The April 2021 issue of Hail Varsity is on its way to newsstands and mailboxes this week. To preview the issue, here is this month’s Letter from the Managing Editor.
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The spring game is imminent, Nebraska baseball continues to be in a tight race for the Big Ten title and volleyball is done.
Two out of three ain’t bad, as they say.
And there was no particular shame in Nebraska volleyball’s exit from the NCAA Tournament. You can read more about that in my column for this issue, but the point here is this feels like one of the busiest Husker springs in recent memory.
The pandemic, and the delayed seasons and condensed timelines that resulted, are no doubt why it feels that way, but after we all experienced the largest-scale shutdown of sports any of us hopefully ever will, it’s much easier to revel in the offering rather than feel overwhelmed by it.
This April issue is a good example of what it looks like when Hail Varsity revels.
The April 2021 cover of Hail Varsity featuring Nebraska golfer Kate Smith.
Our cover story this month from deputy editor Erin Sorensen is a page-turning profile of Husker golfer Kate Smith. When we met her at Wilderness Ridge to shoot the cover, she had just returned from the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, played the week before the Masters. Yes, there’s a reason we chose green for the cover.
Erin also delivers an enlightening interview with freshman gymnast Chloé Lorange. The Husker women sent six to the NCAA Tournament in early April. Men’s gymnastics hosted and finished second at the Big Ten Men’s Championship, seen in this issue through the lens of staff photographer John Peterson, and went on to finish fourth at the NCAA Tournament.
On the football front, Derek Peterson explores one of the keys for Nebraska’s fall that has already emerged this spring. While recruiting via official, on-campus visits can’t start until June 1, per the NCAA’s most-recent ruling, Greg Smith explains how it is already ramping back up.
Mike Babcock checks in on Nebraska baseball, still in first place in the Big Ten as of this writing, and softball slides into this issue as well. If not for weather, we probably would’ve had a little men’s tennis, too.
It feels good to have so many sports available. It’s a great time to be bringing back our May issue next month, something we haven’t had since the early years of Hail Varsity. That was part of the plan for last year, an additional benefit to our subscribers, until everything changed.
But we need it now. We’ve got some great stories planned, and, of course, we’ll have complete coverage of the spring game, which will be the biggest sporting event in Nebraska in more than a year, at least in terms of anticipated attendance. (Around here, it’s a pretty big deal no matter what.)
From there we’re rolling straight into our biggest issue of the year, the Nebraska Football Yearbook, which will ship in June. If you know somebody who’s missing out on all of this, don’t be afraid to let them know that there’s never a bad time to subscribe.
Now just might be a uniquely good time.
