IN THE HOURS earlier than a volleyball sport at Pitt’s Fitzgerald Discipline Home, Olivia Babcock sits close to her locker, content material to reside on the outskirts of exercise unfolding round her.
A number of teammates jockey for area in entrance of the locker room mirror as they put together their ponytails to face up to the fast-paced and high-flying motion. Libero Emery Dupes will get 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 within the work. Her mahogany-hued braids are pulled again right into a ponytail that falls between her shoulder blades. The model is secured with a royal blue hair band that matches her uniform. She all the time takes care to do her hair earlier than arriving on the gymnasium.
“Look good, play good,” says the 2024 AVCA nationwide participant of the 12 months who’s hoping to steer Pitt to the ultimate 4 for the fifth straight season. “Sport-day hair is essential.”
Critically essential to Babcock’s game-day hair is the TIY hair band round her braids. TIYs, which stand for “tie it your self,” have taken over school volleyball. Gamers from every 2024 last 4 staff — together with the Panthers — took the court docket carrying the colourful hair elastics, fixed with their signature knot. Athletes attribute a number of advantages to the TIY, together with a stronger but softer maintain.
Consider it or not, the brains behind this revolutionary accent belong to a 57-year-old bald man: Texas volleyball head coach Jerritt Elliott. Greater than a decade in the past, Elliott recognized a ponytail downside. Not his personal ponytail, after all, however these of his gamers. Apply after follow, athletes interrupted drills to regulate their hair. So Elliott invented an answer.
TIYs are offered as 3-foot strands of elastic lined in a cloth sheath. After tying collectively the ends of the twine, athletes can wrap it in as many loops as wanted to accommodate their hair quantity. Babcock coils her TIY in three loops to get the proper measurement for her braids.
“Till I acquired to school and began utilizing TIYs,” she says, “it was undoubtedly a wrestle to discover a good hair tie to make use of constantly.”
Babcock first tried braids in highschool, however it was troublesome for her to search out hair ties that will maintain her braids safe whereas enjoying. When she acquired to Pitt, she took down her braids and began spending as much as a half-hour scraping again her strands in a decent ponytail or bun. The slicked-back model she labored so onerous to shine, nevertheless, was damaging her hair. So, over the summer season, Babcock minimize off the breakage and returned to braids.
“That did sort of stress me out mentally at first,” she says of the change, “as a result of I do know the previous two seasons, I did discover success. And clearly it wasn’t due to my hair, however I did have constant hair all through the whole time.”
For Babcock, confidence in her hair meant confidence on the court docket, and he or she wasn’t positive she might obtain it with braids. However now, with a TIY, when she winds up for a serve, springs ahead for a block, or takes off for a kill, she will be able to accomplish that with out worrying about her hair.
“That was a sport changer,” she says.
ANDREA NUCETE-ELLIOTT enters a tiny, white-walled workplace within the pool home within the yard of the Austin house she shares together with her husband, Jerritt Elliott.
“It began on this room,” she says of the small area that’s sandwiched between a storage space and what was once a visitor bed room. Now, all three of the rooms — plus two others, and a 40-foot transport container — are stacked excessive with meticulously organized packing containers of colourful merchandise.
She surveys the cabinets of TIY inventory on this quiet October morning, mentioning the best-selling colours — like the recent pink “Euphoria” — and explaining how TIY headquarters will come to life on the finish of the 12 months when she and her 4 full-time workers hustle to fulfill the surge of orders that all the time arrives throughout the vacation season. Nucete-Elliott says the product’s recognition has prompted her to discover distribution choices past the web store.
With straight, waist-length, chocolate-brown hair, Nucete-Elliott is an apt match for the function of hair tie firm CEO. However the product was truly hatched by her husband earlier than she even met him.
It was again in 2013 and Elliott wanted to repair his persistent ponytail dilemma. Elliott did not perceive why his gamers saved stopping follow to redo their hair, so he got down to be taught all the things he might about life with longer locks.
“Folks that know me know that I’ve a wild mind,” he says. “I am very entrepreneurial.”
Step 1 was learning the market. Elliott says he spent round $80 on hair ties from fashionable manufacturers to familiarize himself together with his athletes’ choices. Then he spoke with buddies, former gamers, and different athletes in his volleyball neighborhood — like Olympic gold medalists Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross — in regards to the points they skilled with their hair ties. The ladies stated that along with creating unstable ponytails, the elastic generally brought on complications and dented and broken their hair.
Elliott concluded one-size hair ties don’t match all. His resolution was an extended elastic strip with a comfortable, material cowl that customers might tie and loop themselves.
“I did not actually know if I had something in any respect,” he says.
Across the similar time, Elliott met Andrea, who was persevering with her volleyball coaching in the USA after enjoying professionally in Italy. Nucete-Elliott has worn her hair lengthy for years, and would use as much as 5 hair ties to maintain her ponytail in place.
“It’s a huge a part of my persona,” she says of her hair. “I wish to get artistic with it.”
Again in Italy, when Nucete-Elliott wasn’t enjoying volleyball, she was modeling and competing in magnificence pageants. The 12 months earlier than she moved to the USA, she was a Miss Universe Italy finalist. The mix of tight ponytails and repeated styling put a pressure on Nucete-Elliott’s hair. Nonetheless, she wasn’t prepared to sacrifice the style or operate of her seems to be.
So when Elliott gave her a pattern of the hair ties he was engaged on, she absentmindedly tucked it away within the glove compartment of her automobile.
“I used to be like, ‘Why would I tie my very own hair tie? What’s the profit? I do not belief the bald man,'” she says.
However at some point, Nucete-Elliott was at seashore volleyball follow when two of her hair ties snapped. She shortly remembered Elliott’s hair tie in her automobile.
“I used the whole 34-inch model of the product, put it in my hair, known as him proper after,” she says. “I say, ‘We have now one thing right here. 100%. That is completely different.'”
Nucete-Elliott was instantly invested in Elliott’s imaginative and prescient. For 4 years, the pair labored collectively to refine the product, reviewing numerous combos of elastic and material to search out one which was each comfortable and safe.
They settled on a rubber core lined in a sheath that has been woven to stretch and retract with out trapping particular person strands of hair. This components, paired with the do-it-yourself design, made their hair tie completely different from others available on the market.
Elliott and Nucete-Elliott married in July 2018, and two months later, they launched TIY Merchandise. TIYs are available two lengths: the 34-inch fundamental hair tie, and the 51-inch roll, which is designed for use with the refillable Professional 2.0 slicing case. This gadget permits customers to trim their TIYs to any measurement.
The founders say TIYs are two instances stretchier and 13 instances stronger than the typical hair tie, in line with lab-conducted kilos per sq. inch (PSI) breaking level assessments. A fundamental TIY sells for $8.50, whereas a pack of fifty black Goody hair ties goes for round $3.99. However Nucete-Elliott says she has heard from gamers who wore the identical TIY all 4 years of their NCAA careers.
“While you’re in school, you are working so onerous towards profitable a championship, and also you’re placing in all of your effort and time,” she says. “They usually’ve simply advised me, ‘It is a sport changer. It is one thing that makes my life simpler.'”
After introducing the invention to athletes of their orbit, Elliott was comfortable to get his practices again on observe, whereas Nucete-Elliott discovered pleasure engaged on a undertaking that mixes her pursuits in sport and vogue. Neither anticipated the TIY to turn into a ubiquitous hair accent within the NCAA.
SHADES OF PURPLE peek via Becca Kelley’s clear, plastic organizer earlier than she even pops open the lid. Inside sits a group of star-shaped barrettes, which is able to quickly lie in their very own constellation throughout her curly, bleached blonde hair.
Underneath the fluorescent lights of the TCU locker room, the skin hitter pulls two small sections of hair towards her face. She gently finger-combs the remaining again, ties it in a excessive ponytail — with a lavender TIY — after which pins the unfastened strands up together with her clips. Later that night, after logging 13 kills towards Kansas State, Kelley’s hair remains to be intact.
“A typical hair tie, you possibly can solely loop it so many instances, often like two or three,” she says. “So I feel a TIY is simply stronger.”
Her fellow Horned Frogs agree.
“You set it in at 8 a.m. at some point, and the remainder of the day, via a sport, it stays in place. You do not have to consider it,” says TCU center blocker Sarah Sylvester, who typically kinds her wavy, dirty-blonde hair in a excessive ponytail.
An added bonus for Kelley is that even after a number of hours, the TIY does not dent her curls. “However I feel the explanation a number of us wish to put on it’s there’s so many various colours,” Sylvester says, “and it is a enjoyable technique to decorate on sport days.”
TIYs come in additional than 35 hues — there is a “Giddy” inexperienced, a peachy-pink “Milkshake” and a purple-blue “Abracadabra.” Some athletes, resembling Louisville setter Nayelis Cabello, stick to highschool colours. For Louisville gamers, TIYs are available 4 completely different shades of crimson.
“I really feel prefer it’s undoubtedly made the method simpler and made my hairstyles look cleaner,” Cabello says of the TIY, which helps maintain her unruly, darkish curls in a decent, slicked-back ponytail. “And it matches my game-day outfit, in order that makes it 10 instances higher.”
Others, resembling Cardinals senior Cara Cresse, select their TIY to face out. The center blocker, who describes her hair as skinny and curly, says she wears her light-purple TIY each sport.
Maisie Boesiger, a senior at Nebraska who paperwork the Cornhuskers’ many hairstyles on social media, appreciates the individuality TIYs can foster.
“All of us have our uniforms on, we’re matching in that means, however it’s a method that you may sort of specific your self,” Boesiger says.
Chances are high, TIYs will probably be worn by gamers on almost each staff on this 12 months’s NCAA event, which begins Thursday.
Harper Murray, one of many stars on top-seeded Nebraska, generally makes use of TIYs to tie up her hip-grazing hair extensions. She has all the time needed lengthy hair, and the added inches increase her confidence.
“Having to redo your ponytail on a regular basis is tremendous irritating and it takes your thoughts away from the primary focus on the market,” Murray says. “I really feel good in my very own pores and skin, so I’ll really feel good on the court docket.”