Somewhere in Dejah Mulipola’s childhood home in Garden Grove, Calif., maybe in a basement or the back of a closet — she can’t quite remember where — is an all-star jacket from her youth softball days.

Well, there’s probably more than one. The 23-year-old former Arizona softball star and current member of Team USA likely has countless mementos marking her already successful softball career.

But this particular jacket is special. In 2008, when Team USA went on tour leading up to the Beijing Olympics, Mulipola remembers confidently walking up to a few players and asking them to sign her jacket.

“I thought I was so cool going up to them and asking for autographs on my jacket,” she said with a laugh.

That was 13 years ago. It was also the last time softball was featured in the Olympic games.

Then, Dejah Mulipola was a 10-year-old all-star. Now, with softball making a return to the Summer Games, she’s an Olympian.

This year’s United States squad is full of new faces like Mulipola. In fact, it’s essentially all new players. Just two members managed to bridge the 13-year gap and make the team once again: 38-year-old Cat Osterman and 35-year-old Monica Abbott.

For Mulipola, the 2008 Olympics are a distant memory. She’s certain she watched the games, but doesn’t have any recollections past getting her jacket signed.

For Osterman, the memory feels more palpable. She recalls the disappointment of taking silver and the feeling of “unfinished business” that lingered from it.

In the years since Beijing, Osterman played professional softball before eventually retiring and becoming a coach at Texas State University. When the sport’s return to the Olympics was made official, Osterman was initially up for a spot on the coaching staff.

But it didn’t take long for the pitcher to realize that, though she had retired in 2018, her playing days weren’t really over.

“I realized deep down that I didn’t want to be part of the coaching staff,” Osterman said. “I knew that it was going to be really difficult to coach at a level where I could probably still compete.”

As Osterman set out to get back into softball shape — it’s not quite like riding a bike, she said — Mulipola was fully in the sport. She and fellow Team USA members Rachel Garcia and Bubba Nickles (both from UCLA) all redshirted during their senior seasons to participate in the Stand Beside Her Tour. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic happened — an obvious curse sprinkled with a blessing.

“It was a roller-coaster of emotions, with COVID hitting and the tour being postponed,” Mulipolah said. “But it was also a blessing because it meant I got to go back and finish out my collegiate career and still go to the Olympics in the same year.”

It also meant more time with Caitlin Lowe, Arizona’s assistant coach during Mulipola’s college career who was recently promoted to head coach of the Wildcats.

Lowe played for Team USA in Beijing, so she knows what this means to Mulipola and softball as a whole. She was one of the players hurt by the 13-year gap after her first and only Olympic appearance, but she has no regrets for herself.

When Lowe was younger, she remembers going to watch the Yankees play the Red Sox on the Fourth of July and thinking, “This is as American as it gets.”

Then she went to the Olympics, and that patriotic memory was unseated by something even stronger.

During the opening ceremonies in Beijing, the USA athletes from every sport lined up in a tunnel. She likened it to a football team getting ready to run out on the field, just on a much grander scale. The lights were off, and it was dead silent. Then someone started chanting, “USA, USA, USA!” More people joined in, then a few more, and a few more, until every athlete was chanting in unison.

“To this day, it gives me goosebumps thinking about it,” Lowe said.

Memories like that are enough for Lowe. But since 2008, young girls haven’t had a team to look up to, and for Lowe, that is the worst part.

“I never had any frustrations for myself,” she said. “But I had those frustrations for the younger generations that were coming up. Because when I was growing up, I got to watch them compete in the Olympics and that was where my goals started. That is why I worked so hard.”

Seeing softball back in the Olympics was emotional for Lowe, and seeing one of her players competing with two of her former teammates was even sweeter.

When the roster was announced, Osterman texted Lowe to say she was thrilled that Mulipola made the team. Osterman, a 38-year-old pitcher, told Lowe she loved throwing to the 23-year-old catcher.

“I texted back and said, ‘Take care of her,’” Lowe said. “And Cat texted back and said, ‘She can take care of herself.’”

In reality, the two will take care of each other and their sport. They have to, because Olympic softball finds itself in another precarious position.

After two Olympics without the sport, Tokyo serves as an interruption of that gap, but it doesn’t necessarily mark the return of softball to the Games. Softball isn’t slated for Paris in 2024, after the Olympic committee voted in favor of other sports replacing it, so like it was for Lowe, this could be Mulipola’s only chance to compete.

“To be able to compete for a gold medal is such a big deal,” Mulipola said. “It honestly feels like a dream when I talk about it, but it is real life for me. So I mean, that is pretty cool.”

🎥 A look back at the final stops of the #StandBesideHerTour.

Thank you Oklahoma and Texas for coming out to support our #RoadToTokyo! @NBCOlympics - We’ll see you soon 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/DmIcRSfelO

— USA Softball Women's National Team 🇺🇸 (@USASoftballWNT) June 29, 2021

Because of the uncertainty, Osterman knows she is lucky to be competing in her third Olympics. She remembers the nerves that came during her first Games in 2004, when she was one of the youngest players on the team. She also remembers what she calls “the pure excitement” of it all.

Now, Osterman knows what to expect. So does Abbott, but no one else on the team does.

“The novelty of it isn’t the same,” Osterman said. “Now I get to watch my teammates soak it in and see it through their eyes. I’m excited to be a part of that with them.”

Lowe is experiencing a similar sensation. Though she only got to compete in 2008, watching Mulipola is almost like being there again. As soon as her star catcher made the roster, Lowe bought tickets to go to Tokyo. Now that Olympic organizers have barred all spectators from the arenas because of COVID-19 concerns, Lowe, along with Mulipola’s friends and family, will have to watch her virtually.

Team USA will take on Italy in the opening round on July 21, when Mulipola will square off against Arizona teammate Giulia Koutsoyanopulos. The U.S. is considered the favorite, coming into the Olympics with the No. 1 ranking, followed by No. 2 Japan and No. 3 Canada.

If this is the final act for Olympic softball, Mulipola, Osterman and everyone in between want to take great care in remembering it and sending their sport off in the best way they can: by winning gold.

“We have a great chance,” Mulipola said. “The women on this team are very prepared as a unit. I think the only people who are in our way are ourselves. So, we can’t take any team lightly. We just have to play our game, go out and do what we do, and the gold medal will find its way to us.”

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.