ROSS April

Previous teammates
Kerri Walsh, Lauren Fendrick (olympics.nbcsports.com, 14 Jul 2019)

General
PARTNERSHIP
In April 2017 she split with Kerri Walsh, her partner at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. She then initially partnered with Lauren Fendrick, before pairing with Alix Klineman later in 2017. Klineman had only switched from volleyball to beach volleyball earlier that year. "It was really hard to figure out what to do. There weren't many chances to compete and to try people out. It came down to really intangible things. I decided to go with Alix Klineman to take a shot at [the 2020 Olympic Games in] Tokyo. That's the best decision I've made in a long time. I don't think I ever could have predicted how quickly she would develop her beach game. Our mentalities are so similar. That was the deciding factor for me, but it doesn't hurt that she's so physical and has so much potential." (olympics.nbcsports.com, 03 Jun 2019; p1440.com, 06 Aug 2019)

RETIREMENT THOUGHTS
She says she has no plans to stop playing after the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, but that it may be her final Olympic Games and that she is considering her plans after she retires, including starting a family. "I know that I can go beyond 2020 and still be competitive. My body feels great. It's just personally what I decide I want to do with my life. If I ever want a kid, I probably should do it sooner rather than later, but I'm flexible on that. I'm just going along and seeing what happens and where I am mentally after the Games. I don't want to cut short my volleyball career either. I know that I could give [the 2024 Games in] Paris a run if I wanted to. We'll see after Tokyo." (timesunion.com, 29 Jun 2019)

BODY IMAGE
Prior to the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, she appeared in ESPN Magazine's 'Body Issue'. She said she had felt overweight in high school and college, and felt self-conscious about her body for the first couple of seasons playing beach volleyball. "Sometimes the idea of a beach volleyball body gets mixed up with the casual beachgoer, lay-out-in-a-bikini type. For me, I value the power of my body, and I think I'm a little more muscular than you might expect. I don't consider myself thin, and it might sound corny, but I love the way my body feels. One of the reasons I work so hard in the gym is because I believe that it's kept me healthy." (espn.go.com, 10 Jul 2016)