Johnston’s legendary Volleyball Coach Greta Lalli preps Panthers for championship – John Cardullo

by John Cardullo, sportswriter

It doesn’t seem that it has been 25 years ago when Johnston Boys’ Volleyball Coach Greta Lalli began her coaching career. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that it seems that it was only last week.

She began the high school’s volleyball program in the spring of 2000, in her second year as a teacher at Ferri Middle School in Johnston. She said, “This was the only district that I ever taught or coached in. Back then there was no recreation volleyball program for boys or girls. There was no type of feeder program at all.” Lalli spent her first 15 years of coaching at the high school level with kids coming to play volleyball with no experience at all.

It wasn’t until 2016 when she convinced the Town of Johnston’s recreation officials that they needed to develop a recreational volleyball program for both boys and girls. The athletic department agreed but there was a catch – she had to be involved with the program. She dove headfirst into the recreational volleyball program, taking on the added responsibility of not only coaching both the boys and girls high school volleyball program, but she went on to coach teams in the recreational program as well. “The program was very successful, we went from having 12 kids playing, to a high of 65 at the middle school level, pre-COVID. And then the numbers fell to around 30, but the numbers have rebounded to 40, post-COVID. Johnston re-started the boy’s recreation program before the high schools restarted their programs. For Lalli, she was just coaching her recreation team, then the high school girls’ team at the time.

Lalli’s Coaching start

Her coaching career began in the mid-1990’s where Lalli coached soccer and track at Westport High School. When in high school at Portsmouth, she admits that she was a mediocre athlete at best. “They didn’t have a volleyball team, but I did manage to make the play for the local town soccer team, the softball teams, but I did run for the high school track team.”

When she went off to college, it was all about the learning. She played intramural sports, but she knew even back then that she wanted to be a teacher and a coach.

In 2000 the girls’ volleyball program was able to get off the ground first, thanks to Title IX, which gave girls/women’s sports an equal number of sports of the boys/men.

The Lady Panthers won their first State Championship in 2004. Then went onto win the division championships in 2005, 2013, 2014, 2015. Her teams won the State championship in both 2004 & 2014. Lalli was named the Rhode Island Interscholastic League Girls Coach of the Year in 2004, 2014 and again in 2023. The “feeder” program that she helped get started was paying off with big dividends! Kids were learning how to play volleyball at the recreation level was playing in middle school and now onto high school.

Lalli then started the boys’ volleyball program at Johnston High School in 2017, where she and Johnston legend, Dan Mazzulla, teamed up to co-head coach the team from 2018-2019. The boys won their first State Championship in 2021. She also had then Johnston Parks and Recreation Director Vin Lafazia as her assistant coach of the girl’s team for a few years. “Johnstown is a small town and people here wear many different hats.” It is ironic that both the boys and girls team won their first state championship four years after she started each varsity program. “I would like to say that that was the master plan all along, but it took hard work and very talented and dedicated players to get us to that point in both cases.”

Coaching the boys’ team in their short five-year history won the division championship in 2021, then won the state championship in 2022. She was named the Rhode Island Interscholastic League Boy’s Coach of the Year in 2022. In 2023 her Panthers won both their division and State Championships.

It was after that season Lalli decided that she was going to scale back coaching so in the 2024 season, she stepped down as the head coach of the Panthers girls’ team and invited Michael Bedrosian to become co-coaches of the boy’s team. Rather than give up coaching at the high school level cold turkey, her idea was to ease her way out and leave the program that she helped create in good hands. “There are other projects that I would like to devote more time to.”

Recently Lalli created a non-profit pet food pantry, she named it Four Paws Pet Pantry, that helps serve military veterans who need help providing for their cats and dogs. It has grown to the point that she needs to devote more of her free time to this passion project. “I don’t have an exit plan or a hard deadline to when I will leave the volleyball sideline. Right now, I am in a great place. The pantry is doing better than expected, I still love teaching and coaching. I will know when it’s time to go, when the time comes”.

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John Cardullo, sportswriter. John is a lifelong Rhode Islander. His sports experience is extensive, as a player, coach and sponsor of youth and high school sports. He has been the Public Address Announcer for the CCRI Men’s and Women’s Soccer teams. Both the Cranston East and Cranston West football, Cranston East Boys and Girls basketball for 12 years before moving onto the Central, Juanita Sanchez and Mt. Pleasant football teams. Also, Central HS Boys and Girls Basketball, Scituate High School Boys and Girls Basketball, Johnston High School Girls Basketball, Boys Volleyball, Girls Softball, Boys and Girls Soccer teams, and CLCF football.

John has been involved in Men’s softball for 61 years, starting as a batboy for his father’s team in 1964. He moved to the teams scorekeeper then became a player in 1975, and created the men’s team, Players Corner Pub, that went on to win 20 State Championships in their 35 year history. In the 1990’s he published the statewide softball magazine “The Fielders Choice” which was dedicated to all topics related to adult softball. As a feature writer, John and the publication won several media awards. In 2019 he was elected and inducted into the Rhode Island Slow Pitch Softball Hall of Fame which he also helped create. John is a softball umpire in Warwick, Rhode Island.

In his spare time John golfs with his life long friends in season. After retiring from the printing Industry after a 45-year career, he now writes specialty sports columns for RINewsToday.com, is still actively engaged in the high school sports scene, and will soon launch a radio show/podcast on high school sports.