Hattie Bray knows what it feels like to play in Fiserv Forum.
To be jumping, swinging and blocking in an NBA arena. In front of an NCAA indoor regular season volleyball match with a record of 17,037 fans. It’s one of her favorite college memories, seeing everyone fill the stands in what would have been an unthinkable feat a decade prior.
Natalie Ring knows what it’s like to watch a volleyball game in Fiserv. She was redshirting the last time the match happened in 2023, so she didn’t play then, but nonetheless remembers the filled stands and loud cheers which emulated a Milwaukee Bucks or Marquette men’s basketball game.
Along with those two, Ella Holmstrom, Sienna Ifill and Adriana Studer are the only other players to have been in the blue & gold both then and now. That’s five people out of 16 on the roster; not even half. And, with an entirely different coaching staff than the one two years ago, that 16 jumps to 22 when you take them into account as well.
Nobody else on Marquette volleyball experienced anything like what they will on Wednesday, when the Golden Eagles take on the 7th-ranked Wisconsin Badgers inside Fiserv for the second time in history. None have been in a jersey for a match with this much anticipation, this much importance to the university and state of Wisconsin and this many fans in this many seats.
Marquette head coach Tom Mendoza can’t pinpoint the largest crowd he’s played in front of. When asked, he deferred to longtime assistant of eight years Ethan Pheister, who estimated that it was the Golden Eagles’ season-opener at Hawaii. First-year setter Isabela Haggard said the same.
With a listed attendance of 5,823, it’s only, um, a little over 11,000 less people than the first-ever game at Fiserv. That’s practically a rounding error, right? No biggie.
“This is what we signed up for as coaches and staff and players,” Mendoza said. “To play good teams on big stages.”
Facing the No. 7 team in the country in an 18,000 seat arena? Sounds like mission accomplished.
After the first Fiserv game was such a success, the volleyball program went to the university and told them to run it back. Now, after the match has been on everyone’s calendar since the announcement in February, it’s only one quick sleep away.
“It’ll be awesome,” Ring said.
Bray’s favorite part of the 2023 match was the student section. Normally, at the Al, students sit on the back end-lines. But at Fiserv, they line the sides of the lower bowl.
“It is a crazy atmosphere,” she said. “When you have students 10 rows deep on the bottom bowl, you don’t feel anything else, really.”
Ring, in the midst of her redshirt season, was a glorified cheerleader then. Now, as the Golden Eagles’ leading hitter, she’s going to be on the court, in the thick of it.
“It’s going to be exciting to play in front of that many people,” she said, “and just to have the Marquette crowd behind us again.”
Haggard had only been on campus for around a month when it was announced. Over the seven months since, she’s heard from numerous people on the team about how much they enjoyed it, and how ready they are to get back.
“A lot of them said it’s their favorite game,” Haggard said. “Like it’s been their best memory of college volleyball.”
As the only starter in the 2023 match still on the team, and the only one to play in all four sets (Holmstrom played in three and Studer in two), Bray has the most experience of anyone in this type of atmosphere.
She said last time everyone on the team was so jittery given the magnitude of the situation, but the key is to find the balance between those jitters and excitement, and remembering you still have a game to win.
“Knowing how to find that medium, to find that level head, ‘I’m really jacked to be here, but like, let’s play the game,’” she said. “So then hopefully I can kind of carry that, calm to the other athletes on the team.”
When talking about the game, Ring sounded like coach Norman Dale from Hoosiers, pulling out his measuring tape to show that only the size of the building is changed.
“There’s going to be people out there and it’s going to be darker in the stands than it is [in the Al McGuire Center],” she said. “But it’s the same. The courts, the same size, the ball is the same thing.”
This article was written by Jack Albright. He can be reached at jack.albright@marquette.edu or on Twitter/X @JackAlbrightMU.