Local beach volleyball team represents U.S. in Cyprus

The dynamic beach volleyball duo, Alexis Filippone (a senior at Torrey Pines High School) and Megan Muret (a senior at La Costa Canyon), are in Larnaca, Cyprus representing the USA in the U19 FIVB World Championships taking place July 27 - 31. They will be competing against the top U19 teams in the world coming from 36 different countries.

They qualified for this prestigious international event last May by taking first place at the USA Volleyball Trials in Manhattan Beach against teams from all across the nation. The pair, who started playing beach volleyball with the San Diego Beach Volleyball Club when they were only 12 years old, has been training with the USA High Performance Team for most of the summer in Manhattan Beach and recently at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

“This has been a dream come true to be able to represent USA in Cyprus,” Filippone said, “All of our hours of hard work and training will hopefully pay off and we can bring home the gold medal.” Filippone’s 6-foot-1 height and hard work has also paid off by earning her a future scholarship in 2017 to highly-ranked Pepperdine to play beach volleyball, which is now a NCAA sport. She committed her sophomore year. She first started her volleyball career playing indoor club for Wave Volleyball, but decided to discontinue her indoor club and put all her energy year-round to the beach and training with San Diego Beach Volleyball Club. In addition, both girls train several times a week for strength and conditioning at Jackson Strength in Solana Beach. Even though she is dedicated to beach volleyball, Filippone still wants to play indoor for nationally-ranked Torrey Pines High School as an outside hitter/blocker for her senior year this fall.

Muret, who is committed to playing beach volleyball for top-ranked UCLA in 2017, knew at a young age she wanted to become a beach volleyball star. “ I played some indoor, but decided the beach is where I wanted to train. My whole family is into beach volleyball and we play all the time. Living in Southern California has really been a blessing because we can train year round. Alexis and I have worked really hard for this, and I hope that we can bring home a medal for our country, family and friends.”

Winning has been good for them this past year. They’ve won several tournaments including first place at the AAU Power League Club tournament in Santa Monica in January and the AAU tournament in Long Beach in February, which gave them a bid to participate in the Pan Pacific Games and for the Junior Olympics. In addition, they won the CBVA tournament in Long Beach, qualifying them for the Cal Cup in August. They recently received the gold medal at the BVCA National Championships in the 18’s division in Hermosa Beach where they competed with over 100 teams from all over the nation and helped earn their San Diego Beach Volleyball Club a first-place trophy for top beach volleyball club in the country.

The girls hope their winning streak continues and they will bring home a medal from Cyprus!