BEYOND THE GAME
INSPIRATION: Casey Giovanazzi and Caren Kemner have leaned on each other to keep Casey’s father Greg’s volleyball spirit in their thoughts.
Back in the game
by Don Patterson
asey Giovanazzi’s story starts with her dad. It has to. He is why she is a volleyball play- er and a big part of why she is a good volleyball player. And, indirectly, he is why she was able to once again enjoy playing the game in 2014, just 2½ years after he died of heart disease at the too-young-age of 54.
C
Greg Giovanazzi was a beloved fi gure in volleyball. Everybody knew him as Gio, and the mention of his name still brings smiles to people’s faces in volleyball circles everywhere. He was a very good player – 55-9 record in three seasons as an outside hitter at UCLA from 1976-78 and a member of the Bruins’ 1976 na- tional championship team – but he was probably a better coach.
Among the highlights from his years on the bench was his decade at UCLA in the 1980s, when he served as an assistant for both the men’s and women’s programs on teams that won
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After her father died, Casey Giovanazzi lost her love for volleyball. She found it again in 2014 with help from an old friend: Hall of Famer Caren Kemner
fi ve national championships. Another highlight: the quadrennial that led into the 1992 Olympics, when he assisted Terry Liskevych in guiding a young U.S. women’s team to a bronze medal in Barcelona. More telling is the number of players who say he is the best coach they’ve ever had. You hear that a lot.
It was with the national team that he fi rst coached Caren Kemner, a terminating outside hitter and future Hall of Famer who is now both a club coach in Quincy, Ill., and the head coach of the women’s team at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Mo. Over the years, the two of them had formed such a close friendship that they were like family. Kemner refers to Gio as her brother. When Gio and his wife, Deb, had Casey, Kemner became Aunt Caren. “The fi rst time I met Casey, she was, like, 3,” Kemner says. “I would go to Michigan to do camps. [Gio was head coach at the University of
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