Beach Volleyball Gold Medalist Alix Klineman Announces Retirement from Competition

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (Nov. 14, 2024) – Olympic gold medalist Alix Klineman has announced that she is retiring from competition.

Klineman, 34, shared her decision with a video posted on her Instagram account. She was honored alongside April Ross at a ceremony on Nov. 9 at the AVP League Championship at Dignity Health Sports Park in Los Angeles.

“It’s funny because I almost got too nervous to post it,” Klineman said. “It’s hard to explain everything – all the factors and emotions that go into retiring. Especially for me, there was a part of me that felt like I could keep going, but I also have dreams of growing my family and showing up for my family in a certain way, and it is just really challenging to do both. I am sure that the people who do both realize how hard it is. It’s just been really amazing to see the respect that people have for making this kind of hard decision.”

Klineman began her career as an indoor volleyball player at Mira Costa High School in her hometown of Manhattan Beach, California. She won Gatorade National Player of the Year honors in 2006 and played on the U.S. Girls Youth National Team (2004, 2005) and the U.S. Women’s Junior National Team (2006 and 2007). She was a four-time All-American during her collegiate career at Stanford and led the team to the NCAA final twice.

Klineman won a bronze medal with the U.S. Women’s Indoor National Team at the 2011 Pan American Games and played professionally overseas in Italy and Brazil. She also played with the U.S. Women at the 2014 USAV Cup and in the 2014 FIVB World Grand Prix. She switched full-time to beach volleyball in 2017.

Following Kineman’s first full season of play on the AVP tour, in which she was named the Rookie of the Year, she partnered with April Ross. Klineman became the first woman to win a gold medal in her first-ever international beach event with the pair’s win at an FIVB event in January 2018. In 2019, USA Volleyball named her its Female Beach Player of the Year.

Klineman and Ross became the top-ranked U.S. women’s beach team during their partnership. They competed for the U.S. at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where the pair became the second U.S. women’s beach team to win Olympic gold.

Klineman stepped away from competitive volleyball in 2022 to undergo shoulder surgery. She welcomed son, Theo, with husband and former NHL player Teddy Purcell in June 2023.

Klineman made a brief return to international competition in the fall of 2023 to play her final two FIVB Beach Pro Tour matches with Hailey Harward. In May of 2024, she and Ross announced that the “A-Team” was reuniting for a farewell season in the inaugural AVP League as part of the Miami Mayhem.

“I look back at how amazing it is,” Klineman said. “All that we were able to accomplish and just how special of a partnership we had. To come back after having kids, that wasn’t an easy thing. Just to be able to come back and show that we could come back, and obviously we aren’t at the level that we used to be at, but it’s really special to close out our career in this kind of way and we are just going to have so many amazing memories from it.”