April Ross, three-time Olympic medalist and 2020 Tokyo Games gold-medal winner in women’s beach volleyball, was named head of coaching for USA Volleyball National Beach Teams, it was announced April 28, 2025.
“I’m honored to join USA Volleyball in this new role and look forward to working with our coaches and athletes to continue the legacy of success on the international stage,” said Ross, who will be responsible for supporting the professional development of Beach National Team coaches, enhancing their training, competition preparedness and the performance of Team USA’s top athletes on the international stage. “I’ve always believed in the power of collaboration, and I’m excited to be part of a team that shares that vision.”
Last year, Ross dipped her toe into training for and returning to the Association of Volleyball Professional Tour after becoming a first-time mother at age 41. But she changed her mind and officially retired after a celebrated pro beach volleyball career, which almost never got started.
After earning All-American status at the high school and collegiate level, Ross played three years of professional indoor volleyball in Puerto Rico. But the injuries piled up and she was ready to start graduate school.
After leading the USC women’s indoor volleyball team to back-to-back NCAA national championships in 2002 and 2003, Ross finishing her distinguished amateur career with the Honda Sports Award as the nation’s top female collegiate volleyball player. Ross completed her preeminence with the Trojans ranking in the top six in eight statistical categories, including first in points (1,430) and points per game, second in service aces (161) and service aces per game (0.38) under Coach Mick Haley.
After USC, Ross went to Puerto Rico to play, but her “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 at the end of her third season and her knee hurt so much that she didn’t even finish her third 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. 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, and 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 playing beach volleyball. “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 were traveling the country, but failed to advance past six qualifiers on the AVP Tour, and, well, that hostess job at House of Blues was sounding better and better.
But through hard work and a willingness to learn the ins and outs of beach volleyball, Ross discovered she had a flair for the beach game, and, voila! – a new world opened up. As she improved, Ross caught the eye of another former USC star, Jennifer Kessy, and the duo formed one of the best partnerships in the world. Ross and Kessy played together for seven years and represented the U.S. in the gold-medal match at the 2012 London Olympic Games.
Ross became the AVP Tour Rookie of the Year in 2006 and FIVA (International Volleyball Federation) Rookie of the Year in 2007. Ross and Kessy upset top-seeded Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings in an AVP Tour event in 2008 and captured the FIVA World Championship in 2009. Before the 2012 London Olympic Games, Ross won eight AVP and nine FIVB titles and nearly $1 million in prize money. She won a gold medal at the 2011 World Championships in Norway and an Olympic silver medal at the 2012 London Games with Kessy. Suddenly, Ross was one of the most recognizable figures in the sport. Ross won bronze with Walsh Jennings at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games and reached the pinnacle of her career at Tokyo Olympic Games, which were held in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, winning the gold medal with Alix Klineman.
“I never thought I’d play beach volleyball, let alone win three Olympic medals in the sport. To stand up on that podium and hear the national anthem being played is really something special,” Ross said. “I feel so blessed to be able to grow up in Orange County and have so many great venues to play, and to have so many opportunities to play sports is amazing,”
Shortly after winning the gold medal, she married Josh Riley, and the couple became new parents when their son, whose first name is Ross, was born in October 2023. As part of her physical training to get back in shape after becoming a mother at age 41, the three-time Olympic medalist decided a return to volleyball might be the ticket. “We’ll throw it out there and see what the universe thinks. I thought 39 was too old to play (in Tokyo in 2021), and we won a gold medal. I’m going to dip my toe back into the sport, so we’ll see what happens,” Ross said in early 2024, before retiring for good a few months later. While there are men who have competed at the highest level in beach volleyball in their 40s, Ross said “it’s not the same for women than it is on the men’s side (who are) pushing the age barrier,” because men do not go through child bearing.
She was coaching beach volleyball at El Camino College prior to be named head of coaching for the USA Volleyball Beach National Teams.
“There was a lot of relief after (winning the Olympic gold medal), and we were elated and on cloud nine,” Ross said in April 2025, two days before the announcement of her new coaching position. “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. 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. Even after that, I started to consider what I was going to do for the rest of my life. 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. (The experience of winning gold) was a beautiful thing, and 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 the next step? I did that my whole career. 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 (2024) on the AVP Tour, after having my son, the motivation wasn’t there and I didn’t have an ultimate goal to chase. I had fun, and I’m glad I got to play with Alix and I did that. But it was a very different feeling.”
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