IN THE HOURS before a volleyball game at Pitt's Fitzgerald Field House, Olivia Babcock sits near her locker, content to reside on the outskirts of activity unfolding around her.
Several teammates jockey for space in front of the locker room mirror as they prepare their ponytails to withstand the fast-paced and high-flying action. Libero Emery Dupes gets her blonde hair braided by redshirt sophomore Haiti Tautua'a. And above the chatter, "music czar" Dalia Vîrlan fills the room with the Panthers' hype-up playlist.
Babcock, Pitt's star right-side hitter, has already put in the work. Her mahogany-hued braids are pulled back into a ponytail that falls between her shoulder blades. The style is secured with a royal blue hair band that matches her uniform. She always takes care to do her hair before arriving at the gym.
"Look good, play good," says the 2024 AVCA national player of the year who is hoping to lead Pitt to the final four for the fifth straight season. "Game-day hair is important."
Critically important to Babcock's game-day hair is the TIY hair band around her braids. TIYs, which stand for "tie it yourself," have taken over college volleyball. Players from each 2024 final four team -- including the Panthers -- took the court wearing the vibrant hair elastics, fastened with their signature knot. Athletes attribute a number of benefits to the TIY, including a stronger yet softer hold.
Believe it or not, the brains behind this innovative accessory belong to a 57-year-old bald man: Texas volleyball head coach Jerritt Elliott. More than a decade ago, Elliott identified a ponytail problem. Not his own ponytail, of course, but those of his players. Practice after practice, athletes interrupted drills to adjust their hair. So Elliott invented a solution.
TIYs are sold as 3-foot strands of elastic covered in a fabric sheath. After tying together the ends of the cord, athletes can wrap it in as many loops as needed to accommodate their hair volume. Babcock coils her TIY in three loops to get the perfect size for her braids.
"Until I got to college and started using TIYs," she says, "it was definitely a struggle to find a good hair tie to use consistently."
Babcock first tried braids in high school, but it was difficult for her to find hair ties that would keep her braids secure while playing. When she got to Pitt, she took down her braids and started spending up to a half-hour scraping back her strands in a tight ponytail or bun. The slicked-back style she worked so hard to polish, however, was damaging her hair. So, over the summer, Babcock cut off the breakage and returned to braids.
"That did kind of stress me out mentally at first," she says of the change, "because I know the past two seasons, I did find success. And obviously it wasn't because of my hair, but I did have consistent hair throughout the entire time."
For Babcock, confidence in her hair meant confidence on the court, and she wasn't sure she could achieve it with braids. But now, with a TIY, when she winds up for a serve, springs forward for a block, or takes off for a kill, she can do so without worrying about her hair.
"That was a game changer," she says.
ANDREA NUCETE-ELLIOTT enters a tiny, white-walled office in the pool house in the backyard of the Austin home she shares with her husband, Jerritt Elliott.
"It all started in this room," she says of the small space that is sandwiched between a storage area and what used to be a guest bedroom. Now, all three of the rooms -- plus two others, and a 40-foot shipping container -- are stacked high with meticulously organized boxes of colorful merchandise.
She surveys the shelves of TIY stock on this quiet October morning, pointing out the best-selling colors -- like the hot pink "Euphoria" -- and explaining how TIY headquarters will come to life at the end of the year when she and her four full-time employees hustle to satisfy the surge of orders that always arrives during the holiday season. Nucete-Elliott says the product's popularity has prompted her to explore distribution options beyond the online shop.
With straight, waist-length, chocolate-brown hair, Nucete-Elliott is an apt fit for the role of hair tie company CEO. But the product was actually hatched by her husband before she even met him.
It was back in 2013 and Elliott needed to fix his persistent ponytail dilemma. Elliott didn't understand why his players kept stopping practice to redo their hair, so he set out to learn everything he could about life with longer locks.
"People that know me know that I have a wild brain," he says. "I'm very entrepreneurial."
Step 1 was studying the market. Elliott says he spent around $80 on hair ties from popular brands to familiarize himself with his athletes' options. Then he spoke with friends, former players, and other athletes in his volleyball community -- like Olympic gold medalists Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross -- about the issues they experienced with their hair ties. The women said that in addition to creating unstable ponytails, the elastic sometimes caused headaches and dented and damaged their hair.
Elliott concluded one-size hair ties do not fit all. His solution was a long elastic strip with a soft, fabric cover that users could tie and loop themselves.
"I didn't really know if I had anything at all," he says.
Around the same time, Elliott met Andrea, who was continuing her volleyball training in the United States after playing professionally in Italy. Nucete-Elliott has worn her hair long for years, and would use up to five hair ties to keep her ponytail in place.
"It is a big part of my personality," she says of her hair. "I like to get creative with it."
Back in Italy, when Nucete-Elliott wasn't playing volleyball, she was modeling and competing in beauty pageants. The year before she moved to the United States, she was a Miss Universe Italy finalist. The combination of tight ponytails and repeated styling put a strain on Nucete-Elliott's hair. Still, she wasn't willing to sacrifice the fashion or function of her looks.
So when Elliott gave her a sample of the hair ties he was working on, she absentmindedly tucked it away in the glove compartment of her car.
"I was like, 'Why would I tie my own hair tie? What is the benefit? I don't trust the bald guy,'" she says.
But one day, Nucete-Elliott was at beach volleyball practice when two of her hair ties snapped. She quickly remembered Elliott's hair tie in her car.
"I used the entire 34-inch version of the product, put it in my hair, called him right after," she says. "I say, 'We have something here. 100%. This is different.'"
Nucete-Elliott was immediately invested in Elliott's vision. For four years, the pair worked together to refine the product, reviewing countless combinations of elastic and fabric to find one that was both soft and secure.
They settled on a rubber core covered in a sheath that has been woven to stretch and retract without trapping individual strands of hair. This formula, paired with the do-it-yourself design, made their hair tie different from others on the market.
Elliott and Nucete-Elliott married in July 2018, and two months later, they launched TIY Products. TIYs come in two lengths: the 34-inch basic hair tie, and the 51-inch roll, which is designed to be used with the refillable Pro 2.0 cutting case. This device allows users to trim their TIYs to any size.
The founders say TIYs are two times stretchier and 13 times stronger than the average hair tie, according to lab-conducted pounds per square inch (PSI) breaking point tests. A basic TIY sells for $8.50, while a pack of 50 black Goody hair ties goes for around $3.99. But Nucete-Elliott says she has heard from players who wore the same TIY all four years of their NCAA careers.
"When you're in college, you're working so hard toward winning a championship, and you're putting in all your time and effort," she says. "And they've just told me, 'It's a game changer. It's something that makes my life easier.'"
After introducing the invention to athletes in their orbit, Elliott was happy to get his practices back on track, while Nucete-Elliott found joy working on a project that combines her interests in sport and fashion. Neither expected the TIY to become a ubiquitous hair accessory in the NCAA.
SHADES OF PURPLE peek through Becca Kelley's clear, plastic organizer before she even pops open the lid. Inside sits a collection of star-shaped barrettes, which will soon lie in their own constellation across her curly, bleached blonde hair.
Under the fluorescent lights of the TCU locker room, the outside hitter pulls two small sections of hair toward her face. She gently finger-combs the rest back, ties it in a high ponytail -- with a lavender TIY -- and then pins the loose strands up with her clips. Later that evening, after logging 13 kills against Kansas State, Kelley's hair is still intact.
"A standard hair tie, you can only loop it so many times, usually like two or three," she says. "So I think a TIY is just stronger."
Her fellow Horned Frogs agree.
"You put it in at 8 a.m. one day, and the rest of the day, through a game, it stays in place. You don't have to think about it," says TCU middle blocker Sarah Sylvester, who often styles her wavy, dirty-blonde hair in a high ponytail.
An added bonus for Kelley is that even after several hours, the TIY doesn't dent her curls. "But I think the reason a lot of us like to wear it is there's so many different colors," Sylvester says, "and it's a fun way to accessorize on game days."
TIYs come in more than 35 hues -- there's a "Giddy" green, a peachy-pink "Milkshake" and a purple-blue "Abracadabra." Some athletes, such as Louisville setter Nayelis Cabello, stick to school colors. For Louisville players, TIYs come in four different shades of red.
"I feel like it's definitely made the process easier and made my hairstyles look cleaner," Cabello says of the TIY, which helps keep her unruly, dark curls in a tight, slicked-back ponytail. "And it matches my game-day outfit, so that makes it 10 times better."
Others, such as Cardinals senior Cara Cresse, choose their TIY to stand out. The middle blocker, who describes her hair as thin and curly, says she wears her light-purple TIY every game.
Maisie Boesiger, a senior at Nebraska who documents the Cornhuskers' many hairstyles on social media, appreciates the individuality TIYs can foster.
"We all have our uniforms on, we're matching in that way, but it's one way that you can kind of express yourself," Boesiger says.
Chances are, TIYs will be worn by players on nearly every team in this year's NCAA tournament, which begins Thursday.
Harper Murray, one of the stars on top-seeded Nebraska, sometimes uses TIYs to tie up her hip-grazing hair extensions. She has always wanted long hair, and the added inches boost her confidence.
"Having to redo your ponytail all the time is super frustrating and it takes your mind away from the main focus out there," Murray says. "I feel good in my own skin, so I'm going to feel good on the court."