Hailey Harward: Playing ”like a kid on the playground” with gratitude and joy

TLAXCALA, MEXICO — It would have been the easy and understandable thing, for Hailey Harward to be heartbroken.

This past weekend was no small opportunity, to defend for Alix Klineman at the Beach Volleyball World Championships, a spot they earned via wild card. What had been a brilliant beginning to their run, a 25-23, 21-14 upset over Germans Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller, came unraveled in the ensuing two days, with losses to Brazil’s Taina Silva and Victoria Lopes, and China’s Jie Dong and Fan Wong. Twice, they had shots to move on from pool. Twice, they failed to do so.

Most would take a day or two or five or however long to mope, to wrestle with the existential meanings of such a weekend.

Yet this is Hailey Harward. She doesn’t do moping. Not for long, anyway.

“All good things,” she said on Tuesday morning, less than 12 hours after the loss to China. “Such a cool experience.”

Proper perspective has never been something that eludes Harward. Grounded in her faith, a loss, to her, is just that: A loss. Stings, yes. A bummer, to be sure. Like anyone playing beach volleyball for a living, she’d prefer to win, as her livelihood depends on her ability to do just that. But she’s also mindful of the undeniable fact that to win every match is an unrealistic expectation. She takes losses, absorbs them, and seeks the bigger picture.

Take her ninth in Hermosa Beach earlier this year. It was a light event, with many of the top teams competing in the Gstaad Elite16. Harward and Kelley Kolinske were the No. 1 seed in the tournament, their best shot at winning their first Pro or Gold Series as a team, and Harward’s biggest opportunity to add a second AVP title to her resume. Instead, they’d bow out in just three matches, with losses to the nine and 14 seeds.

Rather than taking the road traveled by most every player after a disappointing finish, Harward did not lament the disappointing finish on social media. Instead, she wrote about what a cool opportunity the tournament was proving for her friends who were making unexpected deep runs in an AVP.

“As much as I’d love to be playing on championship Sunday today, God is writing a pretty cool story for the teams still in it,” she wrote.

This isn’t a show, either. Not a well-refined PR campaign for Harward to appear kinder or more magnanimous than she truly is. This is just Hailey being Hailey — an exceptional athlete who leaves no stone unturned on the court or in the weight room and who also has one of the warmest, most genuine hearts in professional sport.

“Hailey is the epitome of the ultimate competitor but a person who is able to separate their sport from their daily life,” said Julia Scoles, who counts herself as one of Harward’s closest friends. “On the court, she’s fierce, ferocious, giving it her all, and then off the court she’s caring, she’s loving, she’s supportive.”

If only she could be so kind to herself.

Like many high-level athletes, Harward will pick apart her own game, scrutinizing her flaws until there’s nothing left to examine. When she takes a quick scan of her season, she doesn’t see a player whose average finish on the AVP (5.83) would have been a dream finish just a year prior. She doesn’t see her second-place run at the Manhattan Beach Open, or a defender so talented she was picked up by an Olympic gold medalist in her return from pregnancy. She sees flaws, areas of improvement. It’s both what makes her great and what drives her mad.

“I could not dig a ball but maybe I’m close to it, and I’m working on, in my brain, saying ‘Oh you didn’t dig it, that’s so bad’ whereas a coach, Tyler Hildebrand, who’s being working with me a little bit, he goes ‘That’s so good! You’re so there!’ Meanwhile in my brain I’m like ‘but I didn’t dig it! That’s so bad!’” Harward said. “And I’ll hit a swing out and he’ll go ‘That’s a good swing!’ and in my head I’m like ‘But I hit it out!’ But it’s the process that for me has been a 180 of talking to myself of, you didn’t get that one but you’re close, and shifting the belief to I’m going to get the next one.”

It’s a belief that has been tested in multiple ways. From an analytical perspective, she had a quantifiably better year in 2023 than she had in 2022. Her prize money jumped by nearly $6,000 on the AVP despite playing two less events. She more than tripled her prize money on the Beach Pro Tour and finished in the top-10 four times, three more than she did in 2022.

From a mental perspective, it still wasn’t good enough.

“There were high expectations,” she said of this season. “It was coming from a good place of I believe in our team [with Kelley Kolinske and coach Evie Matthews] and I think that’s a good foundation but not to get too caught up in where you perceive you should be vs. the process. Just be where you are right now. There’s no sense of being in the past or the future.

“When I stand back, and I don’t get nitpicky about myself, I really believe having Evie as a coach and being with Kelley, I was able to improve a lot this year. But if I zoom in and only look at the results, well, I won an AVP last year and I didn’t win one this year with a really good partner. I think overall as a player I’ve gotten better and playing the best.

“I’ve heard it said you should be a kid on the playground. You should not be putting this much pressure on yourself. You’re young, you’re athletic, you have this career ahead of you, this should be so much fun for you to play the best in the world. Don’t put this weight on yourself.”

Easier said than done, particularly when you transition from being a player who competed with seven partners in 2022 to getting picked up by a veteran and successful player in Kolinske to defending for Klineman. It is easy to let that get to your head.

“Recently I’ve been putting a little pressure on myself,” Harward said. “I just want to get back to what an opportunity this is! That’s where I want to be. I play my best when I’m filled with gratitude and for the ability to compete. It’s so cool.”

It is especially cool when considering the fact that, a little more than a month ago, Harward couldn’t believe that Klineman had even saved her phone number, let alone wanted to play in Paris and Mexico and potentially more events with her. After Harward graduated from USC, a pair of NCAA Championships in hand, she had messaged Klineman, saying that if she ever needed someone to shag balls, maybe fill in for April Ross, she’d be ready. Klineman was polite enough about it, but Harward didn’t think anything might come of it.

Two years later, Harward received a text message:

“Hey,” Klineman said, “can we talk on the phone?”

“My heart immediately jumps,” Harward recalled, laughing. “What does she want to talk to me about? What’s going on?”

Harward’s schedule magically cleared, and suddenly she was on the phone with Klineman, who had done the math, knowing that “based on who signed up, I see that you and Kelley would not make it into World Champs,” Klineman said. “I just have this itch to get back in the sand, would you want to sign up with me for the wild card? I don’t know if we’ll get it, I don’t know what is going to happen, I just want to see if we can get it, what we would do.

“I remember you played big with a lot of energy, and I’ve watched you play before and I just think we could do really well if we can play together.”

Harward made her best attempt at keeping it together.

“I was like ‘This is insane! What?’ Thank you so much, I’m honored, I need to talk to my team about it just for transparency,’” Harward said. “So we sign up for the wild card and I’m praying about it the night before and the next morning we get the wild card.”

With Klineman’s points frozen from her pregnancy, they were able to get into the Paris Elite16 qualifier and parlay that into a run at the World Championships. Harward savored every minute of it.

“It’s been incredible just being with her at practice and we’ve had April with us as well so to have April and Alix, talking back and forth, and I’m just sitting there like ‘This is nuts!’ I want to have more of that awe factor but also aware of Alix has been awesome of we are on the same level,” Harward said. “It doesn’t matter what I’ve done, we are a team, we are completely peers, you give me feedback, I give you feedback, I want you to feel empowered, we are a team.

“If we have some good finishes, maybe we invest and go for it, and if that’s not the case, new baby, maybe we just see, feel it out. I don’t want to let that put pressure on it either. Just try your best, play how you want to play because that’s what you control. Wherever the chips fall is where they fall.”

The finishes — a first-round qualifier exit in Paris and a pool play exit in Mexico — were not what either would have had in mind. Then again, what could the expectations have realistically been? They’d only been practicing for a few weeks, playing against teams that had played together the entire year, if not more. Klineman is still only four months out from having her son. The fact that they swept the defending World Championship bronze medalists is nothing shy of extraordinary.

“I’m very motivated right now but I also have this perspective of if Worlds is my last tournament of the year, alright, I can take a break, rest my body a little bit, but I’m still going to pursue my goal relentlessly until that happen,” Harward said. “I don’t know what the rest of this year is going to look like, but whatever it is, I’m going to go for it 100 percent.”