HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — The young women on the Concordia beach volleyball team knew, in their hearts, there was little to chance of their moonshot request actually landing.
But still: They had to ask.
They had seen the posts on Instagram, that April Ross — the April Ross — was getting her masters in coaching at Concordia, a small, Lutheran university in Irvine, California. There was also, they couldn’t help but notice, an opening for the graduate-assistant coaching position. What if their coach, Jenny Griffith, gave Ross a call. Would the three-time Olympic medalist want to serve as their graduate assistant coach?
“In my mind, I’m thinking there is no way she’s ever going to coach for us,” Griffith said. “I asked her and she was like ‘Yes.’ Before I even told her what she would do, she said she’d love to do it.”
And thus Concordia became home to the most overqualified graduate assistant coach in the country.
On the outside, it would appear that the next chapter of both April Ross’ career and life began there, in Irvine, the moment she accepted that graduate-assistant position in the fall of 2022. She had made no public announcement about a retirement as a player, and she had remained quiet on anything regarding starting a family. But Ross had foreseen the change coming, despite forgetting the fact that she had, years earlier, foreseen it herself, even enlisting others to help her remember doing so.
More than a year before, in the lead-up to the Tokyo Olympic Games, Ross had asked her coach, Angie Akers, and partner, Alix Klineman, to remind her to write a letter to herself, one “that convinces me,” Ross said, “not to go to Paris [Olympics in 2024].”
But in the chaos of COVID and bubble events and tests and quarantines and strange travel and three straight fifths leading into Tokyo, Akers and Klineman forgot to remind Ross, and Ross forgot to remind herself.
That letter never did end up getting written.
It’s an amazing thing, the way the human mind can warp or simply forget the most trying times in their lives. After winning gold in Tokyo and becoming the first female beach player to win an Olympic medal of all three colors, Ross felt, she said, “more relief than celebration. At the same time, as it went on, I was very grateful. A lot of peace around my career. As time went on, I think I got kind of confused about what I wanted…
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