HERMOSA BEACH, California — There have been a number of moments that suggested to April Ross and Alix Klineman that this season would be unlike any other in their professional volleyball careers, namely the babies they’ve given birth to and fed and raised these past eight months for Ross and a little more than a year for Klineman.
Superhuman though they sometimes seem to be, one doesn’t simply take the elevator back to the mountaintop before their son can walk.
But no moment made it quite so real as when Ross sat down for breakfast prior to their first match at AVP Huntington beach and dug not into a bowl of oatmeal or fruit or eggs or any other nutritionist-approved meal, but a bag of McDonald’s.
“I was like ‘Oh boy,’” Klineman said, laughing.
“There were a lot of comments about that,” Ross said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “But is it really that shocking?”
Depends on whom you ask.
Ask anyone, for example, who has followed Ross’ career, with her three Olympic medals and 46 AVP wins and treasure trove of FIVB medals and cowbells and swords and all manner of other trophies and shock may be the standard response. Ask any mother, on the other hand, who understands the demanding nature of parenting and the time and dedication required to regain the athletic form and shape that once allowed Ross to perform at such an elite level for two decades — not to mention a new, constantly interrupted sleep schedule that isn’t exactly ideal to recovery and peak athletic performance — and there would be an empathetic nod, maybe a laugh of ‘I’ve been there too’ understanding, but certainly no shock.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Ross said of AVP Huntington, her first tournament back since becoming a mother to her son. “Physically, I was so out of shape that I was hoping I can get in good enough shape to compete with these teams at this point. I felt like I barely made it and did OK in Huntington. It’s hard because I know I could play so much better than I played but at the same time I need to be very accepting and happy about being able to play. There’s a fine line.”
Klineman gets it. It’s exactly how she felt when she competed in last fall’s Paris Elite16 and World Championships with Hailey Harward. It was as if the ghost of Alix Klineman were on court, not the version who won a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games two years prior.
“I felt like I barely got in passable shape,” she said.
They both knew, too, even before the McDonald’s Breakfast Incident of 2024 that this season would be different. That the team who won five straight AVPs and hadn’t so much as lost a domestic match since 2019 wouldn’t be the one who took the court in Huntington. The internal furnace that had driven Ross to her place as one of the greatest beach volleyball players to ever live had dimmed to mere embers, to the point that she looks back upon her career in wonder, marveling at how she was able to sustain such brilliance for so long.
“Looking back and wondering how I had such high motivation to win all the time before — I feel like I’m pondering that all the time,” Ross said. “The emotional requirement to show up for every match and want to win and put enough in that you can win, tournament after tournament, to maintain that level of play is so exhausting. It was hard enough for me to do it for one tournament after two years off.
“I had to muster up that emotional energy every match. In certain instances it would have easy to be like ‘This tournament doesn’t matter, I could mail it in, and we’d still be going to the Olympics.’ We qualified in January but every tournament was about how are we going to get better, how are we going to use it for the Olympics. I was afraid to lose throughout most of my career going into tournaments and matches so to be able to allow yourself to put your hopes and dreams on the line every single match with the threat of being devastated, I wasn’t as good with separating my identity with wins and losses. To weather that as an athlete over and over and over again is mentally exhausting. I’m impressed with myself that I did it as long as I did.”
As is Klineman. They’re cut from a similar cloth but certainly not the same. Klineman is as voracious a competitor as any, yet it is Klineman who may be more awestruck with Ross’ career and drive than Ross herself.
“I don’t know how people go to multiple Olympics like you and Kerri [Walsh Jennings],” Klineman said. “How do you do that well and say ‘I’m still that hungry to do it again?’ ”
“I don’t know,” Ross said. “That’s what I’m wondering.”
She’s legitimately mystified, Ross. She knows she’ll never have that same edge as a player again, not when her life now revolves around raising another human being. Even when they intended to compete as well as they were able in Huntington, it was still a surprise to both of them how much their priorities had shifted. The space between matches was no longer a retreat to the hotel for film and lunch and a power nap, a mental and physical reset. It was “go go go get food change the baby make sure someone’s watching him,” Ross said. “It was a lot.”
“No scouting reports,” Klineman added. “There was one point in between matches and Josh’s [Ross’ fiance] mom was going to take him and you said ‘If he’s fussy, bring him back, don’t worry about us. It’s not that important.’ I was like OK, that’s an example of priorities.”
On the court, it all felt the same. They don’t do fun, goofy volleyball, those two. It’s how they’re wired, why they are two of the best of their generation, and Ross one of the best all time. When they took the court in Huntington, it was if nothing had changed. In that space of 40 minutes to an hour, they were the same competitors they’d always been. Of course, everything in between those matches, from practice to lifting to preparing — or not preparing — had changed.
“In the moment, I’m thinking we can beat this team, and then after, I’m like ‘Wait, we’re actually not in that great of shape,’” Klineman said with a laugh. “There’s a level we haven’t reached that we need to reach to beat those teams.”
They will have one more tournament together, the 2024 Manhattan Beach Open, and potentially the AVP League, whatever that may look like come this fall. The reunion of the A Team wasn’t about winning everything, as it once was, but “intentional closure,” Klineman said. They didn’t want to simply fade into the distance, branching off into different careers, an awkward end to two magnificent careers.
“It seemed just enough of a challenge to get back into a routine that would be healthy and motivating and I had been away from the sport for two years,” Ross said. “It would have been strange and just not how I wanted to end my career and fade away and not come back.
“It just sounded to me, in my gut, like a great plan. I just had to get Alix on board.”
After the World Championships, Klineman thought she might be finished. She’d checked a major box with her Olympic gold in Tokyo. Her motivation had dimmed, priorities flipped.
“There’s other things that are more important. There’s a balance of doing well and having a family now,” she said. “I missed out on the Olympics a bunch of times, so my motivation has been building and building and building and then I got it, and so now I know how much work it takes to do it again which is really doing, and I did it, so bucket list is gone, and I’m doing something more important now.
“I wouldn’t say it’s my competitiveness, it’s my motivation. I would say it changed more after the Olympics. It’s not as high of a priority. I was thinking I could be done, but I had the same feeling that it would be a weird end to my career. I still wasn’t even sure I had the motivation to play. I want to play only if I want to be out there and having fun and it feels worth it.”
She agreed to train with Ross for a month, see how it felt. Within two weeks, she agreed. A season with two tournaments? Sounded perfect.
“This is a lot of fun,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
Let’s have one last dance as the A Team.
