Summer Ross

In July, the 39th-seeded pair tied for 17th at the World Championships in Stare Jabłonki, losing to Doris and Stefanie Schwaiger of Austria in the Round of 32.

They reached their first World Tour podium at the $146.4K Phuket Open in November, where they were the runners-up after being beaten in the gold-medal match by China's Xia Xinyi and Xue Chen.

Ross and Day finished the year ranked No. 22 in the world.

The pair also had success on the AVP tour.

Despite having to go through the qualifiers in their first AVP event together, Ross and Day upset the second-seeded Kerri Walsh Jennings and Whitney Pavlik in the finals to win the $75K Cincinnati Open in September, giving Ross her first AVP title.

The pair went on to reach the finals at the next two AVP stops, losing to Jennifer Kessy and April Ross in the $50K Atlantic City Open, while the final match of the $75K St. Petersburg Open was cancelled due to inclement weather.

Summer Ross (born December 20, 1992) is an American beach volleyball player.

Ross began working with coaches from the USA Volleyball (USAV) Beach Program in 2008.

Competing with Jane Croson, Ross placed ninth at the 2008 U21 World Championships and fifth at the 2009 U19 World Championships.

She made her Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP) debut at the $105K Long Beach Open in 2008, losing in the first round of the qualifiers.

She had another fifth-place finish with teammate Jazmin Machado at the 2009 U21 World Championships.

The following year, at the respective ages of 16 and 17, Ross and partner Natalie Hagglund became the youngest team at the time to ever qualify for an AVP main draw at the 2009 Manhattan Beach Open, eventually finishing in 49th place.

She was the FIVB 2010 Youth Under-19 and Junior Under-21 world champion, the only player to win both titles in the same year and was named 2010 USA Volleyball Beach Female Athlete of the Year.

Her breakthrough came in 2010, when Ross and Croson won the U19 World Championships in August.

The following month, Ross partnered with Tara Roenicke to win the U21 World Championships, defeating Italy's Marta Menegatti and Viktoria Orsi Toth in three sets in the gold-medal match.

With these wins, 17-year-old Ross became the first beach volleyball player to win both age-group World Championships in the same year.

By the end of 2010, Ross had been featured in Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd and was named USAV's Beach Female Athlete of the Year.

Ross also placed fourth at the U21 World Championships with Sara Hughes two years later.

Ross was also an active club indoor volleyball player and played for Carlsbad High School in her freshman and sophomore years.

Ross qualified for the main draw at four of the five AVP tournaments she entered during the 2010 season, placing as high as 13th before the league suspended operations for the season.

The following week, Ross was granted a wild card into the Klagenfurt Grand Slam with her U21 partner, Tara Roenicke, as part of the prize for winning the FIVB Beach Volleyball U21 World Championships in 2010.

She graduated as valedictorian from Carlsbad Seaside Academy in 2011.

Regarded as one of the top high school recruits for indoor volleyball, Ross played as a right-side hitter for the Washington Huskies during her freshman year in 2011.

Ross started in all of the team's 32 matches and led the Huskies in service aces.

Following her freshman season, beach volleyball became an NCAA Emerging Sport for Women and several Division I colleges began sponsoring the sport.

Ross transferred to Pepperdine University in 2012 in order to pursue NCAA beach volleyball as Washington did not have a team at the time.

As a sophomore, she partnered with Caitlin Racich to lead Pepperdine to both the inaugural team and pairs AVCA National Championships.

She was named a Division I Collegiate Beach All-American at the end of season.

Later that year, Ross and partner Emily Day won the 2012 World University Championships in Maceio, Brazil.

In July 2012, Ross competed with former Olympian, Nicole Branagh, at the Berlin Grand Slam, making her first main draw in an elite international tournament.

After one season at Pepperdine, Ross left college in 2013 to play beach volleyball professionally.

While still in high school and college, Ross competed as an amateur on the domestic and international professional tours.

At the start of the 2013 World Tour, Ross teamed up with Brittany Hochevar to finish 17th at the $146.4K Fuzhou Open.

Ross switched partners to Emily Day in the middle of the year.

On the 2014 World Tour, Ross and Day's best finish was taking fifth place at the $400K Stavanger Grand Slam in June, following a quarterfinal defeat by eventual champions April Ross and Walsh Jennings.

The duo also posted two ninth-place finishes at the $400K Shanghai and $500K Long Beach Grand Slams.

After 17th places in their first two tournaments together, Ross and Day went on to finish within the top five in three $220K Grand Slams.

As of 2018, her partner is Sara Hughes.

Ross was born in Carlsbad, California to Tony and Kathy.

Her older brother, Chase, was a member of the men's volleyball team at Pepperdine University.