USA Volleyball’s Alix Klineman, who with April Ross won the Tokyo Olympics women’s beach gold medal last summer, posted Monday on Instagram that she had shoulder surgery earlier this month.
“A little life update,” Klineman said in her post. “After dealing with some lingering shoulder issues during the second half of last season, I decided to undergo surgery a couple of weeks ago. Everything went smoothly, and healing is already going better than expected. I started PT today which was exciting, it felt so good to move and sweat a little again.”
Klineman, wearing a sling on her right shoulder and sitting on an exercise bike at Movement Performance Institute in Los Angeles, added:
“Obviously this means I will be away from the sand for the foreseeable future. I’m bummed I’ll miss out on upcoming tournaments, but I’m also really relieved to have this behind me and look forward to coming back feeling even better.”
The 6-foot-5 Klineman, who starred indoors at Stanford and played professionally before hitting the beach, is the tallest woman blocker in the sport. Ross, the former USC indoors great who went straight to the beach after college, previously won a silver medal with Jen Kessy in the 2012 London Olympics and then bronze with Kerri Walsh Jennings in the 2016 Rio Olympics. Ross asked Klineman to play with her in 2017.
They have dominated the AVP Tour and were the team to beat all through the summer of 2021.
In Tokyo, they beat Australia’s Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy 21-15, 21-16 in the gold-medal match.
We reached out to Klineman but she politely declined to comment.
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