United Volleyball Club of the Rockies teammates place second at USA Volleyball Beach National Championships

A pair of Western slope rivals teamed up to win a silver medal at the USA Volleyball Beach National Championships in Fort Lauderdale, Florida this week.

On July 14, Glenwood Springs’ Kaylee Molina and Battle Mountain’s Cynthia Orona placed second in the 16U American bracket, the highest finish ever for a United Volleyball Club of the Rockies team.

“We came into this tournament with the expectation of finishing high. I just don’t think we realized a second-place finish was in the cards until we were on the ground really playing and competing,” said coach Jason Obreque. “It was hard fought but they made it through.” 

The rising juniors qualified for the national event by winning the Rocky Mountain Region Beach National Qualifier in Denver on June 1. They joined 44 other teams in the American division tournament, the middle tier of three brackets in the age group (below ‘Open’ and above ‘Patriot’). The first-two days of pool play seeded and separated teams into gold and silver brackets. Obreque said the focus during those opening games was to adjust to the deeper sand and foreign heat and humidity.

Molina and Orona finished third out of four teams in their pool on day 1 and second the next day, just sneaking into the 22-team gold bracket as the 14th-seed.

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Starting at 8 a.m. on Sunday morning, the I-70 duo opened with a 2-0 win over the 19th seed, then proceeded to dispatch the No. 3-ranked team 2-1, the No. 6 team in a single set 28-24 victory, and the No. 7 squad 2-1.

“Confidence is a funny thing because they balance each other out very well,” Obreque said when asked how momentum grew with each upset. The coach said Orona’s “natural and fluid” style meshed well with the highly-trained Molina, who has been coached within the club since she was 10 and already qualified for four other national championships.

“Because of those two differences, I feel like they compliment each other on the court,” said Obreque, who invited Orona to join the club after facing off against her in the co-ed division at the Motherlode beach volleyball tournament in Aspen last year.

“I saw that she was a natural player. She had a good vision of the game and kind of understood what was happening. She just needed more in-depth training,” he said, adding that he had Molina in mind as a partner from the get go. “So I was happy to see her come on this summer and train with us.”

Orona and Molina advanced to face the No. 1 seed, Nafanua Alofipo and Isa Taylor in the championship, where they were defeated 21-14, 21-11.

“Those two hung in there,” Obreque said. “Throughout the day, honestly it was back and forth. Either Kaylee would hold up the team and get them through situations, or Cynthia would.”

Orona isn’t the first Eagle County student-athlete to make it to the USA Volleyball beach nationals through United Volleyball Club of the Rockies. In 2022, Eagle Valley’s C.J. Yurcak and Talia Crawford also qualified. Another Devil, Anna Gill, teamed up with former Meeker star Emma Luce to qualify that year as well.

Two other teams from the club made the 16U gold bracket this summer, too. No. 21-seeded Ivee Enewold and Brookelyn Savoya and No. 22-seeded Kylee Bair and Grace Sims qualified but were ousted in the first round. Obreque — who was a libero and setter practice player for the Argentinan National Team — said the club, which is based in Glenwood Springs and has a partner gym in Grand Junction, only started the beach portion to give players additional summer touches.

“It was never supposed to be a program we actively starting participating in and really going forward with until we realized a lot of these players were actively competing in these national tournaments,” he said.

“I would say in the last 2-3 years we really kind of flipped the switch and started pushing our beach program participants to really try to qualify,” he continued. “And it’s paid off for sure.”