Stevenson girls volleyball coach Tim Crow was announced on July 24 as among the new inductees into the Sports Performance/Illinois Prep Volleyball Hall of Fame.
Courtesy of Joel Lerner
Volleyball? Tim Crow was a basketball player.
Coming out of Cedar Falls, Iowa, standing 6-foot-4 and blessed with a 33-inch vertical leap, Tim Crow was headed to play basketball at Trinity International University in Deerfield.
Thanks to the advice of his future wife and his own change of heart, he altered his destiny.
Stevenson’s girls volleyball coach, Crow is among nine current and former coaches that are new members of the Sports Performance/Illinois Prep Volleyball Hall of Fame, IPV’s Phil Brozynski announced on July 24.
“I’m grateful for the honor,” Crow said Monday. “I coach at a big school with a lot of numbers and we have some very good talent. It’s more their award than my award with the success that we’ve had.”
Members of the IPV hall include Hersey’s Nancy Lill, Benet’s Brad Baker, St. Francis’ Mike Lynch and Peg Kopec, Cary-Grove’s Patty Langanis, Wheaton Warrenville South’s Bill Schreier, Batavia’s Lori Trippi-Payne, and IC Catholic Prep’s Jean Field.
Entering his 23rd season coaching the Patriots girls (his “Michael Jordan year,” he said), Crow has a record of 604-216. He also won 286 matches coaching the boys from 2003-13.
Winning seven North Suburban Conference titles and 15 regionals, his 2016 girls team beat Niles West in three sets to finish third in Class 4A. That team’s 33-8 record is one of 15 seasons, boys and girls, in which Crow’s teams reached at least 30 wins.
He can thank his wife, the former Jennifer Hampson, a Mundelein High School graduate, for making the switch to volleyball at Trinity International.
Crow met her there, on scholarship for volleyball with a couple older brothers also playing Trinity volleyball. Crow came to Trinity to try out for the basketball team, and though he earned one of two available spots in those tryouts, he’d had enough. He burned out on hoops.
Hampson and her brothers suggested giving volleyball a try. Though Crow rode the pine as a freshman learning the sport, he trained over the summer and was a regular the next three years at Trinity.
A gym teacher at Stevenson, after helping in summer camp and serving as an assistant in 2001-02, he took over both boys and girls programs.
“If someone told me I’d be coaching, I wouldn’t say that’d be crazy, but I wouldn’t have thought I’d be coaching volleyball — let alone playing volleyball,” he said.
Yet here he is, a hall of famer.
“It’s nice to get recognized, especially with the people that already made it in there,” Crow said.
Crowded at the top
Nancy Kerrigan, whose recent resignation as IC Catholic Prep girls volleyball coach we wrote about earlier this month, also is on the Sports Performance/IPV 2024 hall of fame list.
So is Marci Maier, former coach at Glenbard East, and Stefanie Otto, who retired after last season at Prairie Ridge.
Glenbard West’s Christine Giunta-Mayer was among the IPV’s inaugural class in 2020. She recently added another hall of fame honor, by the Illinois Volleyball Coaches Association. It was announced during the Hilltoppers’ run to third place at the 2024 finals in Hoffman Estates.
“I’m honored and privileged to be among some amazing coaches and athletes in my lifetime,” Giunta-Mayer said. “The sport is filled with value and I’m absolutely humbled to be a part of it.”
Glenbard West players, from left, Matthew Scruggs, John Winkler, Zac Norvid, Cameron Lilly, Robert Myrphy and Sean Farmer stand with coach Christine Giunta-Mayer and the championship trophy following the 2017 boys state volleyball final at Hoffman Estates High School.
Joe Lewnard/jlewnard@dailyherald.com
A graduate of Glenbard West’s Class of 1992 and the founder of the boys program in 2006, Giunta-Mayer has an astonishing list of accomplishments and honors.
Her Hilltoppers have finished in the top three in the state in each of the last 10 years, winning five titles. That’s not counting the 2020 season scrapped by the COVID-19 pandemic, when Glenbard West was No. 1 in Illinois.
A favorite fact: In 2016 the Hilltoppers went 42-0 without losing a single set.
A three-time national coach of the year, the Illinois High School Association has Giunta-Mayer’s record as 568-136 — winning a remarkable 81% percent of the time. Glenbard West hasn’t lost more than seven matches in a season since 2014.
“I kind of created the culture I wanted and then the culture created the program,” she said.
Like Crow with basketball, Giunta-Mayer said she got burned out in her primary sport, softball. She credited her late father, Anthony Giunta, also a coach, for the wisdom to expand her horizons.
“He said if I was loyal and devoted and passionate I could do anything I wanted, whether I knew anything about it or not. He told me that as a child,” she said.
“If you’re loyal, the sport will come to you and you’ll make what you want of it. If my dad didn’t tell me that, I probably would have never tried it — not to mention being a female in a boys world. It was different. It took me a lot of time to figure that out.”
A physical education teacher, Giunta-Mayer started coaching volleyball at St. Petronille Catholic School in Glen Ellyn 28 years ago, at age 22.
She’s also coached swimming, basketball, softball and cheerleading. If she’s not familiar with something, as with boys volleyball at the outset, she studies its strategy and intricacies. She gains confidence and comes to love the sport and those who play it.
“I still have a long way to go,” Giunta-Mayer said. Her father’s message will continue to inspire her.
“If it intrigues me and I’m interested in it, now I know I can do anything,” she said.
doberhelman@dailyherald.com
