most prestigious and highest-paying jobs in college volleyball are among women, who have 344 Division I teams, compared to fewer than 30 at the men.

Sam Erger, head coach at SMU, says women have long been passed over for coaching positions because men won championships in the past, creating a vicious cycle.

“I don’t understand the whole thing: ‘We can’t find a qualified trainer,'” she said. “I think that’s nonsense.”

Female head coaches are on the rise, Busboom Kelly and Schumacher-Cawley are prime examples. Both won national championships as players, and Busboom Kelly also won one as an assistant coach with her alma mater, Nebraska.

“(I’m) really proud that we can be role models and hopefully pave a new path and show ADs that women can do it,” Busboom Kelly said. “We can be mothers and we can be senior coaches.

“I think it will be great for the sport to get rid of this crap and get on with it, where it’s not historic for a woman to win, it’s just a normal thing. It will be great if there is every Final Four a chance for a woman to win it.

Penn State middle blocker Taylor Trammell said, “Katie is paving the way for us. If we want to become coaches, it shows that there is a pipeline and a path that we too, just like them, can follow to be successful. To everyone. “The little girls out there – ‘Hey, I want to be a big DI coach’ – they can do it.”

The other possible story is that Louisville could become the first ACC team to win the NCAA volleyball title. Of course, new ACC member Stanford’s nine titles came before joining the league. Busboom Kelly, who took over Louisville in 2017, also credits four-time Final Four participant Pitt for a large part of the ACC’s rise.

“Eight years ago, it felt like I was always fighting the battle of, ‘Well, I want to play in the Big Ten. I go to this school just because they’re in the Big Ten,'” she said. “Now we don’t hear that anymore, which is great.”

How electric will it be in Louisville?

It’s comparable to Nebraska, which played in Omaha, near its Lincoln campus, in past Final Fours. When a team from their hometown or home state is in the final four, there’s just an extra level of energy. The Cardinals were under pressure all season to reach the Finals in their hometown, and they did it.

Excitement was high in the final four, with a semi-final record crowd of 21,726 spectators (not counting the four horses representing each team on the sidelines) and two thrilling games, the second of which went five sets.

“The crowd was rocking, so just feeding off of their fire was huge,” said Kong, from Louisville.

On Thursday, fans lined up outside the KFC Yum! The center holds cameras and signs (“We came all the way from Maine for this,” one read) as the teams arrived on the red carpet. A sea of ​​red (both Louisville and Nebraska fans) swarmed the arena. When DeBeer was introduced, there was a thunderous roar.

While some Nebraska fans – who travel particularly well – left after the Huskers’ semifinal loss, others will stay for the finale to cheer on Busboom Kelly. A native of Nebraska, she won the national championship as a Huskers player in 2006.

Can Louisville slow Mruzik and Jurevicius?

Jess Mruzik and Caroline Jurevicius did the most damage in Thursday’s reverse sweep over Nebraska: Mruzik had 26 kills and Jurevicius had 20. Louisville’s block, which was effective against Pitt, will try to keep this duo in check a little more. It won’t be easy.

Mruzik, who transferred from Michigan to Penn State before last season, hits the ball so hard and from such tight angles that some of the best teams in the country have had trouble stopping her. Mruzik led the Nittany Lions past Nebraska by hitting .300. She has 2,000 career kills behind her.

“It was one of the best performances I’ve ever seen from an outside hitter,” Nebraska coach John Cook said. “Finding ways to get kills, hitting off our block, making really sharp cross-court shots. We thought we had it done, but she did a great job hitting our fingertips.”

Jurevicius, a transfer from Nebraska, had two of her biggest games of the season against her former team: Thursday’s semifinals and the Nittany Lions’ regular-season win on Nov. 29, when she had 18 kills.

Jurevicius talked about the determination Penn State had to have to beat the Huskers after a 2-0 loss.

“In these moments, it reminds me and my teammates that we work hard at Penn State,” she said. “Whether it’s because it’s 30 degrees in our gym in the early season or because we’re running through the snow and coming back at 3 a.m., we go above and beyond.”

How might things be different from the first meeting of these teams?

On September 3, Penn State prevailed over Louisville, not only winning the Cards but also losing by only 47 points. Mruzik and Jurevicius combined for 24 kills. What has changed?

For the Cardinals, a tough five-set win over Northern Iowa in the second round of the tournament changed their energy. Kong spoke about how this win solidified their connection and growth after some “ugly losses” this season. They play with more courage.

“I know they are a much better team than when we first played them in pre-season,” Schumacher-Cawley said. “I think we are a much better team than we were the first time in pre-season. It’s going to be a fight.”

As for Penn State, the Nittany Lions look more unified than ever. They believe they can come back from anything – and coming back from a 22-16 deficit in the fourth set against a team like Nebraska in the national semifinals can only reinforce that confidence. The Nittany Lions need to win the serve-pass game and control the ball on their side of the court, Schumacher-Cawley said.