Trinity Catholic’s Dominic Giacobazzi turned a passion for sports into teaching

If you told him he’d be a teacher one day, Dominic Giacobazzi might have laughed. His dream was to be a sports trainer and he did, in fact, earn a degree in sports management.

But a funny thing happened on the way to an NFL training room. Giacobazzi honed his sports career by teaching kids basketball and flag football at the Illinois Valley YMCA. He liked it.

“The best part of the job was being around the kids,” Giacobazzi recalled.

He liked it so much he pondered a question: Did he have a true calling as an educator? To find out, he tried his hand as a substitute teacher. When a job opened up teaching sixth grade at Trinity Catholic Academy in La Salle, he pounced.

“Not everyone can be an educator, but Dominic has a natural talent to teach.”

—  Deb Myers, Trinity Catholic Academy principal

By the end of the first year, he told Principal Deb Myers he wanted to get a master’s in elementary education. She encouraged him – Giacobazzi finished his graduate work in 2020 at Western Governors University – and privately suspected that he had a calling not only to teach children but to help form them spiritually.

“From the first time I met him, his professionalism as an educator was easy to see,” Myers said. “In my mind, I was telling myself, ‘He would be a very good junior high teacher.’ Not everyone can be an educator, but Dominic has a natural talent to teach.”

Giacobazzi, 28, of Peru is now finishing his sixth year in elementary education. He is the sixth grade teacher at Trinity but also teaches social studies for TCA’s junior high students.

Giacobazzi might have been surprised by his abrupt career switch, but most of his mentors were less than shocked. As a boy, Dominic watched war movies with his paternal grandfather Louis, a Navy veteran of World War II, and hounded his grandfather for stories from his service in the Pacific.

Troy Woods, chairman of the social science division at La Salle-Peru High School, still remembers Giacobazzi as a standout in honors and Advanced Placement U.S. history. Woods was in no way surprised Giacobazzi took up education.

“As a student, he was a very personable kid, always very upbeat and sociable,” Woods said. “He got along with everyone and was able to work and be productive with whoever he was teamed up with. He would take charge and was good at presenting and most importantly, was able to make people laugh. Those are all good skills for a teacher.”

Sports, however, were a big hobby for young Dominic, though in retrospect, he only dabbled in athletics. True, he played soccer until the eighth grade, but he only logged one season each on the gridiron and the baseball diamond.

“I was pretty much one and done: Played it, didn’t like it, didn’t really put in a lot of effort, didn’t really try my hardest,” Giacobazzi said. “I was one of those kids that’d try it – one foot in and one foot out – and then fade away.”

Jim Cherveny came away with a different take. Cherveny is chairman of L-P’s physical education, health and driver’s ed division. He also had served as head basketball coach and Giacobazzi served as his team manager during Giacobazzi’s junior and senior seasons.

“You’re not supposed to have favorites, but when you see a kid like Dom who showed up every day and would do whatever he could for our team, you just knew he was a special person,” Cherveny said. “He had a great attitude, worked hard and the players had so much respect for him because of his willingness to help them at practices and games.”

Giacobazzi also was interested in self-improvement and cultivated an interest in the books authored by great coaches such as Nick Saban and Bill Belichick. Both won by bringing out the best in their players and Giacobazzi tries to replicate their methods in the classroom.

“The kids make fun of me on a daily basis because I’m always quoting one of them,” he said.

The sports bug wasn’t easily shaken. He earned a bachelor’s degree in sports management from Blackburn College in Carlinville in 2018. Soon after graduation, his volunteer work revealed a knack for working with children.

It was his mother, Kathy Giacobazzi, who alerted him to the job at Trinity, where Kathy is a secretary. The Giacobazzi family are regulars at St. Valentine Church in Peru and Dominic gravitated to a setting where he could not only impart his love of history but also help young people with their spiritual formation.

“It’s really helped me strengthen my Catholic faith,” he said.

Here again, Woods said he was unsurprised.

“He was a kid you knew would always do what was right,” Woods said. “You never had to worry about him.”

Past students have noted how passionate Giacobazzi is about history. They were unsurprised when he took his first international vacations to England, where he toured Westminster Abbey, the resting place of many monarchs, and visited Hastings, where William the Conqueror effectively launched the English monarchy in 1066.

“Instead of going to a beach somewhere,” Giacobazzi said sheepishly, “I said, ‘Let’s go see some ancient battlefield.’”

That’s not to say athletics have slipped from his radar. He hasn’t ruled out coaching a sport – “It’s something I’m looking forward to in the future” – and he preaches physical fitness while working out in his home gym.