Michigan for seven years.] That was like our bonding time as a family, and all of a sudden this little blonde girl shows up. When I fi rst met her, she wouldn’t come off the stairs. I said, ‘I’m going to make you some Casey eggs.’ They were just scrambled eggs with cheese, but she thought they were very special.”
The little blonde girl grew up to be a tall blonde young woman with well-polished setting skills and a head for the game that was nurtured by her father. From age 12 to 18, she played club for Dad, who by then was coaching only intermittently at the high- er levels because of severe and debilitating migraines. More days than not, he was in excruciating pain. Kemner remembers him telling her that on one of the bad days he threw up 37 times. He knew the exact number. He kept count to take his mind off the pain. Tough as it was for Casey to see her dad
suffering, there was one positive. He was home. A lot.
“He would come get me from school, even on his bad days,” Casey says. “I always felt so sorry for him, but selfi shly, it created a relationship for us that we could never have had. Because of [the migraines], he spent his time coaching me. I got to be his escape.”
2012. The next day, she got a call and he was gone.
C
Kemner had talked to him just a couple of days earlier, and he sounded fi ne. They were setting up fl ights for his annual sum- mer trip to Quincy, where he helped coach at her volleyball camps.
“It was such a shock because he was always forward thinking,” Kemner says. “Even when his team would lose, he could talk about it being an opportunity for the next day. I never saw the end with him because he never let you know there was an end.”
Casey was in the middle of her freshman year at University of North Florida when Greg passed away. Volleyball in college had been different than volleyball with her dad – more of a business and, frankly, not nearly as much fun. She played another year at North Florida, then transferred to play her junior season at Towson University in Baltimore, where Deb is vice president of student affairs. Being near her mom was a good thing – “We became so close,” Casey says – but the volleyball just wasn’t right. Maybe it would have been okay if her dad
asey’s last conversation with her dad was on a Sunday night in March of
‘Seriously?’ I said, ‘Yeah. It’s just a thought, Case. If you don’t want to play anymore and you’re happy, I completely understand.’ By the next morning, she had her application and her paperwork fi lled out – she did it on her own. And when she told me, I got teary- eyed because I know her dad would be so happy for us to have this time together.” It felt “like a sign from my dad,” Casey says. “It was like he was saying, ‘Here it is. Here’s your chance.’” A month later, Casey was in the gym training with her new Culver-Stockton teammates, and it all fell into place from there. The team had a really good season, went 22-10, and Casey was selected Setter of the Year in the Heart of America Athletic Conference (HAAC).
FAMILY TIES: Casey and her mother Deb have refl ected on some special volleyball moments since Greg Giovanazzi died.
“It was such a shock because he was always forward thinking. Even when his team would lose, he could talk about it being an opportunity for the next day. I never saw the end with him because he never let you know
there was an end.” Caren Kemner on friend Greg Giovanazzi
had been around to analyze it with her and talk her through the tough times. But since he wasn’t, she decided it was time to leave the college game behind. Her plan was to skip her senior season. Last July, she fl ew to Quincy. (After Gio died, Casey took his place at Kemner’s summer volleyball camps.) Not long after Casey got to town, Kemner fl oated her an unexpected question.
“She was sitting in the back of the car, and I said, ‘I’m just going to throw this out: My setter quit unexpectedly and I’m looking for a setter. Have you thought about playing again?’ It got really quiet, and she said,
“The girls absolutely embraced her,” Kemner says. “It’s hard for me to express how much she changed our team. We would not have been this successful without Casey. There’s no way. She had the maturity and the knowledge that really made the differ- ence for us.”
oth Kemner and Casey laugh when talking about her vertical jump, which can be adequately described this way: Not quite Cuban. On the plus side, though, she has her dad’s sweet arm swing and she gets the sport of volleyball on a deep level. “Casey knows just about every aspect of the game,” Kemner says. “Can she physi- cally do everything? Probably not. But she can analyze it and fi gure out a way to win. She makes good choices, and she’s a very positive person to play with.” Casey says, “I am by no means an athletic specimen. But my dad taught me the game. From the time I was 12 years old until I left for college, we would sit in the car after games and just talk about volleyball, talk about who I should be setting. That’s in my head the whole time I’m playing. People come up to me all the time who played with him or played for him and say that I have his mannerisms on the court. I just feel like I really channel him when I’m playing.” The cool thing is, Gio the Elder shaped a lot more young players than just Gio the Younger. In Casey’s 18s year in club ball, her team was No. 1 in Maryland. Four of the girls she played with had been with her and her dad since they were 12, and seven of the girls from that team went on to play NCAA Division I volleyball.
B
“Our love for the game was so pure,” Casey says. “We all just loved to play.” No doubt, the attitude Gio cultivated in the gym had a lot to do with that. In the fi rst
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