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Family and friends of a gold medal-seeking Manhattan Beach native sat on the edge of their seats — and inevitably leapt to their feet — as they witnessed the victory of a lifetime, halfway around the world.
A watch party was hosted by the parents of Olympian Alix Klineman at the Shade Hotel in Manhattan Beach on Thursday evening as she and three-time Olympic medalist April Ross snagged the gold in the much-anticipated women’s beach volleyball competition at the Tokyo Games.
Klineman and Ross defeated Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy of Australia at Shiokaze Park near Tokyo Bay.
Klineman’s sister, Maddy, watching from her hometown, was “proud beyond words” of her accomplishments.
“I’m getting butterflies thinking about it,” Maddy said. “I’m nervous, but they’ve been doing so well. I have a lot of confidence.”
Spectators were banned at the Tokyo Olympics because of the COVID-19 state of emergency, leaving family and friends to cheer for the Olympians from a great distance.
Families and communities have been organizing their own watch parties to support their athletes. And though the family cutaways and community reaction videos have long been a staple of Olympics coverage, the absence of an audience this year has made them all the more heartwarming.
Klineman’s father, Mike, said he was proud to see his daughter accomplish her long-coveted, hard-earned goals.
“It’s amazing,” he said, “She took a lot of risks, and here she is today.”
Mike says all three of his children have always been incredible athletes, and that while he was nervous for his daughter, he has enduring trust in her and Ross’ skills.
The pair, known as the A Team, gathered an international following as they rolled through the Olympic tournament. They even sparked support from a member of another “A Team” — celebrity tough guy Mr. T.
“I pity the competition… grrrr,” the entertainer posted on his Twitter feed.
Klineman, 31, graduated from Mira Costa High School in 2007 and was selected as the 2006 Gatorade National Player of the Year after leading the Mustangs to their third consecutive CIF State championship. As a senior at Stanford, she was named the 2010 Volleyball Magazine Player of the Year, playing indoor volleyball professionally in Italy from 2011 to 2015 and Brazil from 2015 to 2017.
“I get chills thinking about her and this incredible journey she’s had,” said Nikki Jagd, a close friend of Klineman. “She’s went through so much adversity, like almost every Olympian, and she overcame it all.”
Jagd, a junior at Mira Costa High at the time Klineman was an incoming freshman, even used to set for her on the volleyball team.
“She was just this little thing coming onto the court with the big girls,” she said. “But she had so much talent.”
The 39-year-old Ross was the 1999 Gatorade National Player of the Year as a senior at Newport Harbor High School, led USC to the 2002 and 2003 NCAA championships and won the 2003 Honda Award as the top collegiate women’s volleyball player.
She played professional indoor volleyball in Puerto Rico from 2004-06, then switched to beach volleyball in 2006.
Klineman made the switch to beach volleyball in 2017 after being denied three times at the chance to represent Team USA in indoor volleyball, the same year she was selected as the Association of Volleyball Professionals Rookie of the Year. That decision to switch, Klineman said during an interview with E! News, came after meeting Ross at the Stagecoach Festival in Indio.
“She endured so many uphill battles,” Maddy said. “And then she and April met.”
“It was the strangest thing,” she added. “They met, April flirted with the idea of switching to beach volleyball and they just had this connection.”
The pair sent on to win all seven of their matches in the Tokyo Olympics and 14 of their 15 sets. They advanced to the gold-medal match with a 21-12, 21-11 victory over Anouk VergeDepre and Joana Heidrich of Switzerland in a semifinal Wednesday.
Ross won a silver medal at the London Games in 2012 and a bronze at the 2016 Rio Games. For goldmedal-winning Klineman, however, this was all a firsttime Olympic experience.
“I can’t believe it. It’s the most amazing feeling,” Klineman said Wednesday. “We dreamed of this and this is what we worked for every single day. But just because you work for it, and you do everything you can, doesn’t mean that it happens. It feels so magical.”