The Pitt VolleyBand: The seventh player

Wisconsin volleyball fans walked into their “armory bunker,” also known as UW Field House to unusual music before the team’s 2022 Elite Eight match against Pitt. 

“Hail to Pitt, Hail to Pitt, til the victory’s won …” 

The Pitt band — nicknamed the “VolleyBand” — played near the entrance of the Field House while disoriented Wisconsin fans rushed to their seats for a game the Badgers were expected to win comfortably.

The UW Field House typically hosts only diehard Badgers fans dressed in red and white, but there was an annoying splotch of blue and gold right next to the entrance blaring its instruments. Still, it was only 100 people — just a band and some parents. How much impact could they really have on the game?

When head coach Dan Fisher got to Pitt in 2013, the team hardly had any fans. Going to a middle school basketball game felt more intense than going to a Pitt volleyball game. 

On senior night against Seton Hall in 2012, the announced attendance was 224 fans, basically only friends and family. The wooden bleachers on the second level of the Fitzgerald Field House were merely decoration. Something had to change. 

“[Fisher] started talking to us about if we can get band members there,” Dr. Brad Townsend, Pitt Band director, said.

The band had never played at volleyball games before, but both Townsend and Fisher were new to the scene in 2013 and willing to try something different.

“The first year or two we did three games or four games, and then each year we did a little bit more and a little bit more, and now we do all the games,” Townsend said. 

Since 2016, the VolleyBand has been at every Pitt volleyball game in Oakland. The core of the band is made up of a group of Pitt Band members who go to every volleyball game, but other members are free to sign up for any games they choose.

Despite its current success and popularity, it was not easy to get the VolleyBand to Pitt games at first. Fisher would pay for pizza as a selling point to get the band members to the Fitzgerald Field House for his team’s games. Now, Fisher doesn’t even really have to sell how fun it is to go to games — the members do that for him.

“We are always encouraging the freshmen, like ‘please go to this,’” Chris Hughes, a junior environmental engineering major who plays trombone for the VolleyBand, said.

Volleyball is the only team on campus whose players visit a band practice before the season. 

“It’s really clear that they want to come talk to us,” Hughes said. “They get up on that latter and they are so excited to see all of us just beaming at them. They are clearly not there because they have to.”

“Having players come with coach [Fisher] also, means a lot more that way,” Soren Henkle, a junior materials science and engineering major who plays trombone for the VolleyBand, said.

The volleyball team’s love for the VolleyBand isn’t a once-a-year thing — it’s an every game occurrence. Senior setter Rachel Fairbanks has thrown the starting lineup mini ball to the VolleyBand before every game for a year now.

“I think that they deserve all the gratitude in the world and they make our gyms so electric during games,” Fairbanks said. “Their support to Pitt volleyball has been amazing throughout the years. The ball is just a little token of gratitude.”

This relationship doesn’t begin and end with a simple ball toss. Dancing with the VolleyBand to the tune of “Snakes on a Plane” after every win has become a tradition for both “teams.” Pitt men’s and women’s basketball teams are well into the locker room when the band plays Snakes on a Plane after its games.

“It started very soon after we started playing these games,” Townsend said. “Even from the first games, they would come over and thank us … One time they came over and thanked us and we started playing Snakes on a Plane and they stayed and started dancing. Now it’s just become kind of a thing.” 

“Them coming over and dancing with us makes it all worth it and kind of encourages us to be crazy,” Henkle said. 

In no world should Wisconsin volleyball — the defending national champion — lose against Pitt in the UW Field House. 

Wisconsin had won its previous 24 games at UW Field House. In fact, it had been over a year since the last time the Badgers had lost in UW Field House.

“We were accepting that we already lost,” serving specialist and outside hitter Cat Flood said. “Nobody wins there.”

The Badgers were probably happy they matched up against the Panthers in the Elite Eight. Wisconsin’s last home loss was to the team Pitt beat in the Sweet 16 — Florida, who upset Wisconsin in five sets in the Kohl Center on Sept. 16.

Outside the Petersen Events Center Chick-fil-A, six members of the VolleyBand who didn’t make the trip to UW Field House nervously surrounded a laptop watching the Sweet 16 matchup against Florida.

“Me and Chris like saluting people randomly because we think it’s funny, just as a bit,” Henkle said. “We were stressed and during that [Florida] game we would start saluting every time Cat Flood came out. It’s like ‘Oh, here comes Cat Flood, automatic ace.’”

“I don’t know why the rest of the band does it,” Henkle said. “The trombones sit in the front, so whatever the trombones do, kind of percolates back.”

Now, every single time Flood is on the service line, the entire VolleyBand stands and salutes Flood. Even the director of the Pitt Band, Townsend, feels like he has to salute Flood. 

“She’s kind of become a fan favorite and that’s just another way we show it,” Dan Biancamano, a senior psychology major and drum line member, said.

“We honor those who serve,” Hughes said. 

At every game, when the opposing team is warming up, the VolleyBand loudly plays songs ranging from “The Time Warp” to “Great Balls of Fire” to make the opponents have an inefficient warm-up—then, suddenly, they’ll stop playing when Pitt warms up. 

The VolleyBand will chant “13-9 … 13-9 … 13-9 …” when the score is 13-9, referring back to that infamous game. They yell “Bam!” when sophomore right-side hitter Olivia Babcock hits the ball during her patented jump serve because that’s the natural reaction. They wave around green pieces of cardboard paper when Fisher challenges a call with his green challenge card. The traditions arise spontaneously and naturally.

“Oftentimes it’s just something that just happens as a one-off, and then everyone likes it and we just keep doing it,” Biancamano said. 

At the 2022 Elite Eight game, Fisher remembered “this sea of red, and then there was the [VolleyBand] sitting in the corner.”

Pitt started the match with one of the most frustrating first set losses imaginable, leading 19-13 and losing 25-23. 

But the team somehow responded, winning the second and third sets both by a score of 25-21. And the band was holding its own against the sea of Wisconsin red as well.

“I remember this [VolleyBand player] blowing right into a student section and [the student section] just screaming at the [VolleyBand],” Fisher said. 

“It was just us being as nuts as we can be the whole time,” Assistant Director of Pitt Band Will Sugg said.

Wisconsin then responded in the fourth set, winning 25-19 taking all of the wind out of the Pitt’s sails. Wisconsin fans felt as if they had this game in the bag — no shot an away team with just a band and a few parents could take this win from them. 

“I remember one time it was looking a little bit bleak, and [a player] came over and started looking at us, and we started getting a ‘Let’s go Pitt’ going with them and the parents that were there,” Sugg said. 

Pitt got out to an early 5-1 lead with Flood on the service line, acing Wisconsin once and keeping them uncomfortable as she did all game long. But the Badgers responded to the early dominance, taking a 13-12 lead. 

Three straight kills by outside hitters Valeria Vazquez Gomez and Courtney Buzzerio later allowed Pitt to do something that hadn’t happened since 2016 — it beat Wisconsin in UW Field House in an NCAA Tournament game. 

“I don’t think there was anyone in the [VolleyBand] that had a voice at the end of that game,” Biancamano said. “It’s hard to believe that we would win if there were even fewer fans that made even less noise, brought even less energy … It feels so good to provide that support.”