‘We’re built for this’
Final Fours have Pitt’s volleyball program on the national and elite recruiting map. Now it aims to finish the job.
When you walk into the Fitzgerald Field House, one of the first things you see is a banner with the 2022 volleyball team pictured on the front.
It’s a way to celebrate the recent success of a team that made it to the Final Four. If you walk around more, you’ll see more banners celebrating the achievements of the squad.
Another trip to the Final Fourin 2021. TheElite Eight in 2020. NCAAtournament appearances in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Soon, the 2023 banner will go up, marking the beginning ofthe new season.
Depending on the time of day, you’ll hear the sound of volleyballs bouncing around, teammates cheering on each other, coach Dan Fisher callingout commands.
It’s the sound of a team on the hunt for a national championship.
“We’re just never complacent,” graduate student Chiamaka Nwokolo said. “We haven’t done what we wanted to do yet. We keep working because we haven’t accomplished what we wanted to accomplish. We went to a Final Four; that’s not the national championship. That’s a motivation in itself to keep workingtoward that.”
The path to the national championship started this past week when official practices began. For the first time, Fisher had his whole squad of 16 players — a massive upgrade from the eight he had in thespring.
He put together a roster of nine returning players, three transfers and four freshmen — all who know what it’s like towin.
“Thisis for sure the deepest team we’ve ever had,” Fisher said. “It’s one of those years where I have an idea of how it’s gonna go, but I really couldn’t tell you what our starting lineup is gonna look like. It’s a good problem to have.”
Rachel Fairbanks is fresh off a gold medal at the U21 Pan American Cup. The junior was joined by Fisher (coach) and eventual teammate Bre Kelley.
Fairbanks was a big part of the team’s trip to the Final Four last season, earning a spot on the Madison all-regional team. She led the Panthers with 37 assists and 16 digs to get her fourth doubledouble in an NCAA tournamentmatch.
Now,her focus is preparing her younger teammates on thepressures ahead.
“Takingevery day as a new challenge, I think is super important,” Fairbanks said. “Stamina throughout the whole season. Setting mini goals along the way, but gettingbetter throughout the season. Getting better every single day so we can turn it up cometournament time.”
It helps that all the new players on the squad aren’t strangersto success.
This season’s freshman class is the highest-ranked in Pitthistory.
Torrey Stafford and Olivia Babcock were awarded firstteam high school All-American status. It was the second straight such recognition for Stafford. This is the first instance in program history that Pitt will be adding multiple first-team All-Americans inthe same class.
Blaire Bayless joins Pitt as theNo. 5-ranked recruit in her class from Texas and the No. 42-ranked recruit in the country, according to prepvolleyball.com. Rounding out the group is the best player out of Hawaii,Haiti Tautua’a.
Then you add three transfers in Michigan State’s Emma Monks, Virginia Tech’s Logan Mosley and late additionin Florida’s Kelley.
The former Gator joined the team after playing under Fisher in the Pan American Cup. Kelley was later surprised to find out that she was named to the All-ACC preseason team along with Fairbanks, Valeria Vazquez Gomezand Nwokolo.
“[Fisher] pushed the girls extremely hard, but appreciating them made them feel comfortable,” Kelley said. “He’s a very good coach. When I visited Pitt, I was like, ‘This just feels like home.’ It’s not shiny and bright, it just feelslike home. That’s a pretty bigreason why I came.”
That homey atmosphere is also a big reason Nwokolo decided to come back. She had
planned to step away after getting her undergraduate degreeto focus on law school.
Fisher reached out two weeks before the transfer portal closed and asked if she wanted to come back. She decided there was nowhere else she’drather be.
“We could be in the worst place ever, and just because I’m surrounded by this group of people, it would make it a good experience,” Nwokolo said.“I think that when choosingPitt or just Pitt in general, I think about the girls, I think about the coaches. I think about how it’s such a familyoriented dynamic. It can make the hardest practices easy. It can make the hardest days easy just being around thesepeople.”
It’s a sentiment even extendedto the future players.
A recruit was visiting the team on Tuesday, and before practice started, each player went up to give the high schooler a hug. Then they turned and introduced themselves to her parents and gave outmore hugs.
The nameless recruit was included throughout practice, joining in huddles and getting towatch from the sidelines.
“Our culture is what we value most here,” Fairbanks said, “in terms of relationships on and off the court. We value competing. We value moving toward discomfort. I think that we’ve excelled in that in the past two years. I think we have taken on this year and we want to take it evena step further.”
During the regional final in Madison last year, Pitt lost the first set but managed to rally back to take the next two. Wisconsin would win the fourth, forcing a fifth. It wasn’t something the Panthers wanted, especially while playing at the Badgers home court. The crowd was overwhelmingly a UW majority, but Pitt didn’t give up and took down the reigning national champion 15-13to advance.
It’s moments like that which makes Pitt feel like there’s nothing it can’t do — especially this season when so many of them have gotten so close to that national championship.
“We know we’re built for this,” Vazquez Gomez said. “We know we can do it. I just think that we need to start stronger and finish strong. That was our main struggle last season. We would be down as the first set and then we would come back, so I think being aggressive and wanting it more from the start andthen finishing it [is important].”
That want starts now. The first official game of the season is Aug. 25 against BYU with a slew of challenging nonconference games to follow.
Nine of the Panthers’ 11 nonconference matches are against 2022 NCAA tournament teams, with three of those — Kentucky, Marquette, Oregon — being Sweet 16teams.
“It’s naive to always think every year is going to be better,” Fisher said. “We certainly have a team to win a nationalchampionship, and that obviouslyis the goal.
“Butreally the goal is to feel like we didn’t leave anything on the table, that we’re maximizing the talent we have in thisgroup.”