Ask anyone who knows her best — Jaden Polovina is exceptional.

A 5-foot-9 star setter at Crowley High School (Texas), Polovina has been the heart and soul for an Eagles volleyball team that’s off to a 19-11 start in 2022, amassing a team-leading 844 assists along the way. She’s one of two seniors for Crowley and has been a captain the last two seasons, a credit to the tireless work ethic she brings to everything she does.

But perhaps what makes Jaden most unique are the very hands she uses to set the ball.

Polovina was born with deformities in her hands. She has nine fingers. Her two pointer fingers are bent, neither of her thumbs have joints and her left hand has a middle finger and a ring finger that are conjoined into one.

At a young age, Polovina quickly learned to adapt and was rather oblivious to the fact that her hands were different from everyone else’s.

“I just thought, ‘I’m me,’ and I dealt with it in my own way,” she said. “I’ve never known what it’s like to have 10 fingers, so everything I did, I was just kind of learning like a regular child. With my fingers, it didn’t really bother me much. I just never really paid attention to them.

“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal because I’ve never known any other way on how to deal with my fingers.”

Polovina was about 7 years old when she first began playing volleyball. Her parents wanted her to be involved in a sport of some sort, so after gauging her interest in softball, soccer, basketball and dance, Polovina began playing volleyball on a YMCA team.

“We were called the Rainbow Ballers, it was the cutest thing ever,” Polovina said. “I was a [defensive specialist] on that team. When you’re 7, you don’t really have a position, but I was a DS.”

By the age of 13, Polovina had been exposed to volleyball only through her YMCA and school teams. One day, a suggestion by her coaches to join a club program piqued her interest. Polovina and her parents were unfamiliar with the club scene, but they found DFW Elite and decided to have her try out. She was in tears when she discovered she’d made the top team as a defensive specialist.

“On the team, we had one setter, and they were like, ‘We need a backup setter,’” Polovina said. “They picked me because I had the second-best hands.

“I was cool with it. I mean, I’ll play whatever position they need me to. That year, I played backup setter. The next year, I played starting setter, and I just kind of kept setting because people needed me to. And then I started to actually love it.”

Polovina was a freshman when she first met Crowley head coach Catherine Bruder. In search of setters for the team, Bruder asked if anybody could set. Polovina raised her hand.

It wasn’t until the Eagles were a little way into the season that Bruder first realized Polovina’s hands were different, when an assistant coach made a comment that they couldn’t understand how she set so well with her hands the way they were.

“We go to games. We do everything, and then after games, referees and coaches are like, ‘Your setter is phenomenal.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, she only has nine fingers,’” Bruder said. “They’re like, ‘What?’ Nobody notices because she’s just so talented. You never notice that there was ever an issue for her.”

Setting certainly required some adjustments on Polovina’s part during her younger years. She had to learn to avoid being called for a double hit because certain fingers would often get in the way. Her super digit, the big finger on her left hand, would sometimes fall into the palm of her hand, or another finger would simply slip because of how it bent.

But over time, she managed to learn her way around the ball.

“I kept doing wall work with the ball — what they call it is wall-balling — and I kept setting,” Polovina said. “I just found a natural feel around the ball with my fingers, and now it’s very rare that I double.

“Something I do now that I didn’t notice, my club coach pointed out, is I’ll drop one of my pinkie fingers on my right hand so that I have four fingers on both hands, so I basically set with eight fingers just to even it out.”

Of course, Polovina has heard it all from those who’d rather tear her down than build her up. Growing up, bullies would call her “alien fingers” or make rude comments about the appearance of her hands, but it never seemed to affect her.

“I can appreciate how nice she is and how kind she is to people and how accepting she is to people, even when I know that people may have not always been that way to her in her earlier life,” Bruder said.

Most people don’t even notice. In fact, some of her teammates — people she’d been playing alongside for more than three years — just found out this year that her right hand was also deformed.

“People don’t tend to notice, but when they do, they’ll usually just ask questions or they won’t say anything,” Polovina said. “If you ask questions and it comes off disrespectful, I’m not really bothered by it. I’m not really bothered by my hands in general. I don’t know why, but I’m just confident in my hands.”

While most of her teammates, coaches and friends have been supportive, Polovina recalls one instance along the way when a trusted adult told her she wouldn’t play in college as a setter and should instead go as a right-side hitter. It didn’t make her sad but instead fueled her desire to prove them wrong.

And she did.

In July, Polovina committed to continue her playing career at the NAIA level with McPherson College in Kansas. During the recruiting phase, she was contacted by head coach Cory Cahill, who invited her to come for a visit and observed as she practiced setting and hitting. When Polovina was done that day, Cahill pulled her aside and offered her a scholarship.

Proud to announce that I’m officially a McPherson Bulldog❤️ I want to first off thank my Mama, Dad, and family who was a part of my recruiting journey & all the coaches that believed in me as a volleyball player🏐 Excited to get to work with THE Coach Cory🤩 Go BULLDOGS🐶 pic.twitter.com/mRzbxkxcjZ

— JadenPolovinaVolleyball (@PolovinaJaden) July 18, 2022

Polovina was impressed with the entire McPherson coaching staff and the positivity with which they coached. She also likes that the campus is not too far from Crowley — about a six-hour drive — and that she’ll be able to have some independence.

“I’ve heard that being on big campuses, people start feeling alone because there’s so many people, so I’m choosing the smaller campus life,” said Polovina, who plans to pursue a business degree. “Overall, I have a great coach. I’m going to have a great team.

“Also, the freakin’ McPherson uniforms are so cute.”

For now, though, Polovina is focused on finishing her high school career on a high note, with hopes of getting to the postseason to give her coach the send-off she deserves.

In May 2021, Bruder was diagnosed with cancer. Not wanting to cause her players unwanted stress, she waited before letting them know at the end of the school year. That way, she figured, they had the summer to process it.

Earlier this season, Crowley squared off against Burleson, a rival school in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and it was the first time an opposing team had shown support for Bruder. There were “Battle For Bruder” shirts that were made, and people brought flowers to lend their support.

Burleson won 3-2 in what Polovina says was “a very emotional game.”

“We were so close,” Polovina said. “I was so distraught after that game because we all wanted to win for her. Everyone was bawling in the locker room beforehand. We were so driven.

“We’re pretty much playing this season for her. It’s all about Bruder, nothing else.”

Bruder has publicly stated that this will be her final season coaching at Crowley, but with six juniors on this year’s roster who don’t want a new coach for their senior year, she’s beginning to consider coming back for one more run.

“I’m really tired, but I also don’t want to possibly ruin their senior year,” said Bruder, who’s in her seventh year as Crowley’s coach. “I definitely don’t want to do it again, however you kind of have to do things you don’t want to do sometimes just to make sure that everybody else is taken care of.”

Polovina will wrap up her prep volleyball career this fall before resuming her role as the starting goalie on the soccer team in the winter. She’s a multi-sport athlete at Crowley who has also been involved with the track and field and cross country teams.

“She wants to play and do everything and be the best at whatever she’s in at the time,” Bruder said. “Really, skill-wise, she’s always coming back and doing things better than what she was before.”

Polovina’s work ethic is what sets her apart as a team captain. Always hustling in practice and never ready to quit, she’s a perfectionist, almost to a fault. But Bruder has seen her mature in that regard over the years, and learn to accept that not everything will always go according to plan.

All the while, Polovina continues to develop as a player and never makes excuses for the hands she’s grown to embrace.

“She’s always been a person who finishes everything,” Bruder said. “She doesn’t cheat at workouts. She doesn’t walk in practice. She’s always trying to be better all the time. She wants to learn. She wants that knowledge. She wants to be challenged.

“She’s basically the ideal athlete.”

Trent Singer is the High School Editor at Just Women’s Sports. Follow him on Twitter @trentsinger.

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.