As a high school coach for most of his career, Tom Gizzi jumped at the opportunity to take over Seton Keough's basketball team and get back on the sideline in a conference he knows well.
Gizzi coached the McDonogh girls for five seasons before departing for an assistant coaching job with the Loyola Maryland women's team in 2008. In 2012, he left the Greyhounds to pursue a master's degree and now works to help Fortune 500 companies recruit talent.
During that time, he continued to coach club and Amateur Athletic Union girls basketball and helped found the Maryland Belles AAU program.
"I always knew I was going to get back into the high school scene ... and I was looking for the right opportunity in the right setting where I really could find some core values and where I think I can make an impact and where I can appreciate the work that goes in by the school, the work that goes in by the student-athletes and the work that I put in, and the whole basketball community would put in. When I learned Jody [Powell] was moving on, I started looking into that," said Gizzi, who lives in Finksburg and has two daughters at McDonogh.
Gizzi will be the third Seton Keough coach in six years. Powell left after four years, moving with her family to Pittsburgh after her husband, former Maryland football assistant Andre Powell, took a coaching job at Pitt. Powell replaced Jackie Boswell, who won two Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference championships, won an ESPN Rise national championship and kept the Gators perennial A Conference contenders for 11 years before moving on to become head coach at Stevenson University.
The year Boswell left, four starters also graduated, but Powell kept the Gators in the Top 15 all four years. They finished this past season at No. 11 with a 16-11 record and the Gators pulled off one of the biggest upsets of the season, knocking off Roland Park when the Reds were ranked No. 1.
"I have a lot of respect for what Jody has done with that program since Jackie left," Gizzi said. "I love the momentum they have there and some of the culture Jody re-established. Seton Keough is a school that's rich in tradition in terms of girls basketball and the opportunity to try to continue to build the momentum that Jody resuscitated is really attractive to me."
While Gizzi said he has not met with the players yet because the school is on Easter break, he said he does know some of the players' families.
Seton Keough athletic director Josiah LaTona said Gizzi stood out among several good candidates who applied for the job.
"Tom has tremendous experience, not only on the court but in an educational environment as well," LaTona said. "He was a teacher and he connects education and athletics together. ... We're excited to get somebody with his caliber and his experience."
Gizzi, who started his coaching career while a junior at the University of Pennsylvania in 1987 when he would ride his mountain bike to West Catholic to coach the junior varsity boys basketball team, was The Baltimore Sun's All-Metro Coach of the Year in 2007. That year the Eagles lost to St. Frances in overtime in the A Conference final. During his tenure, the Eagles were 100-32.
LaTona said it was a bonus that Gizzi has experience in the A Conference.
"We're more attracted to the person and the type of coach they're going to be as opposed to the landscape, but it's certainly gravy if that comes with the package," he said. "When you're competing in the A Conference of the IAAM, it's just some of the most competitive basketball in the whole Mid-Atlantic area. Some of the girls that come out of here go to the most prestigous Division I colleges, so it's hard to be competitive and you need every advantage you can get."
Gizzi will bring two of his former players to his coaching staff, former McDonogh All-Metro guard Brittany Mallory, who helped Notre Dame reach the NCAA championship games in 2011 and 2012, and Meredith Tolley, an Urbana graduate and three-time MVAL Player of the Year who played for Gizzi at Loyola.