They all said it: it was a dream come true.

From Dave Shondell, the winningest volleyball coach in Purdue history, to his stars Raven Colvin and Eva Hudson, to a freshman from Kansas, Ryan McAleer, they all agreed on the magnitude of selling out two games in Mackey Arena.

But that didn’t stop the tears still drying in eyelashes 10 minutes after Purdue’s lopsided loss.

It was against No. 8 Wisconsin. Second place in the Big Ten was on the line, but so was a good first impression for countless Purdue sports fans popping in to see a Boilermaker team that holds the longest top 25 streak of any at the school – even better than the one loaning out its gym for the night. “Even though we got beat today, I think we probably made some new fans,” Shondell said.

The loss stung more, perhaps, because Purdue had completed the first leg of its Mackey tour perfectly, in a sweep of rival Indiana the previous Saturday. A logistical high wire act allowed the Boilers to play just hours after men’s basketball fan day, albeit on hardwood instead of vinyl, and everything after could have been pulled from a dream.

Alumni were there, including fresh Purdue Hall of Fame inductee and Olympic medalist Annie Drews. The Boiler Suit Guys, known for their gaudy appearances at Purdue’s most high-profile athletics events, also showed. And the place was packed with fans.

That last fact was no certainty when the Mackey games were announced in late July; attendance was a program anxiety, Shondell said.

Purdue needed to sell 3,500 tickets to pay the costs of a Mackey game day – ushers, concessions, utilities, etc. – and got 14,870, twice. It was not only a program record, but a Big Ten regular season best and the 24th most-attended game ever.

Shondell’s concerns appeared well-founded; Purdue volleyball hadn’t broken its attendance record since 1985. The last time a match was held in Mackey, in 2016 and also against the Hoosiers, the arena was little more than half full.

Momentum had been building for a Mackey sellout since that 2016 disappointment, said Katie-Jane Klembarsky, president of the Boiler Block Party student section. The Block Party is more organized than ever now, and Purdue is an established Big Ten contender in a sport that won’t stop growing.

Klembarsky’s organization was named the best in the Big Ten last season by the Big Ten Network’s Emily Ehman, even over the much larger contingents of national powers Wisconsin and Nebraska. Ehman herself is evidence of the sport’s rising prominence: in three years with BTN, she’s called volleyball’s three most-watched games of all time.

Purdue gives her plenty to talk about. The program last missed the NCAA Tournament in 2014, and has made two Elite Eights since.

The latest opportunity in Mackey Arena gave Purdue a chance to join its conference rivals in the NCAA attendance record books. Of the 25 most-attended games before this season, 21 of them featured a Big Ten program: Nebraska, Wisconsin, Penn State and UCLA appear again and again, among others. Purdue was missing before the Indiana game.

Shondell messages Klembarsky and other board members when there’s a big game coming up – “We’d do anything for him,” she said – and everyone in the Block Party knew the stakes of the past two Saturdays.

The first step was to bring cheering down to a scale that thousands could follow, from the complexity that works in matchbox-sized Holloway: the result was more “call and response” chants (like “Whose House? Our House”), and less situational cheers for digs and kills, for instance.

Weeks before the Indiana game, the Block Party board teamed with the other student sections at Purdue, inviting members of every one of them to form the swaying gold sea that made a February atmosphere possible in October. There was a “giant group chat,” Klembarsky said, where all the planning happened.

The student section president clocked in at 11:30 Saturday, four hours before the action, to coordinate a tailgate outside the student entrance at Mackey. She dropped off waters, picked up pizza, ran a cornhole tournament, passed out wristbands and grabbed cheer signs and giant cardboard cutouts of Shondell’s bald head, all before the actual production of psyching out the Badgers.

“Not quite the way we had wanted that to go,” she said of the game’s result.

Shondell couldn’t be happy either, despite the pageantry.

“You look at it from such a skewed perspective as a coach or as players,” he said. “You're just not happy because, there's 15,000 people, you had a chance to go out and give them a good performance, and you didn't.”

But under the disappointment, the tears that stem from Purdue’s now-unlikely shot at a Big Ten title, is the fact that the volleyball team made good on its opportunity.

“I think when somebody asks our team, ‘What was the greatest part of the regular season this year?’” Shondell said. “They're probably going to say the opportunity to play in front of 15,000 people in Mackey Arena.

“They deserve the opportunity to play out here. This is one of the best athletic programs we have at Purdue.”

Shondell also had words, as he often does, for the fans who answered the call. A zealous Boilermaker supporter, he saw them in Pheonix for Purdue’s Final Four run in last season’s March Madness. He’s seen them at football games, despite a losing season.

“Purdue fans are just special,” Shondell said. “This doesn’t happen many places.”