We caught up with Olympic beach volleyball gold medalist April Ross two days before she was named USA Volleyball’s head of coaching for the beach national teams, and discovered she was ready to quit the sport before she ever got started on the sand.
Ross, who won three Olympic medals, was an indoor volleyball All-American at Newport Harbor High and USC.
After earning Gatorade National Player of the Year in high school and NCAA Player of the Year at USC, and leading the Trojans to two national championships, Ross played three years of professional indoor volleyball in Puerto Rico.
But the injuries piled up and she was prepared to enroll in graduate school.
“My body just kind of fell apart,” she said. “You have a whole team of managers (in the U.S.). You have your coach, obviously, and then your physical therapists that work on you. You have your weightlifting coach, who keeps you strong so you don’t get hurt. When I went down to Puerto Rico, I didn’t have any of that. My body broke down. I came home, had surgery on my knee and I was like, ‘I’m done with volleyball. I’m not playing ever again.’”
Ross said weightlifting was a vital part of her training in high school and college, but she struggled doing it on her own in Puerto Rico. Ross couldn’t lift her arm above her shoulder by the end of her third season, and her knee hurt so much that she didn’t even finish her the season.
“It was a really tough time for my body,” said Ross, who quit playing volleyball and wanted to come home. She was unsure of her future and briefly worked as a hostess at House of Blues in Anaheim.
“I did not want to play volleyball anymore,” Ross said. “I was completely burned out. I was hurt and just not having any fun. I was missing my friends and family too much. I had made some money, which I was going to use to go back to school and earn a graduate degree.
“For that summer, during an interim period of time, I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do. My stepsister was the manager at House of Blues in Downtown Disney and she offered me a job, so I went through the whole application process and she helped me get a job there and I worked there for a summer,” Ross said. “I remember once the men’s U.S. national team came in and I seated them at one point. It’s kind of funny. They trained right down the street in Anaheim and they all came in one night to eat. They enjoyed it and had a good time.”
Then, fate intervened.
A former college teammate and roommate, Keao Burdine, called and asked if Ross could play with her in a couple of beach tournaments.
“I was just doing it for fun,” said Ross. It took some time and a few bumpy rides before Ross could fully settle into the beach game.
“My knee had healed and so I just said ‘why not,’” Ross said. “I was really bad, so it was like starting over again, starting a new sport. I had to learn so much. But I fell in love with the sport and the culture and the people.”
Ross had no plans to make a career out of beach volleyball, she said. “I didn’t know the basic differences, which now would be considered pretty stupid questions, and I had a lot to learn.”
Ross said. Ross and Burdine failed to advance past six qualifiers on the AVP Tour, and, well, that hostess job at House of Blues was sounding better and better.
Ross retired in 2024, fulfilled after winning a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Games and earning silver and bronze medals in the previous two Olympics.
“There was a lot of relief after (winning gold), and we (her partner was Alix Klineman) were elated and on cloud nine,” Ross said. “You accomplished what you set out to do. At the time, even when we were still in Tokyo, I felt a lot of closure, because I was 39 at the time and pretty decently older in terms of beach volleyball and Olympic volleyball and playing at that level.
“After that, I knew it was unlikely I would continue to play, regardless of how I did in tournaments. The gold medal sealed the deal for me,” Ross added. “Honestly, I was ready to go home. I played more (AVP Tour) volleyball after the Olympics at Manhattan Beach and Chicago, and we ended up winning those two tournaments. But it was hard to get motivated.”
Ross said she started to consider life after beach volleyball.
“I went through an identity crisis while coming down after the Olympics and I think that happened because I knew I had accomplished that final thing,” she said. “I am so grateful that I was able to reach my goals at the pinnacle of our sport.
“From my time at Newport Harbor, I don’t know why I’m like this, but it’s always about the next step. I made varsity, then can I get starting spot? We won CIF, now can we win state? Then I wasn’t even thinking about a scholarship, until I received my first (college recruiting) letter. Then it was OK, which college should I go to? And can I earn a starting spot? Can we win a national championship? What is the next step? I did that my whole career,” Ross said. “Can we win the gold medal at the Olympics? Once that was checked off, my job is done here.
“Even when I came back last summer on the AVP Tour, after having my son, the motivation wasn’t there and I didn’t have an ultimate goal to chase,” she added. “I had fun, and I’m glad I got to play with Alix and I did that. But it was a very different feeling.”
Richard Dunn, a longtime sportswriter, writes the Dunn Deal column regularly for The Orange County Register’s weekly, The Coastal Current North.