Pitt’s volleyball powerhouse was built on foundation of coach Dan Fisher’s early teams
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Were it not for a quirk of fate, Angela Seman would not have had a front-row seat to one of the most important wins in Pitt volleyball history.
Seman, a Seneca Valley grad, was a freshman in 2014, current coach Dan Fisher’s second season, when Pitt traveled to face No. 25 Duke. Seman had taken a redshirt and, under normal circumstances, would not have been able to travel.
But because a player had transferred, a spot opened up to allow Seman to go on road trips.
So there she was, on the bench at Cameron Indoor Stadium, as the Panthers faced the Blue Devils. Seated next to her was Jess Wynn — arguably the Panthers’ best player at the time — a crutch by her side and a walking boot on her foot.
Even without Wynn, Pitt seemingly had Duke on the ropes after winning the third set and going up 2-1, but the Blue Devils scored a resounding 25-11 win in the fourth set and had all the momentum.
“I remember everybody coming in (after Set 4) and saying, ‘We’ve never been put in this spot before. We have the opportunity to do something really special. Why not?’ ” said Seman, a second-grade teacher at Richland Elementary and varsity girls volleyball coach at Pine-Richland. “ ‘Why can’t we do it?’ ”
In the fifth set, with each passing point, Wynn squeezed Seman’s hand tighter. And when the final kill was put down by Pitt sophomore Maria Genitsaridi, the Panthers bench erupted.
Wynn was not supposed to stand up without help, but she hopped up on her good leg and, with some help from Seman, hobbled out to join the on-court celebration.
“That,” Seman said, “was one (match) of the start of, like, we can do it.”
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There’s no one match that launched Pitt on the trajectory to becoming No. 1 in the nation. Its success was crafted in stages, and Pitt earned some of its most important, program-building victories against North Carolina and Duke.
The Tar Heels and Blue Devils visit Fitzgerald Field House this weekend — both matches are sold out — to face the 21-1 (11-1 ACC) Panthers. Now, the roles are reversed. North Carolina and Duke — and most other teams in the country — are chasing Pitt.
When Fisher arrived before the 2013 season, which would be the Panthers’ first in the ACC, it was Duke, North Carolina and Florida State that typically took turns at the top of the conference.
Pitt went 11-9 in the ACC in 2013, 0-3 against “the big three.” Even then, some of the holdovers from the previous coaching regime could sense a change.
“I learned so much about how to approach training, how to approach winning in a different way, and we just all kind of bought in to what he brought to the table,” said Amanda (Orchard) Patcher, a middle hitter for the Panthers from 2012-15 and their first first-team All-ACC player. “You could really feel a total shift when Fish and the new coaching staff came in.”
Jenna Potts arrived the same year as Fisher after spending her first season on a medical redshirt at Xavier. She immediately was taken with Fisher’s coaching style.
“Training wise, he’s just so super consistent and clear with the language in which he trains,” said Potts, the girls coach at Oakland Catholic and Pitt’s all-time leader in total blocks. “He was so precise in how he wanted everything to look technique wise.
“You needed to be great and perfect on those little things in order to be a great volleyball team.”
After a year in Fisher’s system, it was clear the Panthers were moving in the right direction. By 2014, they were keeping up with the ACC frontrunners, losing to North Carolina and Florida State in five-set matches.
But keeping matches close wasn’t the goal, and Pitt needed that one key win to get over the hump.
“You can’t just believe,” said Fisher, now in his 12th season. “You can’t just keep telling yourself you’re going to ace a test. At some point, you’ve got to ace it so there’s proof in concept.”
Then came the match at Duke.
With Wynn out of action, Fisher turned to freshman outside hitter Mariah Bell (now Antles). It was her first start.
“I learned a lot from Jess,” said Antles, a second-team All-ACC selection in 2016. “So it was exciting because I felt I learned a lot as a player just in the few months of being at Pitt and watching her. But then petrified because I’m just an 18-year-old who also feels like she doesn’t understand college volleyball still.”
With Wynn’s injury, Antles’ inexperience and the drubbing Pitt took in the fourth set, the odds seemed to be stacked in Duke’s favor. But in the fifth set, Antles, who had 10 kills in the match, served an ace at 13-11 to set up match point. She remembers locking eyes with Genitsaridi, as if both new something special was about to happen.
Then, Genitsaridi ended it with her 20th kill.
Cue the court storming. It was Pitt’s first win over a ranked team since 2005.
“… Just being able to beat a top-25 team, not that we didn’t think we could do it, but it was such a big milestone. … You just felt that shift that we can compete,” Patcher said. “We just needed somebody to believe in us and give us the proper training and help us get the right mindset to be able to do that.”
Added Potts, who had eight kills and three block assists in the match: “I remember just running to the middle of the court and just being like, wow. We had been waiting for this forever.”
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When North Carolina came to Fitzgerald Field House on Sept. 27, 2015, it was not ranked. That didn’t make the Tar Heels any less formidable. They were the reigning ACC champions and had won 18 consecutive conference matches.
But after beating Duke the year before, there was at least evidence that Pitt was capable of knocking off the ACC’s better competition. And on that September afternoon, it was no contest.
Pitt humbled the Tar Heels in straight sets. The celebration wasn’t quite as animated as it had been at Cameron Indoor Stadium the year before, but the importance of the win wasn’t lost on the players.
“To our team, that was a huge deal for us,” said Kamalani Akeo, now a Pitt assistant. Akeo, a freshman in 2015, had 17 assists and eight digs that day. “We were over the moon about it. It gave us a lot of confidence.”
Later that season, Pitt defeated No. 15 Florida State — another sweep at Fitzgerald Field House — though they dropped tight matches at Duke and Louisville. Still, the team was convinced its 23-9 record (13-7 ACC) would be good enough to get into the NCAA Tournament.
Potts said the 2014 team was “really close” to making it to the NCAA Tournament. Now, with a couple of quality wins on their resume, the players believed this was the year.
Seman said the day of the 2015 selection show is burned into her memory.
“I remember when the last team was picked,” she said, “and I remember the feeling in our media room where we were, of anger and disappointment, and that started to really fuel the program.”
Added Antles: “I remember sitting there in 2015, and we all expected to make it, and as soon as we didn’t show up — wow, I’m emotional now thinking about it — turning to who is your family at that moment and just being so disappointed and seeing your coaches just shocked.”
It was a particularly bitter pill for Patcher, who wouldn’t know the feeling of playing in an NCAA Tournament. The same for Kadi Kullerkann, who came to Pitt for her fifth season after four years of individual success at Houston, but no NCAA Tournaments.
Kullerkann was first-team All-ACC, but it was of little consolation.
“(The tournament snub) actually hurt quite a bit,” Kullerkann said in a message to TribLive. “It was my last chance to make it to the tournament, and I really believe we had fought for our spot in the tournament that year.
“Even though we didn’t make it that year, I feel like we made a step forward for the program and helped building the Pitt volleyball we know today.”
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In 2016, the returning players had a fresh resolve to finally kick down some doors they had been clawing at for two years.
Namely, the NCAA Tournament.
“Going into 2016, we were in revenge mode,” Antles said. “I remember all of us going in determined. That is what changed from 2015 to 2016. I think we had a determination that we hadn’t had the year prior because we knew how badly we wanted it.”
The 2016 team served notice early in the season with wins over No. 25 Colorado State and No. 22 Michigan. Then came another home showdown with North Carolina.
This time, the Tar Heels were ranked No. 8 and 11-0 in the ACC (19-2 overall).
The Heels left Pittsburgh disappointed again. Behind another big match from Antles (18 kills), 19 kills from Nika Markovic, 49 assists from Akeo and eight total blocks from Potts, Pitt won in five sets.
“I remember it very clearly,” Akeo said. “Going into it, we prepared like any normal game. I remember when the game started, things were just kind of working like what we prepared.”
Pitt finished the season 25-9, 15-5 in the ACC. And this time …
Seman said her father, Michael, recently was going through some family videos, and he sent her the clip of her and her teammates watching the 2016 selection show. Seman watched it during her break at school Monday.
“That is a moment that will forever live in my head as one of the proudest moments I have,” said Seman, who ranks second all-time at Pitt in digs.
Potts thought back to the year before, when she sat next to Patcher watching the selection show and the disappointment everyone felt. She said 2016 was vindication not only for the active players but the graduates who began the work three years prior.
“It was just devastating that we couldn’t give our (2015) seniors the NCAA Tournament,” Potts said. “So moving forward, that next year, it was like, we made it, but it wasn’t just this team. It was the work of the last three years of teams that has gotten us here. We were definitely thinking about them in that moment while celebrating our success as well.”
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From there, the milestones started coming regularly. An ACC title in 2017 (shared with Louisville). Hosting privileges for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament in 2018.
The sweet 16 in 2020 — Fisher noted beating Utah that year to get past the second round of NCAAs after three failed attempts was another big moment — the elite eight the same year. Final fours the past three.
As Pitt’s success grew, more top-drawer recruits started coming. Now, players such as Kayla Lund (2017-21), Olivia Babcock, Rachel Fairbanks and Torrey Stafford are considered not only among the best in the ACC but the best in the nation.
The crowds came, too. Seman has a running joke that her parents and grandparents used to make up half of Pitt’s attendance. Now the Panthers routinely sell out the Field House and draw upwards of 10,000 for select matches at Petersen Events Center.
Just don’t tell Fisher his program is now the hunted rather than the hunter.
“We don’t accept that framing,” he said. “We’re still trying to be the hunter. We have not won a (national) championship. And even if we had, it would be a new year. … We’re trying to go at teams like they’re really good, and we have to bring our best.”
Seman and Potts attend matches as their own coaching schedules allow. Patcher and her husband recently moved back to Pittsburgh. With two small children, she doesn’t get to as many matches as she would like but still attends when possible.
Antles lives in Colorado with her husband and 13-month-old daughter but watches Pitt matches on television. Kullerkann keeps close tabs on the Panthers between her time with Estonia’s national team and her professional team in Greece.
Akeo, of course, is still part of the team. Yet regardless of their current connection to the program, each feels like they have a part in the No. 1 team in the nation.
“It’s really cool to say the least,” Akeo said. “I’ve been here almost as long as (assistant coach) Kellen (Petrone) has, and our skin in the game, how much he and I care about this program and want to see it do well and being able to be a part of it all these years has just been amazing.”
Added Patcher: “Goodness, did I think that we’d be No. 1 in the country? I don’t know, but it’s pretty darn amazing, and these girls are really, really fun to watch. It’s pretty mind-blowing and very exciting, and I’m really happy to be a part of it.”
Said Potts: “Whoever was on the team the day Dan Fisher first stepped foot on Pitt’s campus, we’ve all done our part in building it to where it is.”