University of Pittsburgh Athletics
Gelato, Lake Bled and a National Title Blueprint: Inside Pitt Volleyball's European Trip
7/15/2026 2:00:00 PM | General, Volleyball
The line for the Eiffel Tower light show started forming well before dark. Izzy Starck and Blaire Bayless got there first, planting themselves right up front, certain the lights would kick on by 9 p.m. Olivia Babcock found them a few minutes later.
Nine o'clock came and went. So did 9:30. By the time the tower finally lit up, the three of them were wedged into a crowd that had grown up around them, necks craned, 45 minutes deep into the wait.
Nobody was checking the time anymore.
"It was just so cool to see it actually happen, being there, and all the people around you too," Starck said. "The whole trip just made me grateful for the people that I get to have in my life around me. I feel like I grew so much closer, all the girls, the coaches, the staff, everyone."
That moment — equal parts patience, awe and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with two teammates in a foreign city — is as good a summary as any of what Pitt volleyball's trip through France, Slovenia and Italy turned into.
Two months removed from a nine-day stretch that took the Panthers from Milan to Lake Como, through Slovenia's alpine country and into Paris, the trip has settled into something bigger than a preseason exhibition swing. It became the thing that quietly built the team that will take the court this fall.
The Games: Finding a Rhythm on the Fly
Freshman right-side Jessica Smallwood had never traveled out of the country before. This was also her first trip ever traveling with the team, but there was no time to wait for jet lag to wear off.
The Panthers landed in Europe having been awake for roughly 36 hours of travel, went straight into practice off the plane, and played the Italian Junior National Team the very next day.
It gave Smallwood an honest preview of what Pitt volleyball would ask of her once the fall season arrived.
"I was like, 'okay, this is Pitt volleyball,'" Smallwood said. "It kind of set the tone."
We'll be talking about this trip forever!! ?? pic.twitter.com/QCPktsjCqH
— Pitt Volleyball (@Pitt_VB) May 21, 2026
From there, the schedule didn't slow down — five matches in all, against the Italian Jr. National Team twice, Koper, the Slovenian National Team and Azerbaijan. Pitt won every one of them.
But the record almost undersells what the trip demanded. Every match came in a different country, on a different court, against a team the Panthers had no scouting report on and, most days, without much sense of their own schedule until they were already walking into the gym.
The lineups were different in almost every game. Coach Dan Fisher and his staff wanted everyone to get equal playing time. It could have been a mess. Instead, it showed everyone truly how deep Pitt's 2026 roster is.
"That's a big thing we talk about here just keeping our side good no matter what," sophomore libero Izzy Masten said. "Playing with all those different lineups, being able to find your own way, it's not going to be perfect every single time. Being able to work through those challenges and find new solutions every time was something big for me."
For Starck, the team's new setter, the constant lineup shuffling turned into an unplanned crash course.
Playing alongside different combinations of hitters every night forced her to adapt on the fly and left her with a level of familiarity with her hitters she doesn't think she could have built any other way.
"We do such a good job in the gym of building connections to everyone," Starck said. "I learned a lot about my hitters that I wouldn't have learned in practices, and I feel like I have more of an edge on the season coming up because I had this time to connect with all the hitters more."
That kind of adaptability isn't just a nice souvenir from a preseason trip. It's the exact muscle Pitt will need to flex if this team wants to make a run at a national title. The teams that handle adversity the best are the ones who've already practiced staying steady inside chaos.
Smallwood felt that shift happen in real time. Playing meaningful minutes for the first time in unfamiliar matches, she found herself getting in her head and focusing on the negative.
She credited the trip with recalibrating that instinct — catching herself before a mistake could spiral and redirecting that energy into staying present. It's a mental habit that doesn't just apply to a match in Koper or Ljubljana. It's the same discipline a team needs in a five-set battle in November, or in the moments a national title run actually turns on.
"You really need to focus on the experiences you're having and being grateful for that," Smallwood said, "and not focusing on the bad stuff."
The Trip: Gelato, Cold Water and a Team Getting Closer
Ask almost anyone on the roster for a highlight, and the on-court results might not even crack the top three.
There was the alpine slide through the Slovenian countryside, which Starck admitted she rode more cautiously than some of her teammates. She was happy just to watch everyone else's personalities come out at full speed.
There was the cold plunge into Lake Bled, water so blue that Starck said it looked like her teammates were swimming in Gatorade. Masten didn't jump and has regretted it ever since, but she enjoyed watching teammates Jordyn Dailey, Abbey Emch, Sophia Gregoire, Haiti Tautua'a and Bayless react to the freezing water.
Lake Bled carried extra weight because Monaco native Marina Pezelj spent a lot of time there growing up. She spent the trip playing informal tour guide, showing teammates around Milan's sandwich shops, Paris' shopping spots and pointing out corners of her childhood at every stop that reminded her of home.
channeling our inner Marina!! ????????? pic.twitter.com/TdhjVsbLa6
— Pitt Volleyball (@Pitt_VB) May 17, 2026
Then there was Venice, which multiple players independently named their favorite stop — water taxis in place of cars, no rush of traffic, a slower way of moving through a city that Masten and Smallwood both said didn't feel real at first.
And there was, of course, an enormous amount of gelato, eaten in nearly every city the Panthers passed through.
Paris brought its own chaos. A shopping trip with the full team turned into a sprint through a sudden downpour, the group huddled underground trying to game-plan their way back to the hotel before making a run for it soaked from head to toe.
"We got up stairs and we just froze," Smallwood said. "We just had to run to where we thought the hotel was. We got rained on, but it was in Paris with my friends while I'm in college."
That's the thread running through nearly every story from the trip: the games mattered, but the version of the team that came home was shaped just as much by 24-hour bus rides, mall runs and a shared understanding that nothing about the trip was going to look like a normal week of college volleyball.
"You get to have a team bonding experience that not a lot of other teams get to have," Starck said. "It just created a great opportunity for us to have different situations. So that in the fall, all situations are going to seem normal."
Two months later, with preseason on the horizon, that might be the trip's most lasting takeaway: a team that learned to feel comfortable in the unfamiliar, together, somewhere in between a volleyball court in Koper and a light show under the Eiffel Tower.
To hear more about the international trip as well as the upcoming season check out episode two of the Beyond the Script podcast.
