Blocking Out Darkness: Huskers’ Allick thrives after growing up in ‘dysfunctional,’ competitive family

A booming thud seemed to cement the redemption rout. Before a raucous crowd littered with red in Penn State’s Rec Hall, the No. 1 Husker volleyball team was on the verge of decisively taking the first set from the team that had blocked them from a national title appearance one year earlier. 

Nebraska needed one more point. Then came the thud — an arching volley smacked down to the court with such force that the Nittany Lions had no time to react.

“How fitting that it ends that way from Rebekah Allick,” exclaimed the announcer on the Oct. 3 telecast.

Four days later, roughly 250 miles southeast of Lincoln, another Allick prepared for a far less glamorous road match. Hannah Allick, Rebekah’s twin sister, was trying to hold her Missouri Southern State University teammates together under the uncertainty of playing for an interim coach as they faced the University of Central Missouri.

Hannah, a captain and team leader in assists, served to open the match and came up with a couple of big digs to help the Lions score early. It wasn’t enough to prevent a 3-0 sweep by Central Missouri.

Volleyball is where the sisters’ shared journey diverged. After playing together in high school, first in Lincoln and then Waverly, Rebekah’s size and talent helped land her on the Huskers, the favorites to win the NCAA volleyball tournament that’s now down to 16 teams. Hannah, with her shorter stature, ended up at Missouri Southern, which finished the season with a 10-18 record. 

But before the sport they love led them down different paths, the sisters were just two of six kids in a family that faced its share of hardships. All six kids and their mother uprooted from Texas after a divorce and eventually ended up in Nebraska.

Then, after building a life and finding stability, the Allick children’s stepfather died in a motorcycle crash that also severely injured Colleen Ziegelbein, the matriarch of the family who once again found herself as a single mother with six kids who each had their own challenges. Rebekah and Hannah were 9 at the time of the crash.

“I feel like we’re just as dysfunctional, if not more, as the family next door,” said Rebekah. “Honestly, I would have it no other way.”  

***

Before Bill and Colleen Ziegelbein hopped on his Triumph for a trip to Sturgis, South Dakota, Kalev Allick wanted a hug and one more picture with his stepdad.

The youngest of the six Allick children had struggled with behavioral issues early in life — he would later be diagnosed with autism — and needed structure. Bill Ziegelbein was the perfect antidote. The 6’4”, 255-pound walk-on-turned-starting-center for the Husker football team formed a special bond with Kalev.

“Bill was a really big, calm guy, and he can calm Kalev down just by being in the room,” Colleen Ziegelbein said. 

That 2013 picture of Kalev and his stepdad turned out to be the last one taken of Bill. He and Colleen were riding just north of White River, South Dakota, when the bike left the road near a curve, the Lincoln Journal Star reported at the time. Both were thrown from the bike.

Bill died at the scene. He was 44. 

Much of that time remains foggy, Rebekah said, but she recalled a lot of hugs — and being focused on Kalev’s well-being. 

“A lot of us were consoling Kalev … because he was definitely the closest with Bill,” she told the Flatwater Free Press. “They had a very special connection. I felt like Bill stepped in, like the father figure that Kalev honestly never had.”

Kalev, who is 13 months younger than Rebekah and Hannah, was only six months old when Colleen and Melvin Anthony Allick II, the Allick children’s biological father, divorced. Soon after the split, Colleen and kids moved north from Texas. 

It doesn’t surprise Colleen today that what Rebekah remembers most about Bill’s death was her sisterly concern for Kalev. 

“She’s a very caring person under all that fight and beasty person that you see on that (volleyball) court,” Colleen Ziegelbein said. 

For her part, Colleen Ziegelbein, who was in a torso cast and bedridden at home for three months after the crash, was concerned about all her kids, including her twin daughters. 

“In some very important developmental stages, what she (Rebekah) thought was going to be there wasn’t there anymore. That can really fracture a person.”

She added, “But I think our family bondedness and her faith actually just helped her see life differently and not let it fracture her.”

Before Colleen married Bill Ziegelbein, she had already instilled a sense of independence in her kids. 

She instituted what she called a “buddy” system in which one of the older siblings had a younger “buddy” to look out for. Rebekah’s buddy was Josiah, who finished his college basketball career with the Huskers in 2024 and now plays for the Greensboro Swarm in the NBA G League. 

“We had to be that way,” Ziegelbein said. “With six kids very close in age, I was a single parent for a while. That’s just how we rolled.” 

***

It’s no surprise that the Allick children ended up being star athletes. Ziegelbein, a Lincoln Public Schools special education teacher, played basketball at Northwest Missouri State University from 1988 to 1991. Josiah was a standout athlete in high school, as was the oldest of the Allick kids, Sarah.

“We’d just go to the park and climb trees and have foot races on the football fields,” Ziegelbein recalled. “It’s just always been that way.” 

The 6-foot-4 Rebekah Allick commanded presence, even over her twin sister, from the moment she entered the world in 2004. Rebekah was 8 pounds, 4 ounces; Hannah was 6 pounds, 10 ounces.

Neither of the sisters had even played a high school match when Rebekah, already 6’3”, committed to the Huskers. Colleen recalled what she asked then-coach John Cook. “Do you feel you can put a bridle on that mustang because no one’s done it yet?” 

Ever the competitor, Rebekah at the time was looking to the more immediate challenges.

“My (older sister Sarah) said I better break all of her records at North Star, and that’s my plan right now,” she told the Journal Star ahead of her freshman year. 

After two seasons, the Allick sisters moved from North Star to Waverly High School, where Rebekah continued to earn national attention. As her collegiate freshman year neared, Cook remarked on Allick’s potential to make an immediate impact on the perennial powerhouse.

“Bekka was named captain of the USA team. Think about that,” Cook told the Journal Star. “Of the thousands of kids that are 18 and under, 12 are selected for that team, and then she’s named captain.”

Both Allick sisters put together impressive high school careers. But any notion of the twins becoming the first to play for the Huskers since Amber and Kadie Rolfzen — the twins on the 2015 national championship team — was soon put to rest. 

“I don’t believe in just taking sisters because they’re sisters. If they both earn it as individuals, so be it,” said Colleen Ziegelbein. 

That didn’t mean it was easy for Rebekah to accept. 

“It kind of hurt my heart because I feel like she had the motor of a Division I player, but at the end of the day it comes down to how you feel about yourself,” Rebekah said. 

Hannah’s Missouri Southern career as a 5-foot-9 setter ended on a positive note in mid-November in Wichita, Kansas, with a road sweep at Newman University.

“I look back on my collegiate career with a lot of gratitude,” Hannah Allick said from Joplin. “This program has provided so much more than a great volleyball experience.”

***

Cook gave a simple assessment of his team’s season-ending loss to Penn State in the 2024 NCAA Women’s Volleyball Final Four. “It was a great match by both teams and it’s a bummer somebody had to lose it.” 

The match in October, nearly 10 months later, was far more lopsided, as the Huskers swept Penn State on their home floor, en route to a 30-0 regular season and overall No. 1 seed under new Nebraska coach Dani Busboom Kelly. Allick, as one of the self-appointed “Grandmas” on this year’s veteran team, surpassed Sarah Pavan on Sept. 27 for fifth place on the Huskers’ all-time blocks list.

Heading into the final two matches of the regular season, Busboom Kelly was asked what it has been like to coach Allick. The coach described her as a “team player and somebody that’s ultra competitive” and noted her growth as a leader over the past 10 months. Busboom Kelly also seemed to echo Colleen Ziegelbein’s “bridle on a mustang” remark to Cook years earlier.

“She’s very opinionated, and I think that’s good to have a player like that on your team because they’re not afraid to question coaches’ decisions.”

Rebekah Allick’s outspokenness hasn’t been limited to volleyball. She has talked openly about her faith, which she has pointed to as motivation for lending her voice to political causes in Nebraska — namely a ballot initiative seeking to limit abortion access and legislation barring transgender athletes from competing on athletic teams that don’t match their sex at birth. 

Allick’s support of those causes earned both praise and intense criticism. She recently told the Nebraska Examiner that her experience has been difficult, but she felt compelled to speak up because of her faith.

“I have been told, like, ‘You shouldn’t use your platform,” Allick told the Examiner. “‘You should just stick to talking about sports.’ But I’m a Christian. I’m a daughter. I’m a sister way before I was an athlete.”

Colleen Ziegelbein has seen differing political views evolve between her twin daughters. “Rebekah’s gotten more conservative as she’s gotten older, and Hannah’s very liberal,” she said.

But rather than have a family fractured by polarized views, Ziegelbein implores her twins to accept each other no matter what. 

“They have drifted with how they vote, but we’ve agreed that the dining room table is a neutral place,” said Ziegelbein. “Don’t talk politics. Be careful how you talk about religion. Whatever your interests are, just be respectful and it’s OK to disagree.”

On the court, Nebraska easily defeated Long Island University and Kansas State in the first two rounds of the tournament and now have a regional semifinal match at home against Kansas on Friday. Against Long Island, Allick had 10 kills while hitting .750. In a three-set NCAA tournament match, no Husker had ever previously hit .750 or better.

After falling short the last two years of winning a national championship, Rebekah said the team this season is playing with a chip on its shoulder. 

Pro volleyball beckons after Allick’s Nebraska career is finished, but those decisions won’t be made known until after the NCAA tournament. As for her career after volleyball?

“Truth be told, I want to really be like a rancher or some type of carpenter,” she said. “I really like working with my hands. I want to build something.” 

Craftsmanship is another passion the twin sisters share — Hannah aspires to be an art teacher after completing college. 

“I think it’s an appreciation of crafting that we both have and seeing how far we can stretch that with connecting to people about cool things,” said Hannah Allick. “It’s just a really simple idea that we both grew up with.” 

Rebekah Allick said it would be amazing if the family could reunite in Kansas City, the host site for the Final Four and championship rounds, for the program’s sought-after sixth national title.

“I love my family very much and all of its brokenness. But also its togetherness and, in a weird way, we bond over the craziest things,” she said. “I’m very grateful that God gave me the family I do have.”