From Reluctant Volleyball Player to NCAA Champion to Olympic Champion, April Ross has been on a journey of winning as a player and hopes to pass on her winning ways as the Head Beach Coach for USA Volleyball.
(This is part 1 of a 2-part story based on a Forbes exclusive interview with April Ross Wednesday August 13, 2026. Part 2 will be published Sunday August 23. 2026. All quotes are taken directly from a transcript of the interview.)
Twenty-four months before Los Angeles welcomes the world for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, April Ross is in a different role than the one that made her a household name in American beach volleyball. She is no longer chasing an Olympic medal. She is trying to help the next generation of American women win one.
Ross, a three-time Olympic medalist who won bronze, silver and gold across three Olympic Games, is now coaching the U.S. women’s beach volleyball team toward LA28. Her transition from athlete to coach gives her an unusually valuable perspective: She has experienced the Olympic pressure, the heartbreak, the podium and, ultimately, the freedom that came from understanding that an athlete’s identity cannot depend on the color of a medal.
Great Parenting
That lesson was earned the hard way. Before beach volleyball, before USC, before Olympic gold, Ross was simply a tall, athletic kid whose father thought volleyball might be worth trying. Ross’s father had played basketball and wrestled in high school. He also coached his daughters in soccer, basketball and virtually anything else he could get involved in. Then he noticed his daughter’s height and athleticism.
“With my height, and my athleticism, he thought I’d be good at volleyball,” Ross recalled.
She was initially more interested in soccer. Her father took her to volleyball tryouts anyway.
“I essentially dragged myself to volleyball tryouts,” Ross said. “I’m very thankful that he did.”
The decision changed her life. Ross fell in love with volleyball almost immediately. But perhaps more important than getting her into the sport was the mentality her parents gave her once she was there. They did not make winning the measure of success.
Instead, Ross said, the question at home was whether she had given everything she had.
“My parents never put pressure on me to succeed in sports, to win,” she said. “That was never their measuring stick.”
If she had given her best effort, that was enough. Whether she won or lost, her parents wanted her to enjoy the sport and be a good teammate. That approach produced something more powerful than external motivation. It created internal motivation.
“I think that allowed me to internalize my motivation to win,” Ross said. “It wasn’t coming from an outside source.”
Her mother provided the other half of the equation, serving as the emotional counterweight to her father’s coaching mentality.
“If I felt like I played poorly or there was some issue on the team that upset me, I could always go to her and just cry,” Ross said. “She’d make me feel better.”
The combination helped Ross develop not only as an athlete but as the coach she is becoming today.
Ross also benefited from something that has become increasingly unusual in elite youth sports: She did not specialize early. She played multiple sports and did not really begin volleyball until eighth grade. In high school, she continued to play three sports. That multi-sport background would eventually become part of the foundation for one of the most accomplished careers in American volleyball.
USC Volleyball: Two-Time National Champions
“I never specialized in volleyball until college,” Ross said.
At USC, that athletic versatility became elite volleyball ability. Ross joined a freshman class that was ranked among the nation’s best recruiting classes. There were six players in the class, and the group developed a bond that she believes was central to winning two national championships. The talent was obvious. The culture was harder to create.
“We had a really strong bond,” Ross said. “Our values are aligned in a way that’s not always natural.”
The players were competitive. They pushed each other. They fought, but productively. And perhaps most importantly, they accepted their roles. USC had so much talent that not everyone could play. Some scholarship athletes sat on the bench. Yet, according to Ross, those players bought into something larger than their individual playing time. The team even had a B-side captain whose responsibility was to lead the practice group pushing the starters.
“Everyone just 100% committed,” Ross said.
That produced something every championship team needs but few teams can manufacture: relentlessly competitive practices without destroying the chemistry of the team. It is a lesson Ross now carries into coaching. Talent gets a team into the conversation. Culture determines how much of that talent becomes performance.
Learning From Olympic Heartbreak
Ross’s Olympic career eventually became a three-medal story, but it did not begin with gold. At Rio 2016, she and Kerri Walsh Jennings were considered legitimate gold-medal contenders. They reached the semifinals, only to lose a match Ross still remembers vividly. They recovered to win bronze. Ross calls that bronze-medal match vividly.
“It was the most on the line of any match I’ve ever played,” she said.
The disappointment of missing the final, however, became one of the most important experiences of her career. Ross could have spent years dissecting the semifinal loss. She chose not to.
“I haven’t, you know, I didn’t go back and overanalyze it,” she said. “It’s not worth it.”
Instead, she took the lesson forward. She believed her team may have entered the semifinal a little overconfident. They knew they could beat the opponent and perhaps were not prepared enough for the opponent to play differently or exceptionally well. At the Olympic level, that margin is microscopic.
“You just can’t do that in the semifinals of the Olympics,” Ross said.
And Finding Olympic Redemption
But the experience fundamentally changed how she approached Tokyo. At Rio, she had placed enormous pressure on herself to win gold. In Tokyo, she decided to approach the Olympics differently. She slowed down. She appreciated the journey. She stayed present. Most importantly, she stopped tying her identity and self-worth to the result.
“I didn’t tie myself and my identity and my self-worth to the result,” Ross said.
That freedom mattered. Partnered with Alix Klineman in Tokyo, Ross was able to remain mentally present throughout the tournament. She shared what she had learned from Rio, and the pair ultimately won Olympic gold. The lesson is one Ross now has an opportunity to teach the athletes she coaches. Preparation matters.
But the ability to stay present when the Olympic spotlight inevitably becomes overwhelming may matter just as much.
“The Olympics is one tournament,” Ross said. “A lot of things have to go right.”
That is perhaps the simplest explanation of why Olympic greatness is so difficult. An athlete can spend four years preparing for a tournament that can turn on one match, one adjustment, one defensive read or one moment of pressure. Ross has experienced all of it. Now she is trying to transfer those lessons to the women who will compete in her hometown Olympic Games.
And if the current U.S. pipeline is any indication, she will be leading a deep and talented team of American beach volleyball players into the LA28 Games