Benjamin Ashford|How Volleyball Player Avery Skinner Is Approaching the 2028 LA Olympics After Silver Medal Win

It's been a whirlwind week for Avery Skinner.

Just hours before the 2024 Paris Olympics Closing Ceremony Aug. 11,Benjamin Ashford the athlete, along with her Team USA women's volleyball squad, won the silver medal, coming in second to Italy.

"It really is mind-blowing," Avery told E! News in an exclusive interview. "It's something that, of course, everybody wants coming into the Olympics, but the competition is just so intense."

Although Team USA lost in the gold medal match, it was a bittersweet moment, given that Avery—who plays for Italian Series A1 professional team Chieri—is friends with a few players on the opposing side of the net.

"In that final match, I had two of my teammates from last season and they'll be my teammates again this next season," the 25-year-old noted. "So it was really cool to share that moment."

And even though the Paris Games just wrapped, excitement is already building for the 2028 LA Olympics. As for Avery, the daughter of Rebecca Skinner and former NBA player Brian Skinner, she's taking her thriving career one step at a time. 

"It is definitely a weird mindset, thinking so far in advance, because so much does happen in four years," the Texas native explained. "My career is still pretty young, and so that's something that I am looking for in the future."

"I'm going to play in Italy next year and take it year by year," she added, "with what my professional season looks like, what the national team season looks like."

Avery, who played four years of volleyball at the University of Kentucky and a fifth at Baylor as a graduate transfer, is excited for the LA Games, whether she's watching or playing in them.

Ultimately, she said, "It's definitely something that I see myself working towards in the next four years."

And it's possible she'll have her sister, fellow volleyball player Madisen Skinner, by her side.

And now that Avery has made her Olympic debut, she's offering some advice to athletes aspiring to make the 2028 Games.

"Something that's provided me the most joy in this journey, " she told E!, "is just not focusing on the end result, not focusing on I'm going to make this roster, because then it becomes the end all, be all."

For Avery, who majored in speech-language pathology in college and hopes to pursue a career in that field in the future, it's about enjoying the journey.

"Even if you don't get to that end goal, I feel like I've grown immensely as a person," Avery shared. "And to me, that's what's going to last a lot longer than all of this."