- April 24, 2024
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Almost every day after school, Spruce Creek High School student Anna Giannini would start her club team’s volleyball practice with a three-mile run.
After the run, drenched in sweat and breathing hard, Giannini would spend hours upon hours working on her hitting, defense and conditioning until her skills were perfected. And long after the sun went down, she would finally head home.
There was just one problem: Her club team was based in Orlando, nearly an hour and a half away from Port Orange.
The club team’s practice would start around 6 p.m. Giannini didn’t get home until about 11 at night.
“A lot of the work I put in wasn’t easy, obviously,” she said. “A lot of days, you want to give up and stuff. But it’s whether you have the determination or you don’t.”
Giannini, now an 18-year-old senior for the Hawks, has been playing volleyball for the last 10 years. She’s an outstanding right side hitter for the Hawks as well as her club team.
But her career in volleyball won’t end when she walks across the stage for high school graduation.
In August 2018, she will take the court at the collegiate level for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Giannini — who was recruited by a bevy of Division I schools, including West Virginia, Clemson and East Carolina — committed to the Spartans in April 2017, her junior year at Spruce Creek, after falling in love with the school’s campus on a visit.
Giannini started getting interest from college programs as a 14-year-old eighth-grader playing for a club team made up of 16-year-olds. Giannini, who has always played on club teams two years above her age group, said coaches thought she was a much older player.
“That kind of screwed up my recruiting process a little bit,” she said. “I was playing so far up that coaches thought I was already committed even though I wasn’t because I was younger.”
Giannini dabbled in several sports before settling on volleyball, including soccer and dance. She transitioned to full-time volleyball after watching her older sister compete in the sport.
When she finally committed to the Spartans, it was a dream realized.
“It was really emotional because it was so hard for me. It was a really stretched out journey,” Giannini said of her recruiting process. “I saw all my friends commit to big schools as I played, and it was hard to make that decision [to go to a smaller school]. When it came down to it, it wasn’t really about how big the school was or how big the conference I was playing in.
“I needed to go somewhere that was going to benefit me.”
