When the Napa Valley College volleyball team walked into Yuba’s gym after a two-plus-hour ride to Marysville a month ago, the Storm must have felt like it was entering an ancient Roman Colosseum.

“There were banners all the way across the wall, so there’s a lot of history up there — Yuba was pretty dominant under when Thea Post was there,” Napa Valley coach Kelly Van Winden said of the 49ers’ former longtime coach, who was succeeded by current 49ers coach Greg Chapman in 2006. “Greg is a good coach, too.”

But Yuba couldn’t put away the Storm. Led by co-captains Jane Stier and Tiffany Molinar, Napa Valley pulled out a marathon 25-18, 25-16, 26-28, 16-25, 15-13 victory to stay unbeaten in Bay Valley Conference play.

“Jane actually collapsed at the end of that match, literally, at the end of the bench,” Van Winden recalled of her kills leader at outside hitter. “She had 59 (hitting) attempts, and that’s us doing stats on the bench — she probably had more. She carried us.”

Molinar, the Storm’s setter, has also been carrying the Storm (11-6 overall, 10-0 BVC), which will host Yuba (8-1 BVC) at 6 p.m. today in what surely has been a long-awaited rematch for the 49ers.

“I don’t know if we’re rivals,” Van Winden said of the Napa Valley and Yuba squads, which along with Solano don’t get much of a challenge from the rest of the conference. “We pair up well, but it’s not mean-spirited. We both welcome the opportunity to have good competition and respect each other because of that.”

Van Winden said that the 49ers are probably the tallest team in the BVC and the Storm are the shortest, so her squad always feels like the underdog when playing Yuba.

“It’s always a benefit to be Cinderella,” Van Winden said. “Watch their warmups (tonight) and you’ll see. We don’t look like a team that’s going to mess with anybody, but we do. But we have the target on our backs right now.”

Van Winden said her team made up for its physical disadvantage against Yuba by making fewer errors than the 49ers did.

“That’s how we’ve done it all season,” the coach said.

At just 5-foot-9, Stier is the Storm’s tallest player. The 2008 Napa High graduate leads the team with 95 kills in 282 attempts — just ahead of 2009 Indians product Christina Fonville (77-for-244).

For Stier and Fonville, the BVC might seem as two-tiered as the Monticello Empire League did when they played at Napa High.

“We play down when we play Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin,” Stier said. “We don’t play our best and we don’t have many offensive chances because we’re getting a lot of free balls. So Yuba is our first game since Solano where we have good competition. It’s really hard to get back in there and say, ‘OK let’s go.’ We have to compete with each other (in practice) and hold each other accountable.”

Molinar has 279 assists and is third in digs with behind libero Lauren Sechitano (148) and Stier (125).

Van Winden said her co-captains’ hitting accuracy helps set the tone for the team, pointing out that Stier has just 17 hitting errors and Molinar seven errors in 77 attempts.

Stier has limited her mistakes even though she’s playing in the middle for the first time in her life.

“I’ve always played to be consistent,” she said. “If I didn’t think I would hit it in, I would pass it, even though I make more errors than I used to. I’ve always been very hard on myself, but it’s better not to have a negative than to keep the ball in play and get a positive.”

For the co-captains, even home matches can seem like they’re on the road. Stier now lives in Santa Rosa and Molinari still lives in Vacaville, making them the longest commuters on the team — and their dedication that much more amazing.

“They carry the team, emotionally and physically,” Van Winden said. “We’re like a Thanksgiving meal. You’ve got the turkey, and you’ve got all the condiments and side dishes, but it wouldn’t be a Thanksgiving feast without the turkey.

“They’re the ones who speak what’s on their heart to the team, saying ‘We need this, come on, suck it up.’ They wear their emotions on their sleeves and try to pull the other kids with them. The tears that were shed this year over some of our early losses were theirs, and they are heartfelt.”

Molinar appreciates having Stier to help her lead the team.

“She has a strong voice, so she leads vocally and by example,” Molinar said. “I look to her as my other half. If anything’s going wrong, I know she’s there for me.”

Molinar, a 2007 Justin-Siena graduate who was the All-County Player of the Year as a senior, almost didn’t play this year.

She became a mother 10 months ago — to Raine, the daughter she has with boyfriend and former Justin-Siena basketball star Blaize Boles. After taking off a semester off to work, she enrolled in classes at Solano Community College this summer. When Van Winden caught wind of this, she called Molinar and talked her into enrolling at Napa Valley instead, and playing for the Storm.

“I signed up for classes at Napa Valley the day before school started,” Molinar said. “I hadn’t touched a ball since May 2008, at an open gym, but Kelly really convinced me I should play. I wanted to try it again and see if I still had it in me, and I did. My setting was pretty much there. My hitting I did have to really work on, and my defense. I was really doing bad when I started off. I’m glad I decided to come back. Kelly had us do a lot of (conditioning) on our own time, and it’s taken a lot of self discipline.”

Molinar said volleyball provides a nice release from school and motherhood.

“It’s really helped me to focus more. It’s been a really good outlet for me. It’s been really nice to get away for a few hours a day and focus on myself for a little bit,” she said. “It’s always nice to be on a winner. It makes it easier to go to practice every day knowing we’re doing well. I haven’t lost a lot of games, and I like the challenge of teams wanting to beat us and being one of the top teams. It’s nice to have that again.”

Molinar is athletically only a freshman, and will have another year of eligibility next year when she enters a Liberal Studies program at NVC next year that the campus offers as an extension of Sonoma State. In other words, she may return to the Storm next year.

Stier, a sophomore who has played since she was 12, said she has made a difficult decision to end her volleyball career after this season.

She plans to devote all of her time to studying business, likely at St. Mary’s College in Moraga. She visited the campus Tuesday with assistant coach Emily Pahk, who also plans to transfer there.

She’ll look back fondly on that five-game win at Yuba, assuming tonight’s performance doesn’t surpass it.

“We were going down pretty fast,” she said of losing the third and fourth games. “But there was no way I was going to let them beat us. We were a better team than them, but we had to work on our mental game. I was just trying to bring my team up the whole time. I can literally say I never worked so hard, emotionally, mentally or physically, in a game in my life. It was like an out-of-body experience.

“I didn’t feel connected with myself. I was so pumped up, in a zone. Kelly had to tell me ‘Just breathe, just breathe.’ I couldn’t come back down and think logically.

“But it was the best feeling at the end when we won. I think we really got lucky. It was a pretty intense feeling. I think it taught me that I’ll never quit.”

Van Winden is also still in disbelief over how her team won that match. In fact, she said she’s going to ask the 49ers for a video of that match tonight.

“I’m going to make copies for the girls that played because our kids played out of their heads,” the coach said.