NEW YORK — Imani Dorsey and Ifeoma “Ify” Onumonu were in a reflective mindset after helping adidas announce the signing of 15 female student-athletes to landmark NIL deals at the brand’s New York headquarters late last month.

The Gotham FC duo were impeccably styled for the outing. As mentors to the group of collegiate athletes, Dorsey and Onumonu participated in breakout sessions with the signees earlier that day before hitting the stage at night.

While coaching the young adidas athletes on their sports journeys, Dorsey and Onumunu had begun to meditate on their own.

“I think being a mentor is nice because it helps you reflect on your own experiences and reminds you of the perspective that you’ve gained from so many different things that you’ve had,” Dorsey said. “Sometimes I sit in the present and I’m completely forgetting how I got here and all the different experiences.

“It’s a give and take … we give a lot, but we’re also gaining just as much from talking with them and reminding ourselves that we’re still learning and growing in this process, too.”

“You start to appreciate yourself a lot more,” Onumonu chimed in.

Dorsey, 26, and Onumonu, 28, have much to appreciate as groundbreakers in the NWSL.

Lucrative NIL deals, like the ones they helped present at the adidas event, were not possible when Onumonu and Dorsey were in college, and transitioning into a professional career was anything but promised. In many ways, the duo represent the first generation of the NWSL, those players who competed without getting much in return, building toward a future where their rights would finally be protected under a collective bargaining agreement.

When Onumonu entered the NWSL in 2017, the league was in its fifth season and experiencing some serious growing pains. In her conversations with the college athletes, she tried to explain the sacrifices she had to make to fulfill her dreams as a soccer player.

“I kind of spoke to my experience of myself transitioning into this league, and it had such instability that the idea of even coming into it was a risk in general. If you could get in, that is,” Onumonu said. “I definitely had a rocky experience up until, even I would say, this point where I have been with Gotham for three years.”

Drafted by the Boston Breakers in 2017, Onumonu played her rookie season there before the club folded in 2018. She went to Portland in the 2018 Dispersal Draft and played in eight games before getting waived, and her future looking more uncertain than ever.

OL Reign offered Onumonu a shot at redemption, signing her as a National Team Replacement player in 2019. Her breakout performance as a relief striker earned her a spot on the full roster in June 2019. Months later, she was on the move again, dealt to Sky Blue FC (now Gotham FC) ahead of the 2020 season.

The 2021 season served as Onumonu’s breakout year. The forward notched eight goals and four assists in 21 starts with the club and earned a spot on the NWSL’s Best XI Second Team.

“I’ve been bounced around teams, I’ve been waived. And if I had known all of this would happen when I was younger, I don’t know if I’d choose it for myself, but I am grateful at the same time,” Onumonu said. “I never thought I’d be at that place where I am now, where I can say, ‘Wow, have I grown as a person? Wow, did this make me grow? Wow, did this make me step up to who I am?’ Because it just showed me how strong I am.”

Dorsey’s transition into the NWSL was more straightforward. Joining Sky Blue as the fifth overall pick in 2018, she had success right away, winning NWSL Rookie of the Year after registering four goals and one assist in 14 games. Off the field, however, the club had come under intense scrutiny for poor working conditions and a lack of adequate player resources. New ownership took over in 2019, spurring a movement toward the Gotham FC of today, which is now the most valuable team in the NWSL.

“I’m a vice captain on the team, but I am in my fifth year, so I have so much to learn, and I’m constantly learning from the people around me. We have so many incredible leaders and women on the team who’ve been through a lot,” said Dorsey. “I think that’s something that’s really special, but also probably a little unique to our league, too, because there’s just so much going on constantly. You just kind of feel like you take on a bunch of different hats because you have to.”

Dorsey, Onumonu and their NWSL peers have had to navigate sub-par working conditions and instability while simultaneously pushing for progress through the league’s 10-year existence. Those responsibilities reached a crescendo in 2021 after a series of reports of abusive behavior resulted in the firing of multiple coaches and general managers. Former NWSL commissioner Lisa Baird stepped down amid the scandal. The watershed moment highlighted the league’s hazards, providing the NWSL Players Association an opportunity to ratify the league’s first-ever CBA and guarantee greater protections for the players.

These experiences informed Dorsey’s advice to her adidas mentees, with NC State forward Jameese Joseph revealing that the Gotham defender encouraged her to advocate for herself.

“The biggest insight I got from Imani was speaking up for yourself. As we transition from college to pro,” Joseph said. “If something doesn’t make you comfortable, then you should speak up for yourself.”

With the NWSL still in its infancy, and with plenty of shortcomings to work through, players like Dorsey and Onumonu have stepped up to create a league in their own image. Busy spearheading projects and guiding the NWSL off the pitch, the duo have aimed to make the sport a sustainable and healthy place for all athletes to not only survive but thrive.

That was the impetus, in part, for the establishment of The Black Women’s Player Collective, a non-profit organization created by the Black players in the NWSL to advance opportunities for Black girls in sport and beyond. The BWPC found an enthusiastic partner in adidas after collaborating with the company on the Black Players for Change project, which brought soccer fields to communities across America in an effort to mitigate inequality in the sport.

“I think a brand as big as adidas recognizing Black women in a sport where we haven’t had that recognition yet also just makes so much sense,” said Dorsey.

Dorsey and Onumonu were adamant about maintaining the BWPC’s vision after other competing brands approached the non-profit with the “bare minimum.”

“Even though we’re adidas athletes, before we were apprehensive of being part of a sports brand because of fear that sometimes with these big brands, they want to co-opt the movement, kind of lead it in a direction you didn’t necessarily want to go,” said Onumonu. “Then once you’ve signed on to them and whatever the contract looks like, they can start doing the bare minimum, and I think that was always our fear.

“With adidas, they came in like full force real quick. They have been supporting us, but they have really been there for us with major things, being very, very hands-on.”

Through the non-profit, Dorsey and Onumonu are focused on altering the face of professional soccer from the inside. The juggling of responsibilities has also prepared them for what has been a turbulent season on the pitch with Gotham FC.

The team has made sweeping changes since last year, losing star players Carli Loyd to retirement and Allie Long to maternity leave. Scott Parkinson also took over as head coach after Freya Coombe left for Angel City FC, and midfielder Kristie Mewis, defender Ali Krieger and goalkeeper Ashlyn Harris joined the team in the offseason. All of that upheaval has taken a toll on the club.

At 4-7-0 with 11 games to play this season, Gotham has scored the fewest number of goals and conceded the second-most in the league for a goal differential of minus-11. Now 10th in the NWSL standings, Gotham is a far cry from the win-now, mini-super team many viewed the team to be ahead of the 2022 campaign. FiveThirtyEight forecasts Gotham’s playoff chances at just 11 percent, a figure the club will look to buck in the second half of the season.

“For me, I know it’s frustrating and infuriating because it’s like, yes, I’ve been here for a while, and I’ve seen this club grow and want to continue to see it grow, but I also have to recognize so much change has happened in a very short amount of time and sometimes it takes a little bit for change. The level you want to get to will still take some time,” said Dorsey. “I forget that Scott (Parkinson) is in his first year, like literally his first full season with us. We still have a very young, new coaching staff. They’re incredible, but it feels like everybody is learning together.”

Dorsey and Onumonu said the tumult, uncertainty and stress of last season’s reckoning also contributed to the overwhelming sensation of change.

“There’s ups and downs always in the season, and all we can do is just weather the storms and stick together and do the best we can and just trust in our coaching staff to lead us in the right direction,” Dorsey said. “That’s all we can do at the end of the day.”

While neither Dorsey nor Onumonu sugarcoats the club’s recent challenges, both see the team’s potential. When the squad’s off-field chemistry does coalesce, Dorsey says, “everybody’s going to know it.”

Onumonu rejoined Gotham this month after making a run to the semifinals of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations with her Nigerian national team and clinching a World Cup berth in the process. Nigeria’s campaign ended in a chaotic matchup against the hosts, in which two Super Falcons players were handed red cards, forcing Nigeria to play two down for 60 minutes.

Onumonu, though, has gotten used to being adaptable.

“I made a goals book for the beginning of the year, but I have learned now in my career that things don’t always go as planned, so it’s always having to readjust,” she said. “We’re at a turning point, so it’s like I have to decide now how much am I willing to give in order to get us to where we want to be.

“I can’t guarantee that the wins are going to come immediately, but that’s going to be my goal every game is that I have to give everything I have in order to get us to where we want to be.”

Looking ahead, Dorsey and Onumonu are empowered by their work off the field with BWPC, and humbled by their impact on the lives of the girls they’ve worked with.

On the pitch, in their unique position as young veterans, they have learned there are no sure things. Keeping their heads down, they’ll continue to stay the course.

“In this league, all I can really do is look at the next game,” Dorsey said.

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.