Women’s athletes are often considered trailblazers for a reason, redefining their teams, leagues, games and cultures as they shift the boundaries of sport.

For every wunderkind, there is an athlete who inspired their greatness or transformed their notion of what is possible. The ’99ers galvanized a generation of American women’s soccer players, Billie Jean King changed the face of women’s tennis and Lisa Leslie motivated aspiring ballers.

Just as those iconic teams and athletes set an example for those who came after them, competitors today are making an imprint on the next generation in women’s sports.

As part of Nike’s 50th anniversary, the company is celebrating the last 50 years of women in sport and looking ahead to the next 50. From making an investment in the WNBA to creating the Nike Athlete Think Tank, Nike has been committed to amplifying and supporting women’s sports. In honor of their historic anniversary, Nike is shining a light on athletes who are inspiring the next generation and shifting the landscape of women’s sports.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka, U.S. national soccer team icon Megan Rapinoe and basketball phenom Sabrina Ionescu have all pushed the limits of their sports while changing the culture that surrounds the women’s game.

Perhaps no professional athlete has done that more in recent history than Osaka. With her candor and resilience, she has not only instigated a conversation around mental health but also challenged what is expected of elite tennis players on the court.

Osaka burst onto the scene at just 20 years old in her own pass-the-baton moment, defeating Serena Williams in straight sets to win her first Grand Slam title at the 2018 U.S. Open. The final, which was filled with controversy as Williams and the chair umpire clashed, served as something of a changing of the guard.

Tears filled Osaka’s eyes during the trophy presentation as boos from the crowd rang out. With Osaka’s win, the fans were denied the opportunity to witness Williams tie Margaret Court’s Grand Slam singles title record. To make matters more complicated, Williams had been Osaka’s idol since she was a child.

From there, Osaka took the tennis world by storm, inspiring a group of young players herself. A year after catapulting to fame at Arthur Ashe Stadium, Osaka was featured in another matchup billed as an established star taking on an up-and-coming prodigy in 15-year-old Coco Gauff.

Osaka came out on top, halting Gauff’s first U.S. Open singles run in dominant fashion. Gauff, overwhelmed by the weight of the moment, appeared emotional as tears fell from her eyes after the match. Having been on the other side of this very scenario, Osaka comforted the teen.

“After the match, I think she proved she’s a true athlete. For me, the definition of an athlete is someone who on the court treats you like their worst enemy, but after they treat you like you’re their best friend. And I think that’s what she did today,” Gauff said of Osaka in 2019.

Since those runs at the U.S. Open, Osaka has continued to redefine the sport, taking a step back from the court in 2021 to focus on her mental health while being vocal about the impact of post-match press conferences on her well-being. As Osaka returns to the tour on a more consistent basis, her peers have applauded her bravery and revered her as a leader.

Iga Świątek, who at 20 years old has ascended to the top of the WTA rankings, defeated Osaka in the Miami Open final in April and praised her afterward.

“When I watched you win the U.S. Open (in 2018), I wouldn’t have even thought I’d be playing versus you. You’re an inspiration. This sport is better with you,” Świątek said.

Osaka’s candor surrounding the expectations of fame and pressure to perform has resonated with athletes outside of tennis as well. Nelly Korda, a 23-year-old golf sensation, told Sportskeeda in 2021 that she looked up to Osaka when checking in on her own mental health.

“You also learn from, like, other people, I mean like Naomi Osaka,” Korda said. “You don’t even know what is gonna happen with the girl that just won the U.S. Open. She has all this fame, and you don’t know what’s going to happen, but you know, a prime example is Osaka. Has she just shot up into stardom, and it’s super hard for her.”

Rising above the criticisms and challenges of her sports celebrity, Osaka has helped to destigmatize mental health by bringing attention to it in sports and beyond. An established talent on the court and cultural icon off of it, Osaka is the definition of a generational figure.

S P O R T S M A N S H I P ❤️

Naomi Osaka asks Coco Gauff to join her in the post match interview.pic.twitter.com/4SctZMT6hz

— Yahoo Sports (@YahooSports) September 1, 2019

Twelve years Osaka’s senior, Megan Rapinoe has similarly altered the blueprint for athlete activism, fighting for gender and racial equality while earning the distinction as the best footballer in the world.

The California native and two-time World Cup winner has scored 62 goals in her 187 appearances with the USWNT. Leading the team in goals at the 2019 World Cup, Rapinoe has made her mark on the pitch and spearheaded the the players’ fight for equal pay off of it.

Playing for the NWSL’s Seattle franchise since 2013, Rapinoe has been a consistent leader for club and country. Bethany Balcer, one of OL Reign’s most explosive strikers, credits Rapinoe with helping her adapt to professional soccer.

“I think Megan Rapinoe has been one of those players. I definitely look to the forward line a lot,” Balcer told Goal. “And so just making sure I am understanding what the game plan is when I was to go into the games. Whether I am playing the nine or the winger, just learning from them, taking their advice.”

Rapinoe’s outspokenness and authenticity have placed her at the center of the intersection between sports and politics, a role she has embraced. Advocating for LGBTQIA+ rights and racial equality, while pushing the U.S. Soccer Federation for equal pay, Rapinoe has won herself a legion of young fans and empowered players who’ve come after her.

“In so many ways, you’re the go-to person for current topics and politics issues,” teammate Sam Mewis told Rapinoe on the Just Women’s Sports Snacks Podcast. “I would look to you actually for a lot of things before I was comfortable to speak out myself because I feel like I trust your values, and I trust what you stand for.”

On a team that emphasizes the importance of leaving the squad better than you’ve found it, Rapinoe embodies the USWNT’s progressive ethos.

Teammate and fellow striker Lynn Williams remembers looking up to Rapinoe as a kid before ever sharing the pitch with her.

“Megan has always been an inspiration to me. As a kid, I would be amazed at her poise on the field and how she would always show up in big moments,” Williams told Just Women’s Sports.

“As I have gotten to know her on a personal level, I am in awe of her. She is authentically herself on and off the field. She doesn’t apologize for who she is, and more importantly her energy and positivity inspires me and many others to be authentically ourselves as well. With her, there is no ‘it’s me or it’s you’ mentality. With her, there’s a seat at the table for everyone.”

Megan Rapinoe won the Golden Ball AND Golden Boot.

Watch all of @mPinoe's goals and assists that delivered her the World Cup’s top individual honors. 🥇🥇 pic.twitter.com/LGXGSBZ5n7

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) July 8, 2019

At just 24 years old, Sabrina Ionescu is one of the most undeniably talented guards in women’s basketball.

At Oregon, Ionescu garnered national fame after becoming the only NCAA Division I player ever to amass 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists in her career. Simply put, the California native changed college basketball through sheer talent.

Former Oregon teammate and current WNBA rival Ruthy Hebard explained to WSLAM in 2020 how the duo achieved so much success on offense.

“Playing with Sabrina, it was like, I don’t want to mess this up for her either. It’s really just about being strong and focusing on what I want to do and where I want to do it,” Hebard said.

Competing against Ionescu was equally as daunting, with current New York Liberty teammate Didi Richards recalling her head-to-head matchup with the star in the 2019 NCAA Tournament.

“Back then, being a sophomore, first year in the Final Four, I was nervous going against the best player, some would say, men’s and women’s. I was real nervous,” said Richards, then a guard for Baylor. “I knew I had to guard her. It was exciting. I think that was one of the games that put me on the map for sure. She’s a great player. She hit some crazy shots on me.”

Ionescu’s Oregon teammates praised her work ethic and game preparation. Former Ducks star and current Liberty teammate Nyara Sabally is anxious to reunite with Ionescu in New York. The No. 5 pick in this year’s draft will miss her rookie season while recovering from knee surgery.

“I’m thrilled that I get to share the court with [Ionescu],” Sabally said after the draft. “Obviously, ‘Sab’ is such an amazing point guard, such an amazing person. I saw her in practice every day. I saw her working every day on the court. I’m just very excited to finally share the court with her, not just in practice.”

Since her college days, Ionescu has expertly leveraged her on-court success and widespread fame. Now in her third season with the Liberty, she has inked several blockbuster deals, including a partnership with Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures.

Ionescu’s foray into business resembles that of Osaka. After meeting on the set of an ad campaign, the two have become fast friends, with Ionescu telling Insider that she “ was always a huge fan of Naomi” before the shoot.

Osaka has been seen practicing in a Ionescu Liberty jersey, and Ionescu is eager to show her support for the tennis star.

“I watch her matches and cheer her on and we talk, whether it’s on social media or text here and there,” Ionescu added. “But I think [we’re] always supporting each other and just rooting for each other and hoping for the best and success.”

Ionescu’s game-changing collegiate career and impressive business portfolio have expanded the possibilities for athletes in women’s sports, on and off the court.

Clare Brennan is an Associate Editor at Just Women’s Sports.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.