After six years of working with them, Amy Iannoccari knows the Sedona Juniors can achieve greatness — something she has been busy achieving the last 25 years.

The former all-Southeast Conference first-team outside hitter, who still holds the University of South Carolina record for most attacks in one season, develops much more than her 32-inch vertical in 17s club volleyball players at the Sedona Red Rock High School gym for head coach and longtime friend, Danni Barker.

“I’m in my retirement, but Danni wouldn’t let me retire,” Iannoccari laughed. “I would go to practice once a week and once on the weekends if we weren’t competing so I don’t have to undergo the full wear-and tear of the season.”

She also helps coach the 17s at Juniors tournaments like the three-day Festival Fiesta on Presidents Day weekend.

“I begged her for one day a week, which is huge,” Barker added. “She knows so much. She’s a computer geek.”

By day, Iannoccari is a manager of product owners of technology systems at higher education institutions — and her coaching and playing resumé is as long as that job title. Besides playing professionally for a season in France, she held assistant coaching jobs at the University of New Orleans and Georgia Tech — from which she retired in 2000.

“I resigned due to being diagnosed with an autoimmune thyroid problem” — Graves’ disease, Iannoccari said. “I lost a ton of weight. I was in a very bad spot for six months.

“Once [doctors] figured it out, it’s like a miracle. You feel like a normal human again. Your hormones do what they’re supposed to do.”

Soon after her recovery, she moved to the Verde Valley, where she initially helped Lynda Chavez’s Vertical Thunder club team in Clarkdale. It was not long before she met Barker, whose daughter Brenna was playing for the Juniors.

For the full story, please see the Friday, March 13, issue of the Sedona Red Rock News.