LINCOLN, Neb. — As a kid in Hawaii, Jaylen Reyes competed in club volleyball with a team of athletes straight out of the country club. In school, he befriended classmates from the Honolulu housing projects.
It is his superpower, Reyes said, the ability to connect. The way of life in his home state prepared Reyes for his career outside of it.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“In Hawaii, you have no choice,” he said. “You have so many cultures, you just learn how to interact with different people.”
Hired by Nebraska as an assistant in 2018 by then-coach John Cook, Reyes mixed his relational skills with a tireless work ethic to expand the recruiting reach of a program that won five national titles from 1995 to 2017.
At 33 years old, Reyes has emerged as the best recruiter on the Nebraska campus. His influence is all over the No. 1-ranked Huskers’ unbeaten season as they enter the final weekend of the regular season. Coaches in other sports at Nebraska so respect his acumen that they’ve tapped into Reyes’ recruiting expertise. No one else in the athletic department has assembled multiple top-ranked classes.
Reyes is such a known figure at Nebraska that he even hosts a weekly, hourlong radio show.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“He eats, sleeps and breathes recruiting,” said Cook, who retired after 25 seasons in January. “He wants to hoard players. Even when we were done recruiting, I’d be like, ‘Jaylen, we don’t have any more scholarships, we don’t need any more players.’
“And he was still recruiting. That’s why he’s great.”
A national championship has evaded Nebraska since Reyes arrived. Nebraska has played in four Final Fours in his seven seasons and lost twice in the championship match — against Texas in 2023 and Wisconsin in 2021.
Nebraska (28-0, 18-0 Big Ten) clinched a third consecutive conference title last week and will host Penn State and Ohio State on Friday and Saturday. A top seed in the NCAA Tournament awaits Sunday.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Final Four this year will be played in Kansas City, Dec. 18 and 21. It’s ripe for a Nebraska takeover if the Huskers avoid an upset during the tournament’s first two weekends. Nebraska enters the postseason as a prohibitive favorite in large part because of the talent that Reyes stockpiled.
He recruited every player on the roster, which includes three of the 14 semifinalists for AVCA National Player of the Year and four returning All-Americans. Nebraska signed the No. 1-ranked recruiting classes in 2021 and 2023, and the No. 2 class last year.
Reyes signed a one-year deal at Nebraska after Dani Busboom Kelly returned to coach her alma mater, replacing Cook after leaving Louisville. Reyes could likely write his ticket as a head coach. He’s received opportunities, but he can afford to stay selective. His base salary of $170,000 exceeds the pay of some head coaches.
“There’s major turnover going on right now,” Cook said. “And he’s going to be at the top of those lists. But he’s got a few more things to continue to check off here. He’s not there yet, but he’s working toward it.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementA national championship next month would check a box. A big one.
Reyes’ dad, Tino, coached men’s volleyball for 17 years at the University of Hawaii as an assistant, then spent seven seasons as the head women’s coach at Hawaii Hilo. Even after Jaylen earned acclaim in the sport, first as a player at BYU and then for his role in building the Nebraska women’s program into a nationally recognized brand, he remained, at home in a volleyball hotbed, known most as Tino’s son.
Before his senior year of high school, Reyes figured he’d join his dad at Hawaii for college to play volleyball. But when Tino jumped islands to coach the women at Hilo, Reyes looked to the mainland.
Reyes knew he eventually wanted to coach. BYU appealed to him because it had produced the likes of Hugh McCutcheon and Kevin Hambly, great players who moved into coaching at the Team USA level and in the women’s collegiate game.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementReyes played libero on a Cougars team that lost in the NCAA title match in 2013. When he began his coaching career at BYU, Reyes saw others older than him in the men’s game being passed over for jobs coaching women.
Women’s volleyball offered better pay and more opportunities, so Reyes marked it as a goal. He never expected to hear from Nebraska.
Before his third year on staff at BYU — weeks after Cook’s team beat Florida in Kansas City to win the national championship — Reyes received a text out of the blue from the Nebraska coach.
Reyes was 25. Cook wanted a young coach who would stay in Lincoln. He had recently lost assistants in Busboom Kelly to Louisville, Chris Tamas to Illinois and Tyler Hildebrand to coach Olympians on the beach. Cook asked for a three-year commitment. Reyes offered him five.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“With him here, I knew it would help build our culture,” Cook said.
Cook was right. His players loved Reyes, whose recruiting talents had only begun to emerge.
“I’m still a firm believer that it’s about people,” Reyes said. “If you get to know them and let them get to know you, people still want to be around great people.”
Reyes leaned on his ability to connect.
“He’s that person who can push you when you need to be pushed but also support when you need that,” Nebraska libero Laney Choboy said, “And he could talk to anyone. He could talk to a wall if you asked him to.”
Reyes set a goal to clear hurdles that had slowed Nebraska’s push to bring the best talent to Lincoln. Reyes wanted top volleyball players and their families to see that the Huskers don’t play in a big arena next to a cornfield.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“I still hear about how Lincoln is not as diverse as Dallas or L.A.,” Reyes said. “And I’m not going to sit there and debate that. But since I got here, the diversity on our team has changed. We have kids from so many different backgrounds, whether it’s ethnicity or religion or where they come from.”
Undoubtedly, he’s opened doors for Nebraska to a wider range of athletes.
How?
“I’m literally a mix,” Reyes said. “My mom’s white. My dad’s Filipino and Hawaiian. Sometimes it’s hard to go somewhere and commit four years of your life when there’s not someone who looks like you or talks like you or understands you.”
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementReyes set out to get ahead by identifying young players before they blew up as recruits. Cook didn’t want to travel to watch a ninth-grade club tournament. But Reyes did.
He coached in the Team USA program. He was aggressive with camp invites. When prospects accepted, rules allowed Nebraska coaches to interact with them on campus in Lincoln. The rest took care of itself.
“I think I’m a really good salesperson,” Reyes said. “I would also say, I’m selling the best product.”
Reyes plans to run his own program someday in the way that Cook designed Nebraska to operate. Over their years together, Cook talked often with Reyes about the requirements of a head coach.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementReyes sat on every word.
Cook’s coaching tree includes not just Busboom Kelly and Tamas in the Big Ten but Christy Johnson of Iowa State, Kentucky’s Craig Skinner, Dan Meske of Louisville and Dan Conners of UC Davis. Former collegiate head coaches Hildebrand (Long Beach State), Lee Maes (Virginia), Lizzy Stemke (Georgia) and Kayla Banwarth (Ole Miss) also worked for Cook.
“He would sit with me and say, ‘Jaylen, you coach out there and you do all that stuff really well. But how much of your job is actually in the gym?’” Reyes said. “I’m like, ‘Coach, probably 25 percent.’ And he goes, ‘It’s going to keep getting less and less. So if you want to be a successful head coach, you have to be able to do all the other things.’”
Reyes is chipping away. His experience in the only profitable collegiate volleyball program ought to earn Reyes points with an athletic director in a job interview, he said.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“We all know that he could be a head coach anytime he wanted,” Choboy said. “That’s just how good he is.”
He’s learned from Cook to adopt CEO qualities. And this year, Reyes is watching his new boss, who retained Reyes and fellow assistant Kelly (Hunter) Natter immediately after accepting the job.
“He’s been great for bridging the gap between John and myself,” Busboom Kelly said. “Having somebody that was here who can speak to both experiences, it’s huge. It’s big for me, too, trusting his eye. He’s been here for eight years and really understands everybody’s role.”
As an extension of his work in recruiting, Reyes said he meets players at a place that works for them. For instance, as a freshman two years ago, Choboy struggled to adjust.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“Jaylen was always my backbone,” she said. “We would go to film (sessions), and sometimes we wouldn’t even watch film. He would just ask how I was doing. And I’d sit there and cry in his office.”
Life in Lincoln for Reyes is good.
Reyes has set no deadline to advance in coaching. He’s comfortable at Nebraska but not content with the Huskers’ accomplishments. Neither are they. He’ll patrol the sideline this weekend from the head of the bench, relaying defensive instruction while Busboom Kelly runs the show.
Their push continues next month in the postseason for as long as this ride lasts. Because of what Reyes has helped build, the expectation is nothing short of eight more matches.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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