Team of the Week: Ross & Klineman
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, November 4, 2020 – "It's such a blessing
to be able to play this sport as my job and I'm just going to
play it for as long as I can," says 38-year-old American beach
volleyball star April Ross. And a gold medal at the Tokyo
2020 Olympic Games with partner Alix Klineman would
certainly provide a great climax for both players. Dubbed “the
A-Team”, April and Alix are the number two pair in the current
FIVB World Ranking and Volleyball World's Team of the Week.
April’s great run with Kessy
Ross was 24 when she first appeared on the FIVB Beach Volleyball
World Tour in 2006. Her journey to international glory, however,
really started the following year when she partnered
with Jennifer Kessy. They failed to pass through the country
quota match at their very first World Tour event together, but
at their second attempt, the 2007 Stavanger Grand Slam, Ross and
Kessy made an incredible breakthrough from the country quota,
through two rounds of qualifications and defeats in their first
two pool matches in the main draw, all the way to the top of the
podium.
Two years later, that same venue in Norway staged one of the
greatest highlights in the Americans' careers, as Ross and Kessy
won gold at the 2009 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship.
“The best memory was when the last ball landed and we knew we
had won,” Ross told fivb.com. “I remember jumping into Jen’s
arms and just feeling so amazed at what we had done. It will
always be one of my fondest memories.”
The next big milestone came in the form of an Olympic debut in
2012. At the London Games, the pair claimed silver after losing
only the final match to their legendary compatriots, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri
Walsh Jennings.
When the amazing tandem played their last World Tour tournament
together in August 2013, Ross and Kessy had amassed a formidable
collection of nine gold, 11 silver and nine bronze medals on the
Tour.
Carry on with Kerri
Soon after the September 2013 split with Kessy, Ross teamed up
long term with Kerri Walsh Jennings, a three-time Olympic gold
medallist at the time. They immediately won gold at their first
three appearances on the World Tour – the Sao Paulo and the
Xiamen Grand Slams in October and the Fuzhou Open in April 2014.
A prolific partnership also featured an Olympic bronze won at
Rio 2016, 11 golds, three silvers and two bronze medals on the
World Tour.
Second World Championship medal
Ross then partnered with Lauren Fendrick. They played
together on the World Tour from May through August 2017. Even if
they only stepped on to an international podium once together,
it was significant. Ross and Fendrick took silver at the 2017
World Championship in Vienna.
Alix before April
Before joining forces with Ross on the beach, Alix Klineman was
predominantly an indoor player. She won continental gold medals
with the US national team at both the youth and the junior
levels and eventually became a member of the senior squad. She
played professionally for clubs in Italy and Brazil for several
years.
In 2017, Klineman switched to beach playing domestically on
USA’s AVP Tour. Her first appearance on the World Tour came the
following year, only after she and Ross decided to team up,
coached by April’s former teammate Jennifer Kessy.
Teaming up
"I was just looking towards Tokyo and who I could win a gold
medal with. With Alix's background from indoor, and I knew she
grew up in Manhattan Beach playing beach volleyball, I just
thought there was a ton of potential. We talked about it before
we decided to play together, and it just seemed that everything
that she was saying matched with how I felt and vice versa. I
think we both have really good work ethics and attitudes; we are
on the same page in lots of different ways. Her motivation for
switching to the beach was right. She wanted to make the
Olympics and I know how motivating that can be. To have that
fire under you - I want that on my team," Ross said in an
interview for FAIR GAME.
"It was a really hard decision to make the switch. I grew up
playing a little bit of beach as a young kid and I kind of
always imagined that I would go back to the beach, but I had
been training on the national team and I had a pretty good
career overseas, so I knew, being a rookie in another sport, I
would take a huge pay cut. But I really wanted to try it, to
take that risk, so I just did it and didn't really look back...
No regrets!" Klineman added.
Immediate success
As if to prove that it was the right decision, the new duo
achieved immediate success. April and Alix triumphed at their
very first tournament together. Starting off in two country
quota matches and two qualification matches, the new pair
extended their victorious run to 10 consecutive games to claim
gold at the Hague 4-star in January 2018.
Klineman became only the third woman in history to win a gold
medal at her first World Tour event.
“I’m still in shock!” she told fivb.com after the final in The
Hague, in which they shut out Brazilian standouts Maria
Antonelli and Carolina Solberg Salgado. “We prepared the same
way and we tried to play this game as we would play any other
game and it was enough in the end.”
At the 2019 World Championships in Hamburg, Ross and Klineman
took the silver, April’s third medal from FIVB’s top
competition. But that result did not feel good enough for her at
the time.
“I’m pretty upset. To get here and have it be Alix’s first World
Championship, it would have been so amazing to win the gold,”
Ross said after the final. “We’re obviously very happy to win a
silver medal at the World Championship. This is the best I’ve
ever done at a World Championship in an Olympic qualifying year
by far, and it goes a long way towards Tokyo so we’re proud
about that. But it stings to not have the gold at a World
Championship. To not pull that out hurts a lot.”
In addition to that Hamburg silver, the American pair have
collected four gold medals and one silver over the two seasons
played on the World Tour, before the pandemic put a temporary
stop to their international rise.
Domestic domination
They also dominated domestically, winning as many as 10 gold
medals on the AVP Tour, including all three events on the 2020
calendar that were held after the coronavirus lockdown was
relaxed.
“We honestly didn’t know how these tournaments would go for us
with so much going on. We made sure we did all we could to be
ready for them, but we knew all the other teams would be doing
the same, so to get to win all three tournaments is incredible
and it really feels like a reward for all our hard work,”
30-year-old Klineman commented.
Despite being the number two team in the World Ranking, April
and Alix are not qualified for Tokyo 2020 just yet, especially
with so much internal competition coming from fellow American
pairs. But aware of the huge challenge ahead, they have
confidence and the Olympic gold is definitely what’s on their
minds. |