Seniors Have Reshaped Pitt’s Volleyball Team

In 2019, each time Pitt’s women’s volleyball team ran onto the court at Fitzgerald Field House, a large crowd greeted them with cheers. Kayla Lund felt so astonished to see packed bleachers that she often joked with teammates Chinaza Ndee and Kylee Levers about their rise in popularity.

“I’d say, “Remember when we’d just have parents, the band and a few friends here to watch us?”” Lund said.

Pitt’s seniors—Lund, Ndee, Levers, Zoi Faki and Marija Popovic—have helped transform the women’s volleyball team into an ACC powerhouse, and this spring, as the No. 19 Panthers (16-4, 14-4 ACC) have steamrolled opponents en route to a fifth consecutive NCAA tournament appearance, they have reflected on the hard work and dedication that has made them successful.

Lund, a 6-foot California native who plays outside hitter, became the first two-time Volleyball Player of the Year in ACC history this spring. She believes the team’s intense practices have created a winning culture that will continue to attract fans after she has graduated. During practices, every drill becomes a competition. In one drill, coaches placed markers on the floor, and the student-athletes had to hit each mark with the volleyball. As soon as you missed a mark, you went to the back of the line.

“Just yesterday, we did a passing drill where you had to get 10 perfect passes in a row, and if you miss one, you’re out, next person in,” Lund said.

When the pandemic began last spring semester, the Panthers were coming off their most successful season in team history. In 2019, the Panthers won their third consecutive ACC championship with an 18-0 conference record, and Lund became Pitt’s first women’s volleyball player to be named ACC Player of the Year, as well as American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) East Region Player of the Year. All seven starters also landed on the All-ACC Academic Team.

Lund and Ndee attributed the team’s new tradition of winning to Head Coach Dan Fisher, who took over the volleyball program in 2013—the Panthers’ first year competing in the ACC. Prior to Fisher’s arrival, the volleyball team struggled in the Big East and hadn’t had a 20-win season since 2009.

Fisher turned the team around, coaching the Panthers to a winning record in each of his first four seasons. In 2016, the year before the current seniors enrolled at Pitt, the Panthers reached the NCAA tournament for the first time in 12 years.

“The program’s potential is one of the main reasons why I chose to come to this school and play for this team,” said Ndee, a 5-foot-11-inch Houston native who plays right-side hitter.

In 2017, their first year at Pitt, Lund started and Ndee earned valuable playing time. By their second season, the two were team leaders, and Fisher said that Lund and Ndee have elevated the Panthers on and off the court and will leave a lasting mark on the program.

“They're both stars. They're both respected leaders. They're both active in the community, good students, the whole package,” he said.

When Fisher recruits student-athletes, he said he looks for volleyball players who fit this well-rounded mold that Lund and Ndee epitomize. He doesn’t necessarily aim for the country’s top-ranked players. “We’ve gotten good players [like Lund and Ndee], and they’ve worked themselves into great players,” Fisher said.

In 2019, Ndee and Lund were named to the All-ACC First Team and Ndee was an AVCA All-America honorable mention. Ndee said she and Lund have been close friends since their first year at Pitt.

“Kayla wants the best for the team, just like she wants the best for herself,” said Ndee, who plans to attend medical school after graduation. “It’s easy to play with someone like that because you feel they have your back, and you feel you can have their back, as well.”

As team captains, Lund said that she and Ndee balance each other out. “Sometimes you have to do that good cop-bad cop role with teammates, and we switch,” Lund said. “It’s been really fun to grow with her throughout college.”

The team has stumbled more this season than it has in half a decade under some unusual circumstances. Normally, the NCAA’s women’s volleyball season is played in the fall, with a 64-team tournament held in early December. The spring is reserved for exhibition matches where younger players receive valuable playing experience, but last spring’s exhibition matches were cancelled because of COVID-19.

“It probably hurt our current sophomores the most because they are all playing really significant minutes right now,” Fisher said. “Because their first year was cut short, they’re probably now where they might have been a couple months earlier in terms of strength.”

Fisher said that as Pitt’s younger players have improved, the team has gained steam. The Panthers posted a 12-0 spring record this season, including a 3-0 sweep of Georgia Tech—the top ranked team in the ACC—on March 8.

“That win gave this group the motivation to feel like we can make the NCAA tournament,” Fisher said. “We just have to keep working hard and stay COVID free.”

The Panthers haven’t had a game delayed because of COVID-19, but pandemic safety protocols have shrunk the large crowds Pitt has attracted over the past four years. Playing in front of smaller crowds this season has reminded the seniors of their first year at Pitt, when not many of their fellow students showed up for home matches, according to Lund.

Over the past four years, the more the team won, the more attention the Panthers received from their fellow students on campus. Levers, who grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania, said that before remote learning became routine during the pandemic, she was getting stopped routinely by the team’s fans—a phenomenon that rarely happened a few years ago.

“It’s really rewarding and kind of crazy,” said Levers, a 6-foot, Chartiers-Houston High School alum. “I never thought anyone would recognize my face outside of me in uniform.”

Lund said she’ll never forget the first time a student recognized her on campus. It was right after she was named ACC Player of the Year in 2019. Lund, who plans to play professional volleyball in Europe after she graduates, was crossing Bigelow Boulevard next to the Cathedral of Learning when she was stopped in the crosswalk by a student who just wanted to say hi and congratulate her. Lund wasn’t wearing any volleyball gear, and the student was walking towards her—she had recognized Lund’s face.

“That was the first time I thought, ‘This is really cool,’” Lund said.

Fall 2020 schedules varied throughout the country by athletic conference. The ACC split its schedule between the fall and spring semesters, while the NCAA reduced its tournament to 48 teams and pushed it back from December 2020 to next month. The volleyball season is expected to return to normal for the 2021-2022 school year, and Panthers fans might get another chance to see these seniors play in person this fall. Though nothing is official yet regarding the statuses of Lund, Ndee, Levers, Faki and Popovic, the NCAA has given every student-athlete who competes in the 2020-2021 school year an extra year of eligibility.

The Panthers will face Long Island University on April 14 in the first round of NCAA tournament.