A Commodore Kind of Town

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — With a little more than a year until students would arrive on Vanderbilt’s first campus outside Nashville, James Kellerhouse had more than enough on his plate after being introduced in March 2025 as the university’s assistant vice chancellor for strategic initiatives in New York City. On the face of it, athletics seemed to be one of the only things he didn’t need to lose sleep over while getting the new campus up and running.

Yet Kellerhouse also had an affinity for volleyball—had even traveled internationally with the team at Hartwick College while serving in that school’s administration. So it was only natural that he found instant rapport with Vanderbilt volleyball head coach Anders Nelson when the two were introduced soon after Kellerhouse came on board. Or that the two soon met again over coffee to see if they could help each other.

At the time, Vanderbilt hadn’t played a volleyball game in more than four decades. And it had scarcely more than a lease and a vision for a new chapter in the Big Apple. Fast forward to this September and Nelson’s team not only existed but turned heads by beating North Carolina for its first win against a ranked opponent. And that history unfolded in the iconic Hammerstein Ballroom in front of a boisterous Vanderbilt student section that traveled only as far as the short trip up 9th Avenue from the Vanderbilt-New York City campus.

There are no athletic teams based among the campus’ 13 buildings and tree-lined lawns, where around 100 students across a variety of schools and disciplines spend a semester. But there is Vanderbilt. And as anyone who spends fall afternoons in Vandyville, comes in from the winter chill to Memorial Gymnasium or whiles away spring evenings at Hawkins Field can attest, the games Dores play channel the energy, aspirations and camaraderie of a campus. In events like volleyball’s New York City debut and lacrosse’s subsequent fall-ball visit, athletics are helping connect two campuses as one university, one Vanderbilt.

“Athletics are now such an important part of the Vanderbilt experience that we needed to be really intentional about bringing that to New York City,” Kellerhouse said of his thinking around the volleyball match. “There's an energy that we have an opportunity to really build on. And when we think about network campuses, how do we infuse that type of vibrancy and spirit and pride in the university? It's really easy to see the impact that it has for the university, for the sense of community, and just for the vibes, as we like to say, both on campus, but also off campus.”

Vanderbilt-New York students with Chancellor Daniel Diermeier and Vice Chancellor Candice Storey Lee at the volleyball match (Vanderbilt Athletics). 

Volleyball comes to Vanderbilt-New York

Nelson’s typical coffee order is a black Americano hot, “diesel” as he puts it. Perhaps that at least partly explain why, after Kellerhouse explained the idea behind the nascent New York campus to him, the scale of ambition accelerated quickly.

“I’ve noticed that what makes working at Vanderbilt different from the bigger public schools where I've worked are just the connections you can make with campus and how valued they are,” Nelson said. “That’s why I'm sitting over coffee with someone like James—because I’ve realized how cool this environment is and how talented the people are who work at this university and how willing everyone is to roll up their sleeves.”

At first, Nelson thought about trying to schedule a match against one of the city’s other Division I programs. But as the two men kept talking, the ideas got bigger. What if the encounter didn’t have to be on another school’s court? Around the time they met, Vanderbilt was gearing up to construct a temporary court on Wyatt Lawn for a nationally televised home opener—Match 1. What if they could pull off something equally memorable for the opening weeks of a new campus—celebrating Year 1, so to speak.

When Nelson brought the outlines of an idea to Candice Storey Lee, vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and athletic director, the response was characteristically bold. Great idea, how about Madison Square Garden? Well, for one thing, it turned out that Harry Styles would be in residency at the venerable arena for most of September. But the support was typical. Lee engineered volleyball’s return at a moment when expanding offerings is hardly the norm in collegiate athletics. She also launched Anchored for Her, recognizing that the future for Vanderbilt women’s athletics depends on championing the transformative power of sports for girls and women everywhere. She doesn’t say yes to every idea, but as part of a university with similar ambition to lead by example, she listens.

“I'm never nervous to meet with her about these ideas because it’s so instilled in me that if you involve campus, just about anything is possible,” Nelson said. “She instills that in us. It's very unique. I think Candice connects with campus more than any other AD because of how Vanderbilt is structured.”

Vanderbilt takes the court for the Hammerstein Ballroom's first collegiate volleyball match (Vanderbilt Athletics). 

Andrew Maraniss, special projects coordinator in the office of the athletic director, took the collective ambition and started to give it shape with a list of possible venues that included the Hammerstein Ballroom. Once that was settled, he and Kim Williams, volleyball’s director of operations, worked closely to come up with an itinerary that made the team’s visit something more than just a volleyball match. Along with practicing at the venue and video sessions at the hotel, the team went to dinner at an Italian restaurant and attended & Juliet on Broadway. They had time to explore Central Park and attend a watch party at the Carnegie Diner for the football team’s home opener back in Nashville.

Impossible on any other road trip, they were also able to spend a Saturday morning hanging out with their peers at a brunch open to all students, following a campus tour. A senior human and organizational development major interested in finance and business, Simran Pirani is more partial to playing cricket or flag football than volleyball. But she found a spot on a couch alongside several players. The conversation started with learning more about how they balance school and volleyball, but it soon shifted to their questions for her about living in New York—the easy public transport, the alumni network.

“We were talking a lot about how fast paced the city is,” Pirani said. “There's something for everybody in New York.”

On this particular weekend that list included a top-level collegiate volleyball match. By Sunday afternoon, you didn’t really need the visual aid of the t-shirts students collected at the previous day’s brunch to know this was a neutral-site match in name only. At one point in the second set, Nelson looked up into the balcony and saw Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier on his feet celebrating a point alongside the student section.

“I'm just like, ‘What am I doing? How did we get here?’” Nelson recalled with a laugh.

One more thought crossed his mind before block defense and offensive systems reclaimed his attention: This is so cool.

Feeding off the energy in the building, Vanderbilt raced out to the lead with a blistering 25-16 first set against the ranked Tar Heels. The Commodores dropped a second-set nailbiter 24-26, but the young team that sometimes let setbacks snowball early last season didn’t relent in New York. After winning the third set to regain the advantage, they fought off a set point and then won the next two points to prevail 27-25 and secure the program’s first victory against a ranked opponent.

Even the newest fans appreciated the moment.

“UNC is a really good team, and the fact that we were able to defeat them and make our mark as one of the top teams in the nation was impressive,” Vanderbilt-New York City student Kevin Wong said after taking in the match. “I know how important this game was for the team, for the school and for the campus—because this is essentially saying, ‘Yeah, we're in our home.’ Since we now have a campus here, we want to make sure that we establish that. And the victory was just the cherry on top.”

Vanderbilt volleyball tours the New York campus (Vanderbilt Athletics). 

Vanderbilt-New York Comes to Volleyball

Wong and Pirani had some of the best seats in the Hammerstein Ballroom, although their courtside vantage point came with a catch, literally. During an on-campus brunch with the team open to all students a day before the match, Wong and Pirani volunteered for the ball crew that keeps the action moving between points, like their slightly more famous counterparts at the U.S. Open in Queens. 

“I wanted to experience something different in New York, and it's not something that I would usually experience in Nashville,” Pirani said. “So I figured I might as well raise my hand.”

Pirani first learned about the New York City campus during her junior fall. She was intrigued but also uncertain about sacrificing memories from her final Nashville fall—all the more because she would spend junior spring in Cape Town, South Africa, Kyoto, Japan, and Sydney, Australia, as part of the university’s robust study-abroad offerings.

“Should I go for this, because I feel like I’m going to miss out on opportunities in Nashville,” Pirani recalled of her dilemma. “But I decided that this experience is going to help boost my career, and if this is going to be something that is a very special program —and it has been so far—I want be a part of that.”

In addition to Monday class, Pirani spends four days a week as a brand marketing intern at Excel Sports Management. That her internship deals with sports, helping pair brands with athletes and leagues or research brand activations at events like the U.S. Open, for example, is largely coincidental. What appeals to her is the experience in strategy and consulting that will be applicable across a variety of future paths. For Wong, engineering management classes Monday and Wednesday complement his internship the rest of the week doing software engineering for a start-up involved in AI and insurance.

Throw in abundant opportunities, formal and informal, to meet and network with Vanderbilt’s large alumni base in the city and the random serendipity that comes with a global nexus—Wong recently scored an invite to a major fashion show—and studying in New York is already delivering on the promise of an entirely unique experience. 

Against all of that, a volleyball match might not seem like a weekend priority. After all, at least as of last year, students can get that a dozen times a fall in Nashville. But that’s the point. The new campus is still Vanderbilt, even if it’s a little bit more difficult to go get a Rand Cookie. Pirani described a slight initial sense of displacement—of feeling far removed from one center of activity in Nashville even while immersed in another. It was a trade worth making. But it was also nice to have some familiar faces stop by from the other campus. Neither Wong nor Simrani made it to a volleyball match on campus last fall, but in a new setting, a match felt like Vanderbilt, which isn’t anything to take for granted.

“Bringing athletics here is such a powerful expression of the campus identity,” Kellerhouse said. “It really helps us in creating the traditions and the spirit and the sense of belonging that makes our New York City campus truly feel like a Vanderbilt campus.”

Connecting Commodore Nation

And they will keep coming, even if the Hammerstein Ballroom is a tough act to follow. Students in New York saw more familiar faces recently, when head coach Beth Hewitt’s lacrosse team visited campus for a tour, breakfast and networking opportunity with around 60 lacrosse alumni the day after their fall tripleheader at Princeton.  

Fall trips are usually all-business affairs, with little room to build in extra time. And as the Commodores build toward a new spring season, the on-field reps in New Jersey were important. But sticking around for an extra day was also about development—less winning draws or assessing lineups than building bridges between Nashville and New York.

“With this trip, we have the opportunity to connect with family, alumni, friends of the program, all while in such an awesome city,” Hewitt said. “It’s really special to be able to show that the New York campus is an extension of Vanderbilt and just enjoy the fellowship. They're trying to create a bridge between the campuses, and they were excited about their students and our students coming together and seeing a Vanderbilt team walking around on campus, just like when volleyball was there.”

If volleyball was a perfect fit to initiate the athletic presence in New York, a start-up program coming together with a start-up campus, lacrosse is an equally logical choice to build on the connection. New York and New Jersey are hotbeds for the sport. Eight current lacrosse student-athletes come from one of the two states, with another baker’s dozen from the larger Atlantic seaboard footprint within range of the weekend activities. 

 

Lacrosse head coach Beth Hewitt and Assistant Vice Chancellor James Kellerhouse lead the New York tour (Vanderbilt Athletics). 

Kinsey (Osberg) Tamberrino was part of another start-up vibe as a member of the lacrosse team in the program’s early years. Now director of advertising sales for Netflix, she started to figure out her eventual path while a communications major at Vanderbilt—a time in her life that included a pivotal media internship in New York after her junior year.

As she moved beyond Nashville after graduation, navigating jobs, raising her three children and generally living a rewarding-if-busy existence, Vanderbilt existed mostly through the lifelong friends alongside whom she played lacrosse for four years. As for the university proper, there was always something else that needed her attention. Nashville was a long way away. That began to change recently, thanks in no small part to Hewitt and her staff’s inclusivity—and just as a slice of Vanderbilt was about to land in her metaphorical backyard.  

“Beth has done a really good job of trying to connect with the alumni more, and so I've now started to re-immerse myself in Vanderbilt and trying to give back through career advice,” said Tamberrino, one of many alumni who returned to campus last spring for lacrosse’s 30th anniversary celebration. “And now having the New York City campus, that's been a really great excuse for me to get closer to the school.”

She toured the new campus last fall. Even as someone born and raised in Connecticut who has spent most of her professional life in New York City, she was astounded that such a tranquil enclave had existed in the heart of Chelsea.

It’s a common refrain. Hewitt toured the site last spring to help prepare for the team’s fall trip, and as she put it, she suddenly knew how her program’s recruits and their families felt when they toured the Nashville campus and found an oasis of green grass and red brick tucked away amid the energy of an urban center.

“It really is like a miniature version of what we have in Nashville,” Hewitt said.

From the classrooms, dorms and common spaces, it’s similar right down to the Vanderbilt students trying to figure out their futures. Tamberrino met with the Vanderbilt Career Center’s Andrea DiMarco, director of the academic internship program in New York, to see if she can help connect students with opportunities. She also connected with the Ingram Center for Student-Athlete Success’ Adora Hicks, director of career development, about coming to campus to speak with student-athletes. And she’s counseled recent lacrosse alumni who are just beginning their journeys in similar fields after hanging up the stick.

“We’ve had conversations about things to consider or giving them perspective on my industry,” Tamberrino said. “It is one of those things where you need to talk to somebody to understand the different dynamics that exist within what I’m doing—or any career. You can give them more perspective when you’re living it.”

She was among the dozens of former lacrosse student-athletes who joined the team on campus—ample evidence that bringing Vanderbilt athletics to New York, home to around 11,000 alumni and parents, helps bring alumni back to Vanderbilt.

Home Court Is (an Empire) State of Mind

A year before the Hammerstein Ballroom matinee, Nelson stood in another locker room far from Nashville shortly before Vanderbilt’s first match in 45 years. He encouraged student-athletes who were almost as nervous as he was to embrace the moment. They chose the uncommon path, he reminded them. They chose to be first rather than merely next.

In New York a year later, when he wasn’t stressing about throwing the ball to the wrong server, Wong marveled at how hard those same Commodores hit the ball, how well they countered North Carolina’s adjustments and how calmly they navigated a 27-25 fourth set that clinched victory.

Be bold, embrace growth and work together. As Chancellor Diermeier has said, one reason we love sports is because they are life simplified. In bringing Wong and students together for a volleyball match, perhaps sports also reflect Vanderbilt simplified. For a middle blocker or an engineer, it’s choosing the uncommon path.

“I wanted to be part of creating history,” Wong said of being part of the first New York class. “I want to prove to future generations that come to this campus that you can step into the unknown and still thrive. If I have a dream or an ambition, I can put my mind to it and achieve it here. I want to be that example for other students to know that you can do amazing things here.”

From Nashville to New York, from volleyball courts and lacrosse fields to midtown board rooms, that’s what has always defined Vanderbilt far more accurately than any geography.

The idea that, together, the only limits on the possibilities are the limits of our imagination.