What she sold in VBAmerica gear at a single 2022 tournament weekend.
Kate Fitzgerald walked into the Arizona State bookstore looking for beach volleyball gear to give her family at Christmas. There was nothing. A beach volleyball player and biomedical student, she left with an idea instead of a gift: if the merch did not exist, she would make it.
For a while, the rules would not let her. Fitzgerald sat on the concept because NCAA restrictions blocked athletes from profiting off their name, image, and likeness. When the NIL rules changed in the summer of 2021, she moved fast, got licensed with ASU, and launched VBAmerica, a volleyball lifestyle clothing brand, working with a local Tempe screen printer on designs built around the sport and the school.
It worked. VBAmerica landed in every campus store at ASU and became the top volleyball brand sold on campus, and at the 2022 AVP Phoenix Championships she moved 6,000 dollars in gear in a single event. Now she mentors other student-athletes on turning NIL into a real business through a venture studio.
"The merch she wanted did not exist, so she became the person who made it."
NIL gave a generation of athletes a paycheck. Fitzgerald treated it as a launchpad, not a payday, building a brand and a skill set that outlast her playing days and then teaching the next athletes to do the same. That is the version of NIL nobody talks about enough.
This is the builder path ANF keeps spotlighting. When the thing you want is missing, that gap is the business. Fitzgerald saw an empty shelf and filled it herself.
She went shopping and came back a founder.