Albuquerque Diné finds passion in volleyball

FRUITLAND, N. M.

Nakooma Pelt’s mother always thought her daughter was meant to balance beams and perform mid-air flips.

But when she took Nakooma to an all-day volleyball clinic, she learned she was wrong.

“I really honestly thought that my daughter was going to become a gymnast,” Kimberly Belone said. “Went to free clinics; they were two hours long and there were three clinics that day. Believe it or not, Nakooma went to all three of them. That was the beginning of volleyball for us.”

Nakooma Pelt, 15, started playing volleyball when she was about eight years old and in about seven years she has already proven herself to be a competitive player.

Her most recent accomplishment came last month when she and her team, Lucha, finished 35th out of 64 teams in the 2016 Girls Junior National Championship in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Pelt grew up in Albuquerque, but has roots in Red Rock, New Mexico, where Belone is originally from and in Kayenta, Arizona, where her father Freddie Pelt, Jr., is from. Pelt will be a sophomore at Sandia High School this fall, said she always had a feeling about volleyball.

“When I first learned, it felt really nice,” she said. “When I first started playing I felt like I already knew the game.”

She learned fast. So fast that she made a local club team who already wanted to her to play up at the 12-year-old level, and on a traveling team.
Belone said she wasn’t quite sure her daughter was ready, but when Pelt turned 11, she insisted she was ready.

“She told me she wanted to play more competitively, she didn’t feel the local circuit was competitive enough,” Belone said. “She’s been on a national team for the last four years.”

Pelt played in the libero position for the last four years and continues to. While she built up her experience with a traveling team, this was the first year she played in the national championship.

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