As a child, Coach Giovanazzi was surrounded by volleyball. Both his father and brother played, and volleyball was just as much a part of life as surfing was in his hometown of Venice Beach, Calif. In high school, Giovanazzi played baseball, basketball and football. When the school's volleyball program started in his sophomore year, the quarterback from his football team asked him to go out for the team. Giovanazzi did and was soon hooked on the sport. "From the minute I started it, I loved it. It was a great combination of sports I was already playing," he said.
Giovanazzi discovered his passion for coaching around this time as well. Although he had wanted to be a teacher since middle school, it was his high school football experience that sparked his interest in coaching. He was influenced most by his high school coach who, always thinking of ways to improve the team, would often draw up plays for the team himself.
In 1975, Giovanazzi took his passion for volleyball to college, where he played for four years at UCLA as a three-time USVA All-American. It was there that his career as a volleyball player really took off. He was a member of the 1976 national team and played on the 1978 squad that competed in the NCAA Finals. In 1977 he was selected to play on the men's junior national team that played in the Junior World Championships and placed third at the Pac Rima Championships. He then set his sights on the next stage of his career, halfway across the world in Italy. "It couldn't have been better," he said. "It was so great. I arrived and didn't speak a word of Italian, and everyone on the team was Italian. They wouldn't use any English; they wanted me to pick up Italian right away."
After sustaining an injury in 1980 while playing in Italy, Giovanazzi accepted his first coaching job as an assistant coach at the University of Hawaii for one season. He then returned to school and graduated from UCLA in 1981 with a B.A. in history. That same year, he accepted a position as assistant coach at his alma mater. From 1981 to 1990, he helped coach the team to six NCAA Final Four appearances and three NCAA championships. During this time, in 1986, he also returned to Italy. "I wanted to finish my playing career. I was coaching both men and women at UCLA and wanted to get the playing out of my system and get the Italian experience," he said.
After leaving UCLA, Giovanazzi took the position of first assistant coach for the USA women's Olympic volleyball team from 1990 to 1994, a team that in 1992 received the bronze metal at the Barcelona Olympic Games. In 1992 he accepted another coaching job at the University of Michigan. It was while coaching there that Coach Giovanazzi's life underwent a drastic change.
Giovanazzi had suffered headaches throughout this life. After suffering two concussions before the age of 13, he started to experience migraines. At the time, they were sparse and easily ignored. Around his late 20s, the headaches became more noticeable and intense. By his 30s, they intensified even more, causing him to give up his Michigan coaching position. Like 28 million other migraine sufferers, Giovanazzi must grin and bare the pain, whose origin remains a mystery. "The truth is, nobody knows what migraines are about," he said. "It just got to the point that they didn't go away. They're there everyday, it just depends on the level."
Giovanazzi and his family then moved to Maryland, a decision that was made in part because of its close proximity to Hopkins Hospital. Ironically, while there is still nothing that can be done to relieve Giovanazzi of his headaches, it was at Homewood campus that he was able to find some relief by coaching the women's volleyball team. Although a Division III school may seem like a completely different coaching experience from an Olympic team, Giovanazzi said that he coaches them the same way he had his Olympic level athletes - by forcing them to motivate themselves. "I was so impressed with how good they were when I walked into the gym and saw them playing, I thought, 'This might be DIII but they play as if it were DI.' They are very good and just made a choice that academics were the priority and ended up really coming together and creating a strong team." he said,
In his first Hopkins season, Coach Giovanazzi led the team to a 20-6 finish. Although his headaches still plague him, he does his best to make it to every practice and game that he can, loading up on caffeine before games in order to delay his migraine attacks. According to junior outside hitter Allison Cappelaere, "Coach's condition affects his coaching, because sometimes he has really bad days when he can't come to practice, and we understand that. We have learned to pick up on the warning signs when he is feeling sick, and we can usually guess when he won't be at practice the next day. Even when he's not at practice, the team works just as hard as if he were there. And when he is there, he's 100 percent there for us."
Giovanazzi hopes to return to Hopkins next year, provided that it's in the best interest of the team. Regardless, he reflects warmly on his experiences coaching at Hopkins. "I wish I could thank everyone in the department for being so supportive and for the players who make my life incredibly positive," he said. "There have been three teams that have stood out as the highlights of my career and this is one of them. This year will be something I'll never forget."
