US juniors gain ground in Pereira, U18 pair rallies to ninth

Camilo Velasco Franco and Santi Castro Varela turned a shaky start in Pereira into a ninth-place finish in the U18 draw, stringing together three straight wins after group play at Padel House Galicia. The pair’s run gave the U.S. junior program its clearest evidence yet that it can recover inside a tough Americas field, even if the gap to the region’s top pairs remains.

The second stop of the 2026 Pan American Junior Circuit ran July 2-4 in Pereira, Colombia, organized by the Federación Colombiana de Pádel, and the United States sent eight juniors in four pairs. Alejo Kalil, Emiliano González, Matias Vazquez, Niko Palacios, Matthew Toro and Santi Costantini all logged international reps, with Paloma Varela listed as the team delegate. For a program building toward bigger targets later this year, the trip offered more than scorelines: it showed which pairs could settle after an early setback and which still needed a cleaner first-strike game to stay with the continent’s best.

Velasco Franco and Castro Varela were the U.S. standouts because their response after a difficult group-stage start was immediate and measured. They advanced through the quarterfinal, semifinal and final-round bracket in succession to claim ninth overall, a result that mattered as much for how it was earned as for where it placed them. In a junior circuit where matches often turn on composure and doubles chemistry, that kind of rebound suggests the Americans are learning to stay in points longer, absorb pressure and turn one bad opening into a reset rather than a collapse.

Pereira also fit into a larger development calendar that now gives the U.S. a clearer benchmark. The season began in Paraguay in April, moves next to Pan American Junior Circuit III in Mexico from August 6-8, and then heads to the Pan American Junior Circuit Finals USA from October 8-11 at TAKTIKA Padel in San Diego, California, inside the Barnes Tennis Center at 4490 W Point Loma Blvd. USA Padel’s junior pathway places the bigger target on the FIP Junior America Padel Cup in Mexico from November 10-14, which it identifies as the qualifier for the 2027 FIP Junior World Cup. The selection route asks players to stack real match play across at least four FIP- or USPA-sanctioned tournaments, including at least two FIP Promises events, so the lessons from Pereira feed directly into a season built to reward consistency, not one-off spikes.