Blaire Bayless has always shown loyalty. It’s a trait about her that has never been questioned. Whoever Bayless is with, that’s who she stands beside to this day.
She has stayed in the same friend group since kindergarten and played for the same volleyball club throughout all of her years while playing in the club volleyball circuit.
Pitt’s junior outside hitter and once top-50 recruit, according to prepvolleyball.com, was recruited to join other high-ranked clubs in Dallas, her hometown. But Bayless said no because she wanted to stay with Madfrog, the club that built her up from the “little, scrawny 12 year old” she was when she joined the club.
So it’s no shock that Bayless is still in a Pitt uniform today. The Transfer Portal takes so many student-athletes in a similar situation to Bayless. She was a top-50 recruit who didn’t start as a first-year or sophomore. Bayless would probably have started at the majority of high major programs the past two seasons, but she hardly ever considered the Transfer Portal because that is how loyal she is.
Bayless’ mom, Julie Bayless, who drove Blaire to club practices since she began club and traveled throughout the country to all of these club events, even mentioned the idea of transferring to another school after seeing Blaire’s first season not going how she initially pictured it going.
“Is there any school you would want to go to, whether you play volleyball or not?” Julie Bayless asked her daughter. “’No, there is no [other] place that I would want to be.’ [Blaire said in response]. I was like, ‘OK, then that’s it. Then you do your thing, you put your head down, and you keep working hard, and you be the best teammate you can be, whether you’re on the court or on the sideline, and just see what happens.”
In 2023 alone, over 31,000 student-athletes entered the NCAA Transfer Portal, but Blaire Bayless wasn’t one of them. She’s still at the same place she committed to in August of 2021, when Pitt volleyball didn’t have four consecutive Final Four appearances, or better yet, even make it to the Final Four in program history.
“When I committed, Pitt was kind of on the rise,” Bayless said. “It was just really cool to see a program that hadn’t been a powerhouse before really make a stand against these top teams.”
Bayless, who committed to Pitt in 2021, started playing volleyball at seven years old. She played other sports growing up, but volleyball was the sport she truly loved. When Bayless joined Madfrog at 12, she started seriously getting into the sport.
At 16, it was evident Bayless would play volleyball at a high level. She was the best player on her Madfrog team and her high school team at Plano West High School, so colleges started to take notice. Louisville, Texas A&M, TCU, Illinois and many other universities recruited Bayless.
Once the summer came, Bayless had her work cut out for her with all of these schools trying to contact her, plus she still had a sport to continue to improve in.
“It was like a full-time job that summer … it was crazy,” Julie Bayless said. “She was having like, eight to 10 calls a day, talking to coaches and then going to do her training, and then the next day, same thing.”
But in the midst of all of these colleges was Pitt, a school that is a 19-hour-and-10-minute drive away from Plano West High School, recruiting someone who never thought about going to college far away from her home.
“[Pitt] was never really on my radar until I started getting recruited,” Blaire Bayless said. “It was actually my club coach, who was like, ‘Blaire, I really like these coaches, I’ve talked to them a couple times, I’m going to invite them to practice. I know they’re on your list.’”
And the rest is history from there.
“Once I came [to Pitt] on my visit and really met the girls and saw the culture in practice in person, I just knew this was something I wanted to be a part of,” Blaire Bayless said.
Bayless is about to start her junior year at Pitt, and the former Under Armour All-American hasn’t earned a starting role yet, but she hasn’t considered leaving.
“Constantly coming in here to an environment where we practice winning and constantly are working towards a goal is something that you can’t always find at other programs,” Bayless said. “I knew that whether I’m playing or not, this is just a great experience to build me, both as an athlete and a person. I just couldn’t pass up on that.”
In 2025, Bayless is likely playing as a six-rotation starting outside hitter for Pitt volleyball, taking over the role of Torrey Stafford, who is now at Texas. Blaire now has to show everything she has learned in her first two years at Pitt on the floor, leading her team from the left pin.
“We want to empower our athletes. We want them to be uber competitive. We want to be warriors in the court. And not everyone’s ready to do that at 17 [or] 18,” head coach Dan Fisher said. “But certainly by, I think year three if it’s going to happen, it’s usually a pretty big year. If it hasn’t happened by year three, it’s pretty rare.”
Fisher expects Bayless to step up and take a leadership role despite not having a large role in her past two seasons. She’s the only outside hitter who has stayed with the program for the past two seasons and will have her name on the roster sheet in August. But Bayless knows the leadership role isn’t something that gets handed to you like a business card.
“I have to earn that spot first and earn the respect of my teammates,” Bayless said. “That’s something that I’m striving to do this spring and going into the season.”
It seems like a lot to handle, but junior opposite hitter Olivia Babcock isn’t worried for Blaire.
“She’s definitely a natural leader,” Babcock said. “I feel like she goes on and she’s like, ‘This is what’s gonna get done. I’m gonna do it.’”
At first glance, it doesn’t seem like Bayless has done much in the past two seasons. She’s only accumulated 86 kills in 96 sets played.
But Fisher doesn’t believe Bayless’ stats tell the whole story. Fisher believes Bayless’ efforts against Oregon in the Sweet Sixteen played a big part in Pitt’s victory and is maybe why Pitt fans can say they cheer for a team that has made four consecutive Final Fours.
“She’s definitely a game changer,” Babcock said. “Just knowing that last season, whenever we put her in, we could just trust her.”
But Bayless isn’t coming in for simple substitution, or playing in a game against a less than opponent. Bayless is likely going to play in the entirety of games for the majority of the season. And if Pitt wants to contend for a National Championship again, she needs to progress her game even more.
“I want her to continue to improve as a passer, which she has, and then I’d probably say the consistency,” Fisher said. “It’s pretty obvious her high-end is very good, [but] we want her bad games [to] still be really good.”
Bayless dealing with these lofty expectations adds pressure, and a lot of it. A team that has made four straight Final Fours expects you to fit right into the puzzle with no issue whatsoever.
“There’s always pressure because we are at such a high program, and I have big shoes to fill,” Bayless said. “But honestly, it’s more of just a readiness. I’m ready to get out there and make a difference in the program and make a name for myself.”