For over an hour after the start time of 9am, organizers from the Maroon Belles Volleyball Club delayed its first-ever Carbondale Open, intended to be an annual tournament, checking and rechecking wind forecasts and air quality numbers. At 7am, as they set up nets, the numbers were moderate, but by 8am, they worsened. Then at 10am, the air improved. Surrounding hillsides hove into view.
For a summer event, you might expect to manage issues of rain and wind, maybe lightning. The Aug. 9 youth outdoor volleyball tournament at Miners Park contended with heavy wildfire smoke.
At 10:15am, the organizer, Laird Little, gave the assembled girls and parents the choice: “If anyone does not want to play or isn’t comfortable playing, we’ll refund your entry fee” ($20 per team), he said. “Come and see me.”
No one dropped. At 10:30am, the tourney proceeded, with shortened rounds.
Eleven teams, with 22 girls, had registered for age group 14U, and three teams with six girls for 16U, for a total of 28 at this inaugural event. The nonprofit Maroon Belles Volleyball Club (maroonbelles.com), established in 2019, has been an indoor girls’ volleyball program, with six-person practices and tournaments in winter and spring. This summer, the club launched a program for learning the outdoor game, with doubles in sand and on grass, for girls ages 12 to 20 (enrollees were 12 to 17) from Aspen to Glenwood Springs. The fee was $220 a player for the season.
The initiative took off. “The first practice, 30 girls showed up,” said Little, a Maroon Belles director. Practices, beginning in June, were not mandatory, but each drew 20 to 30 girls.
“I’ve been wanting to play beach,” said Macy Swann, 16, of Glenwood Springs, at the tourney. “A lot of my friends did, for United [Volleyball Club] so I wanted to try it, and it’s been really fun.”
She and her partner, Kaia Devine, also 16 and from Glenwood, were part of the new program. “I like our team, and I like all the girls,” Kaia said, adding that she’d return.
An exceptionally positive vibe marked the tourney. Throughout a hot day, with temps into the 80s, girls were heard to tell each other after errors, “that’s okay” or “my bad.” They might say to an opponent, “Nice one.”
“Hey, I’m happy with second,” Chloe Cherry, 14, of Glenwood Springs, told her partner, Emma Ragan, 15, of Edwards, in the championship round where the two “played up” from their age group. Autumn Sherwin and Andrea Lee, 16, of Aspen, prevailed.
“Good game,” Emma told them as it ended.
Shelby Little (Laird’s daughter), an event volunteer and University of Colorado Law School student who has coached club volleyball for two seasons (one with the Maroon Belles), said, “We’re pretty excited about the turnout. It’s just fun to grow the game and give girls the opportunity to play year-round.”
The event format was doubles on both sand and grass courts for age groups 18U (none attended) 16U, and 14U. The tournament was open to boys as well, and two teams signed up, though neither arrived.
Shelby kept results, and other volunteers put up canopies and brought coolers of drinks. Two 15-year-old boys, Matteo Ritschard and Sawyer Ivansco, strolled by and offered to be DJs, producing hours of tunes.
The beach program has operated in partnership with the Town of Carbondale and Eric Brendlinger, Parks and Rec director. He and Laird, former volleyball teammates at the MotherLode Volleyball Classic in Aspen, have been working to upgrade the courts in Miners Park. The Town has put in new net brackets, boundary lines and safety pads. Girls in the program helped sift the river sand placed there years ago, last week filling five five-gallon buckets (Laird and Shelby loaded up four more) with abrasive gravel fragments; the gravel is being used to shore up the ground at the in-town cemetery. The current sand also contains clay that creates dust, which floated up around the girls’ feet and knees, and Brendlinger has requested that the Town replace it with washed sand, potentially taking the old sand (400 tons) to the rodeo for use.
Laird earlier this summer arranged for a pro, Kris Bredehoft, to come teach a skills clinic, paying her with two ski lift tickets he got from bootpacking at Aspen Highlands.
Two or three teams from the Maroon Belles Beach Program will be able to compete in the MotherLode (where Shelby, too, has played, four times) on Labor Day weekend.
Participants on scene came from high schools including Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Roaring Fork, Basalt and Battle Mountain. Brian Arbuckle, another Maroon Belles director, said, “It was great seeing players from every town in the Valley in a fun and competitive event.”
Results: 14U: 1. Samantha Avalos, New Castle, and Lily Mondragon, Canyon Creek. 2. Ashlyn Sherwin and Hannah Lee, Aspen. 3. Alexis Meisel and Sylvie Leeds, Basalt. 16U: 1. Autumn Sherwin and Andrea Lee, Aspen. 2. Chloe Cherry, Glenwood Springs, and Emma Ragan, Edwards. 3. Macy Swann and Kaia Devine, Glenwood Springs.
