Athletics at Coleville High School revolved around Jackie Giorgi

A smile crossed Sharon O'Keefe's face as she reflected on memories of her mother, Jackie Giorgi, long-time educator and coach at Coleville High School who passed away on June 22 in Carson City.

It could be said that athletics at Coleville High School revolved around Jackie Giorgi.

"She had her hand in pretty much everything," O'Keefe said.

Teacher ... Coach ... Athletic director ... Statistician ... Booster ... Parent ... Friend ... Mentor ... She wore all of those hats for more than 40 years in the Antelope Valley, located five miles south of the Nevada/California stateline on Highway 395.

"That was the biggest memory, her going up and down the field. That started when my brothers were playing," O'Keefe said.

"Mom even used to help dad coach football," she added, smiling. "I remember way back when, they'd have cow pasture football games out in front of the old house for my brothers and their friends."

Giorgi taught at both Antelope Valley Elementary and Coleville High before retiring in 2000 and worked as the high school's athletic director from 1981 until the end of the 2002-2003 school year.

And this is just scratching the surface.

Among the many former students and colleagues to send their condolences was Lovell Smith, who taught and coached at Coleville for 10 years in the 1970s.

"Lovell called and told me about the advice my mom gave him when he first started teaching," O'Keefe said. "She told him to just make sure the kids know you care and everything else will fall into place. He said he followed that advice for the rest of his career."

Obviously, Giorgi had volumes of memories and experiences.

"I've taught so many different things. I taught science, P.E., health, home economics, Spanish, and before we had special ed classes, I used to teach remedial type classes, reading and math. I enjoyed that," Giorgi said in an April interview.

Jackie was born and raised in Merced, Calif., and after her high school graduation, went to nearby Fresno State. In college she met Baldo Giorgi, a Lyon County product who played football at Fresno State. They married on July 5, 1950 and Jackie began teaching at Antelope Valley Elementary in January, 1957.

Jackie and Baldo Giorgi's three children graduated from Coleville: David (class of 1969), who now lives in Yerington; Ken (1971), who lives in Mariposa, Calif.; and O'Keefe (1973), who lives in Topaz Ranch Estates and now teaches in Coleville.

Giorgi was one of the pioneers of girls high school athletics in Nevada. She started the program at Coleville and coached volleyball, basketball, track and softball.

"Before I started coaching, they had Girls Athletic Association, GAA, in the schools," Giorgi said in the April interview. "The actual beginning was in about 1975; we started with basketball and volleyball, and I remember thinking, 'I can't believe how it was so much different from the way it was when I went to school.'"

Among the many highlights was Coleville's 1A state championship volleyball team she coached in the spring of 1980. It was the first state team championship in any sport, not only for Coleville's girls, but the first in any sport in the A division, where the Wolves competed against schools more than twice their enrollment of about 80 students.

The Wolves had a roster of only eight players, numbers-wise the smallest team in the league, yet compiled a 19-1 season record and won their state title at Chaparral High in Las Vegas -- defeating Virgin Valley and then Pahrump Valley.

"She was so proud of that," O'Keefe said. "She'd say, we've got eight and they've got to know how to play together."

Tammy Reneau Wellock played volleyball in each of her four years at Coleville, capped off by that state championship season.

"Coach Giorgi was a very positive, cheerful coach and we all enjoyed the time we spent with her," said Wellock, whose son, Derek, was a state champion wrestler at Yerington High School this year. "She recognized each athletes' strengths and weaknesses and played us in positions which not only helped the team as a whole, but helped the athlete as an individual.

"We were the only team that won a state championship in all of her years of coaching and she was as excited and emotional as all of us after our win. Talk about tears, smiles, and pure joy!"

Giorgi always looked at the big picture. It was great to win, but other objectives were important, too.

"One of the things she was always excited about was the scholar-athlete awards," O'Keefe said. "She always made sure she went to the awards banquets because she always wanted to impress upon the students that academics came first."

And she believed in her students at Coleville.

"If someone would mess up, she'd be firm, but she'd tell them they had made a kid mistake and that they needed to learn from it. She just loved them unconditionally," O'Keefe said.

"She kept in contact with many of her students. She was always so proud of the people who came out of Coleville. She was a firm believer that the size of the school didn't matter, it was what they did afterward that counted."

(Memorial donations may be made in her name to Coleville High School, 111591 Highway 395, Coleville Calif., 96107.)

Dave Price is a sports writer for the Nevada Appeal