LINCOLN, Neb. — Every Sunday after Caroline Jurevicius turned 16, she drove for 20 minutes alone on the back roads east of Cleveland. Her Jeep Wrangler kicked up dust. Caroline stopped to see her grandparents and grab coffee en route to the cemetery.

There she visited her brother, Michael, who lived for 10 weeks in early 2003. He died of complications from sialidosis, a rare genetic disease that prevents normal cell production.

Advertisement

It was a time that should have fit as the greatest in the 10-year NFL career of their father. Joe Jurevicius caught a 71-yard pass for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFC Championship Game against the Philadelphia Eagles five days after Michael was born. A week later, Joe recorded a game-high 78 receiving yards on four catches as the Bucs beat the Raiders 48-21 in Super Bowl XXXVII.

“There are things that are going to happen in your life that knock you to your knees,” he said. “Sports teaches you to get up.”

Caroline, a freshman on the top-ranked Nebraska volleyball team, was born 16 months after Michael’s death. Ava arrived 2 1/2 years after Caroline. The sisters inherited strength from Joe and his wife, Meagan.

Any children born to the couple stood a 25 percent chance of contracting sialidosis. Tests at 16 weeks on the girls returned negative. Both received two dominant genes and cannot pass the condition to their future children.

At the cemetery on those Sundays, Caroline said she thanked Michael.

“She feels him,” Meagan Jurevicius said.

His life impacts her.

“I want to do what he couldn’t,” Caroline said. “He didn’t have a lot of time on this Earth, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be remembered.”

Caroline spent time this fall planning a project to raise awareness for rare diseases.

She hopes, starting in 2024, to connect student-athletes in Lincoln with families impacted by conditions similar to the one that cut short Michael’s life.

“She feels like that was her job and her destiny,” Ava said, “to show the world that he lives in her memory.”

At the time of Michael’s birth, doctors estimated he would live less than 72 hours.

“He gave us almost three months,” Joe said. “He fought.”

For longer than a year, Joe and Meagan mourned. Caroline helped repair their lives.

“She brought us out of the darkness,” Meagan said.

Nebraska played a volleyball match against Omaha on Aug. 30 at Memorial Stadium. The crowd of 92,003 set a global attendance record for a women’s sporting event. When she ran out of the tunnel from the football locker room and took the court, Caroline expected to play in the landmark event.

Advertisement

She never got called off the bench.

“It wasn’t the greatest feeling in the world,” Caroline said.

Among five true freshmen from a No. 1-ranked recruiting class for the Huskers, who enter regional play of the NCAA Tournament at home Thursday against Georgia Tech, Caroline is the only player on the roster who’s redshirting.

Her first fall in Lincoln involved difficult moments. A top-20 prospect nationally like the other freshmen, Caroline expected to compete right away. But another newcomer, Florida transfer Merritt Beason, plays the same position, opposite hitter, as Caroline. And Beason, a captain, emerged this year as one of the top players nationally.

Not only did the other freshmen play, they starred from the start of this season. Harper Murray, Bergen Reilly and Andi Jackson earned All-Big Ten honors last week. Caroline cheers their achievements.

“I’ve never heard her say anything about jealousy,” Meagan Jurevicius said.

But at the time, in that football stadium, Caroline felt humbled and alone.

Coach John Cook said he planned to play her. When he moved to insert Caroline late in the match, assistant coach Jaylen Reyes intervened. Caroline had recently told the coaches she switched to a double major in advertising-public relations and journalism, with a minor in psychology.

She would require five years to graduate. The Huskers could preserve a year of her eligibility, Reyes said to Cook. She could produce more as a fifth-year senior than in this season.

The problem was, Caroline didn’t know of their reasoning until she got called into the office to talk to Cook a day later. And she still wasn’t sure she liked it.

“She’s so competitive,” Cook said. “You spend two minutes with that family and you understand. At first, it was really tough. But the mindset became, ‘How can you come in and get better every day?’ That kid is a beast in the weight room. She works hard. She’s improving. And she makes life hell on our other players in practice.”

Advertisement

Despite standing in Caroline’s path to play, Beason formed a tight connection with her. The Nebraska roster includes no seniors. Beason, back next season for her final year, said Caroline hits a harder ball than anyone she’s ever met.

Caroline strives this season in practice to diversify her skill set.

“She makes me step up my game,” Beason said. “And I think the way she’s handled it with so much grace and so much humility has been huge. I’m so excited to see her shine when she gets a chance. She’s going to shock the world.”

Part of Caroline’s bond with Beason involves tragedy. Beason’s parents also lost a son, Tanner, before Merritt was born. He suffered from a heart defect and lived for one week.

Many people around Merritt didn’t know, but she told Caroline about it.

“I looked at her,” Caroline said, “and I was like, ‘What did you just say?’ It really does show that rare stuff impacts a lot of people. You don’t think it could happen to you? It could. Life does happen.”

Life threw plenty at Joe Jurevicius.

“When Michael died, I had to get up,” he said. “Meagan had to get up. We had to get up. There was no choice.”

Joe endured numerous knee operations and a staph infection during his final stop with the Cleveland Browns that led to the end of his playing days in 2008 after 29 touchdown catches and more than 4,000 receiving yards.

In 2018, he was held at gunpoint by a burglar for 30 minutes at the Jurevicius home near Cleveland. Caroline made the call to police that ended the scare. It shook their family.

Perspective helped Caroline handle hardship in volleyball. Her own life provided evidence that she could survive a setback.

“If the hardest thing that you’re going to go through is a redshirt, you’re doing OK,” Joe said. “What happens with kids, they’re looking at the internet and everybody’s playing as a true freshman.

Advertisement

“They just want to see their name. I’m more interested in seeing the final product.”

He believes that Caroline will emerge hungry from her first year in Lincoln.

“What some people might view as hardship,” he said, “I view as opportunity.”

Therein lies the key to the Jurevicius approach.

“I’m tough on my girls,” Joe said. “I love my girls. They’re my best friends. On the flip side of it, it’s not my job to be their best friend. I’ve always tried to teach them how to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

“I told Caroline not too long ago, ‘You jumped in the saddle. You’ve got to take the ride now.’ I’m a realist. I’ve been through this before.”

When Ava, at age 15, asked her parents to move to Lincoln so she could receive better training in volleyball and earn a shot to play collegiately, Joe and Meagan applied the same principle about comfort in agreeing to her request. The entire family relocated a week before Christmas last year.

“It was a decision I had to make for myself because I knew I’d be in a better place,” Ava said. “It had nothing to do with Caroline. We’re not the helicopter family.”

Ava is a junior at Lincoln Lutheran High School. Her volleyball team won a state championship in November. She’s playing for VCNebraska, a club owned by former Nebraska setter Maggie Griffin. One of Ava’s coaches next year will be Beason.

“I have nothing but pride,” Caroline said of her sister. “It’s such a mature decision.”

She and Ava have grown closer in Lincoln.

As for their dad, Caroline said, “he’s a lot more at peace here.”

Joe and Meagan long planned to leave Ohio when both girls got to college. They’ve looked at land in Idaho and Montana. Joe said his goal in life is to give his daughters a ranch, “something that can be passed down a generation or two.”

Meagan ran track at Princeton and grew up in Seattle. Joe is originally from Cleveland. Two decades ago, he befriended John Howell, a teammate with the Bucs and Seattle Seahawks and a rancher from western Nebraska. After his NFL career, Joe fell in love with the cowboy lifestyle while guiding hunting tours with Howell.

Advertisement

In Lincoln, the Jureviciuses are renting. They’re set to move west when Ava graduates high school in the spring of 2025. But here, they’ve taken to the community. Joe helped coach the Lincoln Lutheran football team this fall.

He said his heart rate drops 10 beats per minute when he travels west to Nebraska. His stress level decreases even more, Joe said, as he heads toward more open spaces.

It’s heady stuff for a Penn State graduate. In State College, Joe dated a volleyball player and fell for the sport. He played volleyball at home in Ohio during NFL offseasons.

No question existed about the paths for Caroline and Ava in athletics.

“There was a sport that was graceful and athletic and powerful,” Joe said. “It kind of had everything that I love wrapped into one.”

He thrives on studying athletes and their movements. Joe repurposed a warehouse at his commercial laundry business in Cleveland to fit a volleyball playing surface. The girls worked on it daily.

He made training contraptions out of PVC pipe and tape. He built a sand pit in the woods behind their house in Ohio.

“The lessons you learn in the sand pit, it’s not necessarily just volleyball,” Caroline said. “It’s discipline. Nobody else was getting up that early and doing sand work or running hills.”

Joe prescribes 6 a.m. ice baths for Ava. He constructed a ball of socks for Caroline that she threw at the bottom of a wall every day for years to perfect her arm swing.

When Caroline first made a club team at age 11, Joe didn’t allow her to play. She needed another year of preparation, he said. Years later, she understands his methods.

“The girls, yes, they’ve been pushed,” their dad said. “Volleyball is not the end product. I just want them to be strong people when they have their own families.

“The future is not always going to go the way you want it to go.”

Advertisement

The NCAA volleyball semifinals on Dec. 14 and national championship on Dec. 17 will be played in Tampa, where Caroline was born and where Joe played in winning a Super Bowl while Michael battled for his life. If Nebraska wins Thursday and Saturday, it’s headed to the final four for the 17th time in search of a sixth national championship.

The Jurevicius family would go along for the ride.

Back in Cleveland last week on business, Joe drove to the cemetery Friday night. Michael would have turned 21 next month. Joe returned to his new home in time to see the Huskers dispatch Missouri on Saturday in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

Caroline, of course, watched from the sideline and celebrated the winning points.

“I come in every day, and I do my job,” she said. “If you look at what other people have had to go through in their lives, I have it pretty good. I have it really good.

“I’m just playing the long game right now.”

(Top illustration photo of Caroline Jurevicius courtesy of Nebraska Athletics; photo of Joe (left), Ava and Meagan Jurevicius (right) by Mitch Sherman / The Athletic)