The 2022 NWSL summer trade window closed on Wednesday, ushering in a roster freeze for the rest of the season and the start of the NWSL’s first free agency period.

As the league and NWSL Players Association clash over the full list of eligible free agents, Just Women’s Sports breaks down each team’s trades, waives and signings from the summer transfer window, dividing them into winning and losing categories in no particular order.

🔑 📆

The trade window closes at the end of the day and several other key dates are rapidly approaching.

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Winners

Houston Dash

The Dash easily top this list. In the last week, they strengthened their backline with the addition of 2021 Defender of the Year Caprice Dydasco, signed Jamaican national team forward Tiernny Wiltshire and acquired Valérie Gauvin from the North Carolina Courage. The forward has scored 17 goals in 37 appearances for the French national team and should help boost a Houston attack that Ebony Salmon has been lighting up since she joined the team via a trade on July 1. After playing sparingly for Racing Louisville this season, Salmon has scored eight goals in eight games with Houston. Despite star forward Rachel Daly leaving for Aston Villa in August, with so many new stars, it’s safe to say the Dash will be fine without her.

Kansas City Current

Cece Kizer has been a game-changer for the Current during their 11-game unbeaten streak. Since joining Kansas City at the end of May, Kizer has scored five goals, making up almost a quarter of the Current’s season total. French national team player and former Lyon midfielder Claire Lavogez has also provided a boost, scoring one goal in the three games she’s played since signing with the team on July 20. Kansas City will have to adjust to life without midfielder Victoria Pickett after trading her to Gotham FC this week, but they have a whopping $200,000 in allocation money and Gotham’s second-highest first-round 2023 draft pick or natural first-round pick to use to their advantage.

Angel City FC

Two words: Sydney Leroux. Acquiring the former U.S. women’s national team forward for a first-round 2024 draft pick and $75,000 allocation money was a big save for Angel City after losing Christen Press to a season-ending injury in June. They also just signed 2022 draft pick Claire Emslie and gained an international spot from OL Reign in exchange for $40,000 in allocation money. Goalkeeper Maia Pérez went on loan to Grand Paris Seine Ouest 92 Issy in France, where she’ll gain valuable experience as a starter while Angel City continues to play current starting keeper DiDi Haračić. Wins all around.

Portland Thorns FC

The first-place Portland Thorns have found their rhythm with the players they have, so there was no need for any major roster shake-ups. They did acquire defender Tegan McGrady from San Diego in exchange for Madison Pogarch in late July. McGrady brings experience after winning the NWSL championship with the Washington Spirit last season.

San Diego Wave FC

After picking up Pogarch from Portland, the Wave signed U.S. youth national team star Jaedyn Shaw, who had previously trained with the Spirit. The 17-year-old wasted no time showcasing her talent, scoring the game-winning goal in her NWSL debut, the only game she’s played with the Wave so far this season.

OL Reign

Like the Dash, the Reign have gone all-in on blockbuster signings this season, acquiring former NWSL MVP Kim Little, Olympic gold medalist Jordyn Huitema and star forward Tobin Heath. The team has yet to turn the additions into results as well as Houston has, but Heath’s impact should increase as she gets more minutes. Huitema has been finding her rhythm, scoring the game-winner in the Reign’s 2-1 Women’s Cup championship victory. On the downside, Little’s contract was only for the summer and the Reign traded Ally Watt, an important player off the bench, to Orlando. But OL Reign’s overall depth should keep them in contention as the playoffs approach.

Jordyn Huitema makes it 2-1! What a finish from the striker. 💥

The ball from Jimena López though. 🥶 pic.twitter.com/VFLS8rL5ok

— Attacking Third (@AttackingThird) August 21, 2022

Neutral

NJ/NY Gotham FC

Gotham would have been a winner on this list after acquiring Taylor Smith and Victoria Pickett, especially given how dominant Smith has been with her two goals and one assist this season, but Caprice Dydasco is a big loss. The team has conceded a league-worst 32 goals this season, and without one of their most consistent players on the backline, they’ll continue to have their work cut out for them.

Orlando Pride

The Pride had a rollercoaster of a summer. While Sydney Leroux, Amy Turner and Angharad James were big, unexpected losses, Orlando also acquired some serious talent. Ally Watt from OL Reign and Haley Hanson from the Dash bring leadership and winning experience that will be important for the young squad. The Pride will hardly miss the second-round pick in the 2023 NWSL Draft and $75,000 in allocation money they gave the Dash in exchange for Hanson because they already have a wealth of draft picks. Thais Reiss and Haley Bugeja are two other young additions with loads of talent.

Losers

Chicago Red Stars

The Red Stars are getting left behind. They dominated the first half of the year to stay near the top of the standings, but as other teams started making moves to boost their rosters, Chicago remained stagnant. Sarah Luebbert returning to the Red Stars from a one-year loan with Club América in Liga MX Femenil has been the biggest change.

North Carolina Courage

From an outside perspective, it appears that head coach Sean Nahas didn’t realize the amount of talent his team had coming into the season. Taylor Smith and Jorian Baucom were waived after hardly getting any playing time with the Courage, but since leaving North Carolina, Smith has scored two goals for Gotham. The Courage also traded Valérie Gauvin, one of the top players in France, to Houston before she got a minute of playing time.

Racing Louisville FC

Louisville lost a big talent when they traded Ebony Salmon to Houston in exchange for $150,000 in allocation money in 2022, with an additional $25,000 in 2023. While head coach Kim Björkegren kept Salmon on the bench, she’s scored eight goals and moved into fourth on the list of scoring leaders since leaving Louisville. The team also traded star forward Cece Kizer and defender Addisyn Merrick to Kansas City and sent Tobin Heath’s rights to OL Reign. On the bright side for Louisville, defender Satara Murray has been a consistent starter after they signed her to a two-year deal.

Washington Spirit

The defending NWSL champions are near the bottom of the league standings and dealing with internal turmoil after head coach Kris Ward was fired following an incident at practice. While they haven’t been far off from winning games since appearing in the Challenge Cup final in May, the Spirit clearly need a spark and they didn’t make any moves before the trade deadline.

Jessa Braun is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering the NWSL and USWNT. Follow her on Twitter @jessabraun.

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.