In volleyball, Northern Iowa has killed it for 50 years
Panthers have been an elite program throughout nearly their entire history
You can read a media guide or sort through decades of yellowing newspaper clippings to find out just how successful the Northern Iowa volleyball team has been since nearly the day it launched.
Or, you can simply walk into the McLeod Center on the school’s Cedar Falls campus and look up. There, flying in the rafters along nearly half the court, hang 14 banners full of championship years for the Panthers. One year after another stitched in gold tell the story of 50 years of success.
Since 1974, UNI has flown the flag for volleyball in the Hawkeye State. With only four losing seasons in that time – two at the beginning and two during the pandemic – generations of Panthers have made the Missouri Valley Conference mid-major the state’s volleyball school.
“You just know you are a part of so many people that have been through the program and have put their blood, sweat and tears into building what it is today,” said Bobbi (Becker) Petersen, a former Panther star who has been with the program as a player, assistant coach and head coach since 1986. “It’s totally a dream to be able to be at the place where you played and continue to keep it going.”
The program is celebrating its 50th season all season, but past players and coaches will be on hand to be recognized and celebrate together this weekend during Homecoming matches against Evansville on Friday and Indiana State on Saturday.
There’s plenty to celebrate. The Panthers have been to the NCAA tournament 25 times, including three Sweet 16 appearances. They have won 22 regular-season conference championships in their history and 19 conference tournaments. Both conference and NCAA play began in 1982.
Iowa State has become nationally competitive, too, since Christy Johnson-Lynch became coach in 2004. But in the years before that and many others since, when it comes to volleyball, Iowa has been a Panther state.
“We knew that within the state, we weren't the Big Ten, we weren't the Big Eight at the time, Big 12 later,” said Mary Bernhardt, a two-time all-American for the Panthers who played in 1984-87. “We knew that maybe our budgets weren't quite the same, so it kind of put maybe a little chip on our shoulders.”
That feeling has remained over the years. Bre Payton, a three-time MVC Player of the Year who played from 2008 to 2011, said it was always motivation.
“We loved being ‘Iowa's team’ especially because we are a mid-major going toe to toe with the Power 5 conferences,” she said. “There was always a little extra in the tank when you were competing against other instate schools.”
The story of just about any women’s team is a story of starting with nothing, but UNI’s “nothing” had a little serendipity mixed in. Its first season, 1974, had a schedule that included Iowa and Iowa State but also a junior college and the YMCA of Dubuque. By the next year, though, the team coached by Sharon Huddleston already had its first undefeated season (15-0-2).
After a strong 32-16-3 season in 1980, Coach Carol Gruber left and the school was in search of a replacement. The problem? There was a hiring freeze at the university and getting a new coach would be a challenge.
But right on campus, at the high school affiliated with the university, was a coach and teacher who once was in the high ranks of sports in his native Iran and had taught the nation’s crown prince to swim while serving as his tutor.
Iradge Ahrabi-Fard was teaching at Northern University High, the university’s small lab school that closed in 2012. Ahrabi-Fard also was the high school’s track and volleyball coach.
In 1981 Ahrabi-Fard switched to UNI, the college, with three jobs in one – volleyball coach, women’s track coach and physical education professor. At first, the team didn’t have enough players so Ahrabi-Fard put up posters around campus to recruit more. He got 12 to sign up.
“On the day of our first match, only eight showed up,” he said.
That match was a five-set loss to Iowa State, but things got better. As the new coach pieced together a team and taught them the game, the Panthers ended the season with a 40-8-3 record (ties came from tournament play). It was a shoestring operation with the team jamming into vans for road trips, where they would sleep two to a bed in hotel rooms.
The next year, though, changes began. After a few preseason practices, the players came to Ahrabi-Fard’s home with one big demand: They wanted their own beds on road trips.
Then it was Ahrabi-Fard’s turn to make demands. He went to Athletic Director Stan Sheriff and asked for two things. One was to get enough of a budget so players could have their own beds. The other was to let him print 100 tickets he could sell for $1 each to drum up some support at the games.
“So my daughter and I went around the neighborhood and to our friends and we sold about 80 of them,” he said. He also got to lose the track coaching job and was half teaching/half coaching volleyball, a combination he kept his entire career.
Early victories that season, including one over Iowa State, piqued interest in the program and it grew from there.
“We have people from when I played in 1986 who still come to matches today,” Petersen said.
With rosters consisting of primarily Iowa athletes, Ahrabi-Fard’s success continued. His final two Panthers teams went 30-1 (1999) and 29-5 (2000). The 1999, the Panthers started the season with a 30-match winning streak and their only loss came to No. 5 Pacific in the Sweet 16. Ahrabi-Fard was named national coach of the year.
After Ahrabi-Fard retired prior to the 2001 season, his top assistant Petersen took the reins and picked right up the next two season with records of 31-2 and 34-3. She has a 597-216 record as the Panthers’ coach, and was national coach of the year in 2002.
As an academic, Ahrabi-Fard was both a teacher and a student of the game, creating and staying abreast on research about training and motivation – things he still researches in retirement. Despite UNI’s success, the program still didn’t have a huge recruiting advantage against bigger schools. That didn’t matter for Ahrabi-Fard.
“One of his biggest things is he could just take a really good athlete that maybe wasn't as skillful in the game and just make them into a great volleyball player,” Petersen said. “That was his bread and butter – taking really good Iowa athletes and making them great volleyball players.”
Petersen has done that, too. Payton said a key to the teams she was on was the coaching staff’s ability to take non-scholarship walk-on players and develop them. Payton was a walk-on; now she’s in UNI’s Hall of Fame.
“During my career, at the height of our success, four to five starters or consistent players were walk-ons,” she said. “That doesn't happen anywhere I know but at UNI. That staff knows how to cultivate talent and get [everything] they can out of each player.”
Most of the program’s top players have been Iowans: three-time MVC players of the year Molly O’Brien (Parnell) and Payton (Waterloo); four-time all-MVC player Jill Arganbright was from Iowa City; several three-time all-MVC players were also Iowans including Kate Galer of Iowa City (whose twin sister, Kara, was a two-time MVC Player of the Year), Karlie Taylor of Eddyville and Kim McCaffrey of Carroll.
But the town that the Panthers have tapped the most is just 12 miles west of campus: Dike, current population 1,304. For decades it has been a high school volleyball power, both on its own and when it joined with neighboring New Hartford in 1996.
Eighteen Dike/Dike-New Hartford players have been on the UNI roster over the years, including Bernhardt and Petersen. Jadyn Petersen, the coach’s daughter, plays for the Panthers as her older sisters Bailey and Sydney did before her. Bernhardt’s niece, Jenny Willms, also played for both Dike-New Hartford and UNI.
Petersen became coach in 2001, and by then the game had changed. Gone were the days of earning a point only while serving and playing to just 15, not 25. The team’s home court moved from the rowdy but dated West Gym to the McLeod Center in 2006. Now, Petersen said, it’s less about teaching athletes the game in college because they already know it from starting much earlier. Then there’s the speed and athleticism of the game now.
“Our players say, ‘We want to see video of when you played’ and I’ll watch video from back then and think, ‘Oh wow, I’m not showing this to anybody,’” Petersen said. “It was a little slower, there wasn't as much going on. It’s just so funny how different it is and thinking that you were pretty good back then.”
The Panthers remain pretty good. After a brutal non-conference schedule that included losses to No. 4 Louisville, No. 6 Creighton, No. 12 SMU (twice) and No. 20 Dayton, they are in their familiar place atop the Missouri Valley Conference standings with a 9-0 record, 14-7 overall.
Around 100 former players and coaches will be on hand to celebrate this weekend. Bernhardt said they’ll probably talk more about road trips and fun times than any matches, but they’ll certainly revel in being with friends and getting the chance to see one of their own leading the program they love so much.
That’s a big part of the team’s success under Petersen, Bernhardt says of her lifelong friend since they grew up together in Dike.
“You could probably try to dive into Xs and Os and whatever,” she said. “But it's her dedication and her passion, not only for volleyball, but for UNI volleyball.
“We all care. We’re all proud.”
Another traditionally strong women’s program in the state is also celebrating its 50th season soon. Read about it in the coming weeks.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
I’m happy to join fellow Iowa writers and journalists as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. The collaborative is 60 writers throughout the state - likely some familiar names to Iowa readers - publishing on topics ranging from politics to food to sports and so much more. A subscription (paid or free) gets you a Sunday roundup of all the writers’ work that week. One of my colleagues described it as “Iowa’s Sunday newspaper.”
Meet the writers here, and see for yourself the great variety the collaborative offers.
Thank you, Jane! Appreciate your lens into the stories. This is one we will cherish as UNI Volleyball marks the 50th season!
Thanks Jane. I took my daughter to UNI volleyball when she was a little girl and the Beckers were always an inspriation. Mentioned that in a earlier column of mine about Caitlin Clark and Brittney Griner.