Ross rising to the challenge

It was more an accumulation of things. And before April Ross knew it, indoor volleyball was the version of the sport she looked down upon and beach volleyball was where her future lay.

Ross dominated the hard courts from her days of powering Newport Harbor High to back-to-back CIF Division I state championships to leading USC to a pair of national championships.

A 6-foot-1 outside hitter, she has been named national player of the year at both the high school and college levels. But the indoor game began to grind on her.

So Ross turned to beach volleyball, a game she never desired to play before, but now looks upon with great joy.

She has eyes on making the 2012 Olympics in beach volleyball, while staying focused on this week’s Assn. of Volleyball Professionals Manhattan Beach Open.

“In just the past year, this is the path I wanted to take,” said Ross, in her rookie year on the AVP Tour. “Before, I didn’t even like beach volleyball. I didn’t play it. It was so hard, so frustrating. With all of the rules I said ‘I don’t want any part of this.’ I was going to stick to indoor.”

But indoor volleyball became something different after college. Ross will start her fourth year playing in Puerto Rico’s Superior Volleyball League in the fall. But, this time around, it is more to fund her play on the pro beach tour.

Indoor volleyball has become work. Ross’ team in Puerto Rico plays four games a week and practices every other day. And when she is hurt or worn out, she still has to practice.

“I go down there for a paycheck,” said Ross, who added she enjoys spending time in the evenings with her teammates and the people she has met while playing in Puerto Rico.

The players on the beach tour have a different mentality Ross said, with the competition kept between the lines and not spilling over into personal lives.

“[Beach volleyball players] take it very seriously, but we’re all part of a group,” Ross said. “If you’re out of the tournament by Saturday, we all go out and have fun. The lifestyle of beach volleyball is more relaxed. The people who are a part of it are more laid back.”

Now Ross, with partner Keao Burdine, a former teammate at USC, will attempt to scale the ranks of the pro beach tour. It is a difficult proposition, Ross admits, and the duo’s top finish in 10 tournaments this season is ninth (twice, at Sacramento in June and Seaside Heights, N.J. in July).

They also have three 17th-place finishes.

Ross has earned $3,888 in beach prize money, heading into the Manhattan Beach Open.

“There’s a whole process of getting to that level,” Ross said. “The courts are a lot smaller in beach volleyball. It’s hard to hit the ball as hard. You have to rely on shooting the ball, hitting it where they aren’t. There’s a lot of thinking. Indoor, you can just hit it hard past people. Outdoor, you only have one person to block so you have work on speed a lot.”

Beach volleyball requires a well-rounded skill set. If Ross can do anything, she can do it all. Her senior season at USC, she averaged a team-best 3.7 kills per game to go with .5 aces, 3.15 digs and .7 blocks a game while leading the Trojans to an NCAA record 47 consecutive victories.

“I’m going to try to get there as fast as possible,” Ross said of finding similar success on the beach tour.

The pro beach tour has brought new responsibilities for Ross in that she makes her own travel arrangements.

“You have to take care of everything yourself,” Ross said. “It’s more like you are your own business.”

And to finance this business venture, Ross will play in Puerto Rico for a fourth year and Spain before starting her second AVP season.

Standing in the way of the AVP Tour becoming lucrative for Ross is fellow Newport Harbor grad Misty May-Treanor.

Ross and Burdine have come up against May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh — for years the dominant team on tour — three times and have lost each match without so much as winning a game.

“They’re kind of a road block,” Ross said. “I don’t know if any team has figured them out.”

Ross will happily plod through her first season, learning the ins and outs and adjusting to the different nuances of the game. But she expects, before long, to be her old self in this new game.