Kehau Rust is in her third year as the Mavericks’ assistant beach volleyball coach.
She also serves as varsity indoor volleyball coach at Glenwood Springs High School and guided the Demons to the state tournament in 2017, her first season as the coach of the program, which she played for one year while in high school. Rust, who born in Hawai’i, also coaches beach volleyball for high school athletes throughout the summer.
Prior to moving back to Colorado, Rust served as the top women’s assistant coach for Division I Princeton University for the 2014 season and also assisted with the Tigers’ men’s indoor team in the spring of 2015. She also started a branch of the East Coast Beach Volleyball Academy in 2013, an organization which has grown to be the biggest beach volleyball club on the East Coast.
In that role, she coached several high-school aged teams taking multiple teams to Junior Nationals.
Before entering the coaching field, Rust was a collegiate indoor and beach volleyball player at Orange Coast College in southern California and then went to play on the beach for the University of Hawai’i in Manoa. She then finished her collegiate career playing indoor volleyball for NCAA Division III Kean University Cougars in Union, New Jersey, while completing her bachelor’s degree in administration with a focus in recreation and a minor in athletic training, graduating in 2015. She was on the dean’s list in all three years at Kean and graduated in the top two percent of her class.
A natural leader, Rust, whose maiden name was Vegas, served as the team captain at both Orange Coast and Kean.
Away from coaching she enjoys playing beach and doubles volleyball throughout the spring and summer as well as backpacking, fishing and hunting with her husband Tyler, a CMU graduate, and dog Mia, a blue heeler and Australian shepherd mix.
She resides in Rifle, where she also works in the real estate industry.
