Summer Ross went a little wild this week.
She washed her car. She did her laundry. She went asleep in one time zone and awoke in — can you believe it? — the same time zone.
She even took an accounting class.
The rebel.
For Ross, this sense of normalcy, of routine, is as foreign to her as traveling to eight countries in four months to play beach volleyball would be to most 24-year-old American women.
And Ross, of course, is not just any other 24-year-old American woman. She’s one of the best — if not the best, at this point — blockers in the United States, and she’d very much like to prove that this weekend in Manhattan Beach.
The AVP returns this weekend for its annual Manhattan Beach Open, which is referred to, among many affectionate names that have made their way into the volleyball lexicon, as the “Wimbledon of beach volleyball” or the “Granddaddy of them all.”
Really, all one needs to know is this: If there is one tournament an American player wants to win outside of the Olympics, this is the one, where a win cements you permanently into volleyball lore, right there on the pier from which fans watch you play.
