As Vlatko Andonovski prepares to name his roster for a pair of June friendlies, the last evaluation opportunity before the U.S. women’s national team travels down to Mexico for World Cup qualifying, he has a tricky task at hand. The USWNT has infused plenty of new talent into the squad over the past year, but they’re also dealing with injuries and looking to achieve a balance of veteran leadership and youth to sustain a full tournament.

Missing June doesn’t necessarily mean missing July, and missing July certainly doesn’t mean missing out on the 2023 World Cup. In the short term, the USWNT will weigh two key factors as they prepare for games in Monterrey: how they would like to play, and how they think teams will play against them.

The USWNT will have games where they’ll need to possess around a pressing defense and others when the task will be unlocking numbers behind the ball. Most importantly, they’ll have to balance getting the results they need and developing as a squad, especially with a number of key players not available.

Here is what I have my eye on as the USWNT gets ready to take the field again this month.

Absences that could field a world class XI

There’s no getting around it: The USWNT is hurt. A wave of injuries has hit the team at an inopportune time across a number of different positions, turning usual areas of strength into relative weaknesses.

Notable absences from the provisional shortlist include center backs Tierna Davidson and Abby Dahlkember — Davidson is out for the season with an ACL tear, and Dahlkemper is recovering from broken ribs suffered in the early part of the NWSL season. The backline will also have to adjust without outside back veteran Crystal Dunn, as she works her way back into fitness after the birth of her son. In the midfield, the USWNT will be without Sam Mewis and Julie Ertz. Mewis is still recovering from a lingering knee issue, while Ertz is taking some time off due to pregnancy.

On the forward line, all systems were firing until rising superstar Catarina Macario tore her ACL in Olympique Lyon’s final match of the season, knocking the 22-year-old out of any summertime competitions. The team will also be missing Lynn Williams after the “Snacks” host suffered a hamstring injury that required surgery and now months of rehab.

None of the players mentioned above were featured on the provisional roster submitted to Concacaf, meaning they will not be selected for World Cup qualifying, but the injury picture for those still available also presents cause for concern. Outside back Kelley O’Hara has missed a number of games with the Washington Spirit due to hamstring tightness, and midfielder Andi Sullivan has been slow to return from a calf and a quad strain. Lindsey Horan carried a heavy load for Olympique Lyon in their Champions League-winning campaign and has had lingering knee trouble since then. Forward Tobin Heath left Arsenal FC before the end of the FA WSL season due to injuries, and Megan Rapinoe has yet to play a regular season game for OL Reign.

As women’s soccer players are asked to compete in more competitions across the calendar year, injuries will continue to be a part of the game. As a result, this USWNT roster presents more of a logistical challenge than in years past.

A wealth of veteran leadership for different types of games

Andonovski hasn’t been shy about rotating veterans in and out of recent rosters, but with crunch time approaching, it might be worthwhile to bring some familiar faces back into the fold. The chances of a veteran making the team depend primarily on form and fitness.

No. 1 goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher has looked as nimble as ever in her return from the knee injury that sidelined her for the latter half of 2021. She’s been able to organize a very young Chicago Red Stars defense this season with strong communication and reliability as a shot stopper. USWNT captain Becky Sauerbrunn has also made a welcome return to regular minutes in Portland and has shown few signs of slowing down.

For others, the questions lie not in fitness, but in form. There’s no question that Christen Press and Alex Morgan are two of the top American forwards in the current player pool, but the sheer number of rising attackers in similar roles doesn’t make their inclusion a done deal. Press has taken on a significant amount of responsibility at Angel City FC, having to create attack out of nothing at times, but that’s also limited clear goal-scoring chances for the striker. Morgan has looked especially sharp for San Diego, but half of her goals have come from the penalty spot and she’s had to find spaces behind the defense as a winger as often as from her natural position of center forward.

Press and Morgan would give the USWNT different options for breaking down the two types of defenses the USWNT will likely face in Monterrey. Morgan is masterful at slipping in behind a defense that is pushed forward or caught in transition, and she has a special ability to control the ball in the air to provide distance and create clear chances on goal. Press specializes in manipulating defenders in front of her to score from the top of the penalty area, which can be crucial when the other team keeps numbers back in a more organized defensive structure.

The untapped youth movement

Press and Morgan’s chances of making the team have less to do with whether they’re good enough to represent the USWNT, and more with how well they line up against the team’s opponents. Even with Macario sidelined, the player pool has never been stronger at forward than it is right now. The new generation’s specialty is on the wings, as Sophia Smith and Mallory Pugh headline a group of wingers ready for the big stage.

Smith, Pugh, Trinity Rodman and Margaret Purce can all hurt a defense in a variety of different ways. Pugh and Smith have become the best kind of drifting attackers, settling into the midfield when necessary. Purce’s strength is beating defenders 1v1 and creating shooting angles or getting to the endline to send crosses in, and Trinity Rodman has only scratched the surface of being able to do all of these things at an elite level. Her Spirit teammate, Ashley Sanchez, brings a similar level of creativity and tenacity and will almost surely be an option as a No. 10.

Perhaps more important for Andonvoski will be fitting young players into more shallow areas. The USWNT has to figure out its defensive midfield quickly, with Ertz out and Sullivan a question mark.

Portland rookie Sam Coffey looks ready for the next step as a No. 6, but she’s never played at the international level with the first team. Racing Louisville teammates Jaelin Howell and Savannah DeMelo have a lot of promise in the midfield, but they’re still settling in at the professional level. San Diego midfielder Taylor Kornieck has likely earned a serious look, but she won’t have much time to prove herself before July’s qualifiers.

Behind the midfield, Naomi Girma has looked like a mainstay at center back in her first two months in the NWSL. Outside back Emily Fox has also looked increasingly assured in her second season with Racing Louisville, understanding when to defend and when to push forward in attacking possession. In goal, OL Reign keeper Phallon-Tullis Joyce has had a strong start to her first full season in the NWSL and might be a future prospect.

The provisional shortlist also includes college standouts like Jenna Nighswonger, Emily Madril and Croix Bethune, who have been tabbed as next-generation talent.

Players in their prime will be the glue

You’d be forgiven if you assumed the USWNT in 2022 was all 30-somethings and youngsters, but those in their prime years will be a significant part of the team’s success.

Rose Lavelle has never looked better, consistently creating attacking chances with OL Reign while still being one of the fastest players in the world with the ball at her feet. Sofia Huerta is playing with confidence as she approaches a full calendar year at right back for OL Reign. Alana Cook has also had strong performances in the Reign’s central defense.

Lindsey Horan looked as disciplined and savvy as ever in Lyon’s Champions League victory in May, though injury questions remain. Emily Sonnett, at times, has fallen into a pattern of trying to do too much during Washington’s tough schedule to start the season, but her competitive edge and understanding of the pressures of the environment will be key at center back. Imani Dorsey, who has been in camp with the USWNT before, remains a strong option for outside back depth.

When healthy, the USWNT has one of the best midfield trios in the world, but finding the right options in the face of uncertainty will also go a long way. Andi Sullivan was at the height of her powers in 2021, understanding the optimal lines of defensive contention and how to distribute the ball forward. Other midfield options include Gotham’s Kristie Mewis, whose ability to generate the attack are well-known but have been somewhat dormant as her club finds its way.

Macario’s injury also could pave the way for Ashley Hatch, who was in danger of losing a spot with Morgan’s resurgence at the club level. Hatch has a good rapport with her Spirit teammates and can drift into the midfield to receive services when passing lanes get disrupted.

Getting the right mix

With all of this in mind, here are the players I would like to see get looks during the June international window. This wouldn’t be my final defense or midfield for World Cup qualifiers, but the USWNT needs options at the No. 6 and outside back roles before bringing known properties like Sullivan and O’Hara back into the fold.

The team also has to solidify Naeher’s backup in goal, with Casey Murphy seeming like the most likely candidate. The versatility of the forward line makes me confident in the balance in numbers: Purce can play outside back, and Pugh can drop into the midfield if necessary.

I do think it’s time to welcome back some veterans, namely Press and Morgan. They give you different options in front of the other team’s defense, and they’re proven contributors at the international and club levels.

Here is my June roster:

Goalkeepers: Naeher, Murphy, Kingsbury

Defenders: Sauerbrunn, Girma, Sonnett, Cook, Huerta, Fox, Dorsey

Midfielders: Coffey, Horan, Lavelle, Sanchez, K. Mewis, Howell

Forwards: Pugh, Smith, Rodman, Hatch, Press, Morgan, Purce

Claire Watkins is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering soccer and the NWSL. Follow her on Twitter @ScoutRipley.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony this afternoon. 

The Team USA standout is the most decorated women’s swimmer in the sport’s history. In addition to her seven Olympic golds, she’s also won a total of 21 gold medals at the World Championships, the most of any swimmer regardless of gender. 

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The esteemed award recognizes those who have "made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," according to a White House press briefing. 

Ledecky is one of 19 medal recipients chosen by the Biden administration this year. She joins a class that spans the worlds of politics, sports, film, human rights, religion, and science. Her fellow 2024 awardees include Everything Everywhere All at Once actress Michelle Yeoh, pioneering Hispanic astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, plus posthumous winners Jim Thorpe, the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the US, and assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. 

Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and USWNT legend Megan Rapinoe were among 2022’s class of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. Biles and Rapinoe were the fifth and sixth women athletes to be given the honor, making Ledecky the seventh.

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.