Jule a gem of a PCHS volleyball playmaker as 8th-grader who helped lead playoffs team
November 8, 2023 at 11:45 p.m.
As the volleyball goes, so goes eighth-grader Julianna Luzzi and, quite possibly, the future of Port Chester volleyball with a lot of help from her up-and-coming teammates.
Julianna Luzzi was one of the scoring aces on the Port Chester Lady Rams volleyball team this past season.By File Photo
Because Luzzi, 13, is the cool hand that makes the Lady Rams go, the assist leader who sets up the plays with a confidently steadying calm, poise and precision. Jule or Jules, as she is called, is that all too rare high school gem of a find, a coach's crowning dream—a middle schooler capable of running the varsity with a maturity well beyond her years while racking up the kind of statistics that made the just past rare winning season one for the ages.
Jule's stats included a dazzling, mind-boggling 448 assists, 103 digs and 60 aces out of 302 serve attempts.
Jule just shrugs off that kind of performance.
All in the family
"I'm just doing what comes naturally," she says. "My whole family is into volleyball. I grew up watching my mother play volleyball. And my aunt. And my cuz, all volleyballers. And my grandfather has been reffing volleyball games up and down Westchester for something like the past 20 years."
So VB has been very much a part of her life for almost as long as she can remember. As have the stories about what VB has meant to her family.
Her mother Laura, for example, was recruited out of Valhalla High School to play college VB for Ryder in New Jersey.
Her aunt played for Pace and was recruited after playing for Good Counsel in White Plains.
Her cousin stars for Pelham and is being recruited to play college ball.
And her maternal grandfather, Jim Berger, has reffed high school VB and umped softball games for around two decades all over Westchester.
Oakland Beach link
In fact, Jule's mom met her future husband Frank playing volleyball in the Oakland Beach summer league. Frank, a Port Chester native, played for a team called Pat's Angels. Laura doesn't remember her team's name, but she thought teaming up with Frank would be a marriage made in heaven—and it has been. They bought the house right next door to the home where he grew up in Port Chester. Their careers took off—Frank's in finance and Laura's as a health consultant and partner in the Mercer Company. And their family has inherited their athletic genes—Jule's big brother Dominick pitched for the Rams junior varsity as an eighth-grader and now plays baseball as a freshman at Iona Prep. And Julianna has followed in her mother's footsteps in volleyball.
Jule's VB interest led to her mom’s becoming involved in starting a CYO youth volleyball program for fourth through sixth graders at Don Bosco Center that ended during the outset of the COVID epidemic in 2019. So Jule started to go to VB clinics and began taking lessons at the Chelsea Piers Athletic Club in Stamford, Conn., not far from The Dance Pointe studio in Greenwich where she had been taking ballet, tap, modern dance, hip hop lessons and more for a decade. But many a truth is said in jetés, so Jule quit dance because it was so time-consuming and was eating into her volleyball time. And soon she was playing up at Chelsea, competing on teams with players two and three years older than she was.
Regional & national teams
Chelsea Piers Volleyball Club director Jamie Colangelo took Jule beyond the volleyball ABCs, teaching her the finer points of serving, setting, playmaking, defense and more, until soon Jules was playing up for Colangelo on the club's regional age group 11-13U travel team before moving all the way up to the national 15U team under Stephanie Costabile, the Chelsea Piers VB Club assistant director.
All that playing up led to the skills that helped Jules earn a starter's position on the Lady Rams varsity as an eighth-grader playing for Costabile, the new Lady Rams coach who is now also a teacher in the Port Chester School District. Jule had no trouble fitting in with the older girls because she has a flair all her own, a grace that comes from all that dance study, a musical flow that comes from the band she played in at the Middle School but quit so she could have more time for volleyball. But most of all, she has that athletic joie de vivre, an enjoyment of what she is doing on the court that leads to that indescribable something that comes from a genuine love for the game. That shows in the way she rocks to the music that fills the gym during warmups on game day. And it shows in the way she dives for the ball or cups her linked hands, dips and then uses her arms like tennis racquets to bat the ball into the air, up, up and away towards the top of the net so it is all but placed directly into the waiting hands of one of her soaring teammates looking to score. She has become the Lady Rams playmaker par excellence. And makes it look easy, like she seems to be effortlessly conducting an aerial ballet of her own with a choreography that can't be taught. Because she seems to move to an inner music. With a joy that is contagious. And an unshakeable confidence and seamless ability to blend in with her talented teammates, an up-and-coming ensemble that includes Nataly Suertegaray, Skylar Sams, Camila Nunez, Emily Garcia, Karah Provenzano and more.
Julianna Luzzi with her brother Dominick and parents Frank and Laura on the occasion of her Confirmation last weekend, Nov. 4-5.Courtesy of Laura Luzzi
"I think we could have beaten a lot of the so-called better teams that beat us," Jule says. "Ursuline, for instance. We were right there. We have to believe we can beat that kind of team because we can. And we let Mamaroneck get into our heads, maybe it was the pressure of making the playoffs, maybe it was trying too hard to win for the seniors playing high school volleyball for the last time. Whatever it was, we have to learn how to handle that kind of pressure as a team. Just play the game. And have fun."
She is just coming off her latest rite of passage, having received the Catholic sacrament of Confirmation this past weekend (10/4/5) at the Parish of St. John Bosco. And now she just wants to get back to playing the game and having fun. And that's what she intends to do now that the fall VB scholastic sports season is over. So she will pick right up and keep on playing fast-paced travel team ball for the Chelsea Piers age-group national team in places like Boston, Philadelphia, Tampa and Hartford. And come the summer, she will be playing VB doubles, two on two, in Mamaroneck, getting ready for her next Port Chester varsity year come the fall. Because she hopes to be an even better player by then. And so will the Lady Rams.
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