There isn’t just one secret behind the Kansas City Current’s 13-game unbeaten streak that has propelled last year’s basement dwellers to the top of the NWSL table. In less than a year, the club has made roster tweaks and coaching changes while investing significant capital into off-field support to forge a radical turnaround.

After winning just three games in 2021, the club’s first season since relocating from Utah, the Current now sit at the forefront of the NWSL Shield race with nine wins, four losses and five draws. In a year of firsts, their change in fortune is unprecedented.

Even with all the best-laid plans, changing a locker room culture after a disappointing season can be difficult. So, maybe the best place to start is the “douchebag jar.”

“If anybody ever catches you being a douchebag and not a good teammate, you have to contribute to that jar,” midfielder Lo’eau Labonta tells Just Women’s Sports. There’s currently only one problem with the jar, Labonta says: No one is messing up enough to have to contribute to it.

“Right now, because I handle that jar, I’ve been petty and have been like, ‘Oh, you didn’t give me a hug today, put money in the jar,’” she says with a laugh, noting that the end-of-season party might suffer because of a lack of funds. “But that’s how good this team is — we’re being self-accountable,” she continues. “And if it needs to go another level, all your teammates are going to be there.”

There’s an easygoing joy to the way Current players speak about their team culture, and that chemistry has paid off this year in spades, with four regular-season games left before they begin their quest for an NWSL title. Kansas City has found success with quick goals in transition and an all-in mentality that never lets a game get out of reach.

They’re known for roofing penalties into the back of the net, being tenacious defensively and performing goal celebrations that have gone viral far beyond the insular circles of women’s soccer. So, how did a team that struggled to find results emerge as one of the best NWSL stories of the year?

Becoming a team

Labonta has been ride-or-die for this group for a long time. She’s played for the club in three iterations: first as FC Kansas City, then the Utah Royals, and now as the Kansas City Current. Of the current squad, only Labonta and Desiree Scott are left from the final 2017 FC Kansas City roster. Being ready to move at a moment’s notice is an inherent part of professional sports, but wholesale change through roster upheaval and two relocations comes with bumps in the road and very little time to adjust.

As Labonta tells it, while the Utah Royals had serious issues in other areas — the team folded in 2020 after reports of racism and misogyny under owner Dell Loy Hansen — the facilities were some of the best she’s seen in her career. What the roster found in Kansas City upon their return was much more temporary, in ways that challenged them.

The club didn’t have a name, crest or facilities when the players first arrived, and they played their games in 2021 on a converted baseball field. There was never any question that owners Chris Long, Angie Long and Brittney Matthews were committed to creating something special, but players had to go through growing pains to get there.

The Current didn’t have a locker room to change in before or after training in 2021, instead using trailers for basic functions, which Labonta says made bonding off the field difficult. The group made conscientious efforts to change the locker-room energy during a difficult season, but sometimes the biggest contributing factor was lacking the physical space to do so.

“When you’re in a locker room in a group setting, somebody else is going to disagree with you,” she says. “So at least those harder conversations come out, and we build on that.”

Labonta also credits roster shake-ups for the team’s renewed purpose this season, including the trades that brought in Kristen Hamilton and Hailie Mace in 2021 and welcomed Cece Kizer and Addisyn Merrick in 2022.

“It was very difficult on the mental side to be here in Kansas City last year,” she says. “But then we bring in these new, fresh legs, people who have won on teams before, it just brought a new competitive edge.”

A clean slate

Despite taking some positive steps in the second half of 2021, the Current finished the season 10th in the NWSL table, with just 16 points in 24 games. From there, Kansas City moved head coach Huw Williams into a technical staff role and hired Matt Potter to replace him. Potter brought experience from coaching at the USWNT youth levels and from a long career in the NCAA.

When Current players reconvened in 2022, they had finally gotten their bearings and were determined not to let negativity seep into the locker room. With the promise of a new facility and a brand-new coaching staff, they sensed for the first time they had a chance at a clean slate.

Rookie Elyse Bennett, selected in the first round of the 2022 College Draft out of Washington State, recalls feeling like she was joining a club amid a turnaround. “I know from the vets and people who were here last year, they said it was a complete 180 from what they experienced last year,” she says.

Ownership paid for the team to travel to Florida and train at IMG Academy for a month during the preseason, which Labonta and Bennett both described as crucial to the team’s reset.

“We got a completely new coaching staff and we started from square one, and everybody bought in from there,” Labonta says.

“I don’t think I’ve been a part of a team where the chemistry has been this good,” adds Bennett.

The month they spent in Florida also gave the coaching staff enough time to identify every player’s strengths and establish their roles accordingly.

“I think that the coaches’ main focus in Florida was kind of establishing our structure and what we were planning to do as a team,” Bennett says. “Not looking specifically at different players, but more so just the roles that we needed to fill on the field.”

Leaving it all on the field

The Current have done the work off the field, opening a world-class training facility in June and breaking ground for a new stadium set to host games in 2023. As for on-field results, the club has produced faster than most people expected.

Kansas City made two blockbuster moves in the offseason, trading for three-time NWSL champion Lynn Williams as well as three-time NWSL champion and World Cup champion Sam Mewis. Due to injuries, neither star has played a regular-season game for the club, and yet their absences have not slowed Kansas City down much at all.

It’s hard to describe what it’s like to watch Kansas City methodically win games. While they occasionally get pulled out of shape or rely on AD Franch’s excellent goalkeeping to keep them in a match, they’re almost always able to flip a switch, move the ball with confidence and finish on the other end. Then, they celebrate those goals with an openness that we don’t always see in the NWSL.

NGL you had us @L0momma 😂 pic.twitter.com/ffwsehv26t

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When things aren’t always clicking in the midfield or on a final pass, sometimes the only response Labonta has is laughter. “I think we play our best when we’re having fun. And that’s why I do have a smile on my face a lot of the time, because I just enjoy seeing what my teammates can do,” she says.

That energy from Labonta, who is tied for the team lead with six goals this season, filters down to the rest of the Current.

“I think that it gives us the ability to be an individual and showcase our gifts. And Matt doesn’t dampen that. He allows us to play pretty freely, which is great,” says Bennett, who has three goals in her rookie season.

“I think that the way we play is also very methodical at times. It may not seem like we have something in place, but I feel like we’re all on the same page in terms of what we’re trying to do on the field, both offensively and defensively.”

Underdog energy

The Current aren’t the only NWSL team exceeding expectations this year, but they’re building something unique while setting a league precedent. Kansas City is the only city in NWSL history to have a folded team return, and the players don’t take that lightly.

“The style of play is what we owe to the fans. They showed up for us at a baseball field, and we weren’t giving them the best of results,” Labonta says. “This is the type of soccer I think the fans deserve. And so we as players are just grateful that we’re able to finally attain that and give that to them.”

As for what comes next, even if there’s more to the Current’s story than seemingly overnight success, they embrace the underdog moniker. What started as a strong Challenge Cup showing has turned into a legitimate shot at the best record in the NWSL, and the Current are ready to be known as much for what they do on the field as off of it.

“We’re not here just to show up to our facility and talk about our locker room and how great it is,” Labonta says. “We’re here to compete and get to playoffs, and try and win this whole thing.”

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

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.