Courtney Materazzi is the Head Women’s Volleyball Coach at Fairmont State University. Her husband, Cristian Materazzi, is the Assistant Women’s Soccer Coach at Fairmont State University. They have a 2 year old son, Dominic James, who spends many days going between Volleyball and Soccer practice. Both programs are very Family based programs that enjoy having Dominic around at all the events and both teams were super excited to learn that Courtney and Cristian were going to have another child.
Brandon Heembrock, Head Women’s Soccer Coach at Fairmont State University, brought up question of a gender reveal to both Cristian and Courtney during the early stages of their pregnancy. As time moved forward, Brandon brought up the idea of Courtney finding out the gender of their child without Cristian knowing and then us finding a way to surprise Cristian with it. Several idea’s were thrown out there until we finally landed on trying to have a soccer official give Cristian a card and that card be the color that represented the gender of their future child.
Cristian is a very vocal coach on the sidelines and thus him getting a car would be nothing new, and something that would probably not be hard to make happen in a game. Originally, we thought the gender would be found out close to Cristian’s birthday, September 11th, which the women’s soccer team have a game on that day, but once Courtney found out she would be able to find out the gender earlier, we changed course. The final pre-season game for the women’s soccer team was on Aug. 31st and Courtney was scheduled to find out the gender on Aug, 27th. Cristian had no idea that Courtney had this appointment scheduled. Once Courtney was done, they placed the ultrasound, with the gender on their baby on it. Courtney did not open it to find out the gender as she wanted to find out at the same time as Cristian.
Courtney gave the ultrasound to Brandon and Cody Jankowski, Assistant Women’s Volleyball Coach, on Aug. 27th to allow them the time to put together the gender reveal. Prior to this gender reveal being set, the referee for the pre-season game was already set as Raul Ovalle, a former College soccer coach and current Head of the local soccer club, who Brandon works for as well. When Raul was brought into the know about this idea he was all for it.
During the first half of the game Cristian was very quiet, even after attempts by Brandon to egg him on to be more vocal. At Halftime Raul and Brandon had a conversation about how Cristian was not saying much and that the card would have to be given the very next time Cristian said a word, even if it was to the bench. Early into to second half the ref had the perfect opportunity to execute the gender reveal. The ball went out of play over the team bench and the ref called Cristian over and told him that he had enough of Cristian talking and Cristian responded with asking the ref are you seriously giving me a card right now and that is when the ref showed Cristian his pink card.
The women’s soccer players were told the gender the day before so they could prepare the bench with hidden bottles and piles of pink confetti. The volleyball team, Courtney, and their son Dominic were all at the game, standing just a few feet away waiting for the card to be shown. What makes this story even more special is the Cristian was the former Head Women’s Soccer Coach at Alderson Broaddus. He left that program in 2018 and his assistant Jaron Hulme took over as the Head Coach. That pre-season game was against Alderson Broaddus and his former team, and former Assistant Coach, who was brought into what was going to happen just a few minutes before the game.