When she was 9 years old, Sam Gordon just wanted to play football.

She didn’t plan on becoming a viral YouTube star. But that’s exactly what happened. In 2012, she was thrust into the national spotlight when her father, Brent, uploaded a highlight reel of her running roughshod all over the field during a youth football game, with the football tucked tightly under her arm and her blonde ponytail peeking out of the back of her helmet.

Run after run, little Sam juked defenders out of their cleats, broke tackles and sprinted her way to the end zone.

“When I first stepped on the football field, I didn’t think anything of it — that I was a girl doing something or I was gonna change the world by making this play,” Sam, now 19, says. “I just loved playing football and that was it going forward, too.

“When I look back at it in hindsight, I see how little there was with girls’ involvement in football and that it was such a story because nobody had seen a girl playing against the boys yet.”

Three days later, the video had amassed almost five million views and Sam became known as “Sweet Feet.” She appeared on ESPN, Good Morning America and other nationally televised programs. She was featured in Sports Illustrated and on the cover of the Wheaties cereal box — an honor reserved for superstar athletes like Michael Jordan and Serena Williams. Sam even attended Super Bowl XLVII as a special guest of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and she rubbed elbows with numerous celebrities and professional athletes, including Carli Lloyd, Shaq, Rebel Wilson and Snoop Dogg.

Now a sophomore at Columbia University, Sam is living a life that looks a lot like that of an average student. She’s majoring in film, playing on the soccer team and navigating the rigors of college. It’s been a decade since her viral video, giving her time to sit back and reflect on that period in her life, how the experience has shaped her and, in turn, how she has made a lasting impact on the evolution of women’s tackle football.

Breaking the mold

Brent Gordon saw firsthand how damaging gender stereotypes could be when friends and people in their local community actively discouraged his ex-wife from pursuing a career in accounting. Living in a conservative area of Utah, Brent knew she was being treated differently because she was a woman. And it stuck with him.

When his daughter was born, they decided to give her a gender neutral name. “I was intentional about that because I wanted to make sure that whatever she wanted to do, she could do,” Brent says.

Years later, after a divorce, Brent took on the role of single dad and used sports to pass the time and keep his kids busy. They’d eat dinner together before heading out to the yard, where games of football became a regular occurrence. Eventually, Sam inquired about playing on a team.

“When she asked me, ‘Hey, can I go play football,’ I was actually excited about it because I thought, ‘You know what, I think she can f— the other kids up,” says Brent with a wide grin. “And I think it’d be awesome. I really did. I thought she could. … She could show people that she could do just as well as anyone else.”

At first, Brent started filming highlights of Sam himself, just for fun. Through word of mouth, he discovered a company that would film them for him. Each week, he’d put together clips of Sam and post them on YouTube. At the most, he thought he’d get 25,000 or 30,000 views. He never anticipated going viral.

“The first three or four months after the video blew up, there was an intense amount of activity going on,” Brent says. “Especially for the first month, I only think [Sam] slept on her own maybe two or three nights. But she was loving it. She was having a blast, doing all these fun things and going to different events. And then it started to slow down for the next few months, and then at the end of the spring, it basically died out.”

“I still remember having a talk with my dad, and there was a chance to go to New York for another interview and I was just like, ‘Noooo.’ Like, I don’t want to do another one of these,” Sam says. “So there were times when it was a lot, but overall, I found it very fun.”

For the most part, Sam’s moment in the limelight had been a good experience. Aside from a few YouTube comments from men twice her age saying they could “destroy her on the field,” the response was positive and affirming.

But when football season rolled around again, Sam felt the shift. In her first season, she scored 25 touchdowns and had 10 extra point conversions. She ran for 1,911 yards (8.2 yards per carry) and racked up 65 tackles. She felt pressured to keep the momentum going, and every time she had the ball in her hands, she wanted to make a big play.

“When I came back that next season, I definitely had a target on my back. It was a whole different level,” Sam says. “That first year, it was my ponytail and that was what set me apart. And the next year it was like, ‘That’s the girl that’s famous and that’s the one that was making the highlight reel, so we need to go crush her.’”

Even though she was still having fun playing football, Sam says it was stressful at times. No matter how many touchdowns she scored, how many yards she gained or how many tackles she made, she felt she had to keep proving that girls could play, too, and that it all rested on her tiny shoulders.

Not long after Sam’s viral video and others that followed, parents would continuously come up to Brent and ask him how their daughters could get involved in football. Those conversations stuck with him.

He knew the interest for girls wanting to play was there. He just had no idea how much there actually was.

The dawn of a new league

In March 2015, 12-year-old Sam spoke at a local Utah middle school assembly and asked if there were any girls in the audience who wanted to play football.

“I was there with her,” Brent says. “It seemed like almost every hand went up.”

At the time, Brent knew that Crys Sacco — a former semi-pro women’s football player and middle school football coach — was interested in starting a girls’ tackle football league in Utah. The day after the assembly, Brent called Sacco and told him that Sam could help promote and market the league.

Sacco was in.

Together, Brent and Sacco set up the non-profit organization, created a website and put together a board of directors. They hired coaches, ordered jerseys and equipment and scheduled playing fields. In May 2015, they held their first tryouts for the Utah Girls Tackle Football League. There were only four teams and 50 open roster spots available, but they filled up in a single week.

“I get the credit for founding [the Utah Girls Tackle Football League], but it was also my dad and some other people who had been wanting to start a league for a while,” Sam says. “And it was such a quick turnaround.”

Today, the UGTFL is thriving. The league is comprised of 34 teams, with over 600 players and four divisions: third and fourth grade, fifth and sixth grade, seventh and eighth grade, and high school.

“The Utah Girls Tackle Football League wouldn’t be what it is without Brent and Sam. I love them dearly,” says Sacco, who recently stepped down as league president but still serves as a coach and an active board member. “Brent has been a mentor, and Sam has been paving the way for girls’ and women’s football since she was 9 years old.”

This past summer, the UGTFL got another boost when Under Armour stepped in to partner with Sam and the league as a sponsor and to develop the first football cleat designed specifically for girls.

“The women’s Blur Smoke Cleat that all the girls in our league were wearing this last season is amazing,” Sam says. “It’s been great to have your own and not have to wear a soccer cleat or a baseball cleat to find one that fits. And it also shows that you are meant to play this game, that you have a cleat that’s provided for you, women’s football.”

Some companies and brands are quick to jump on the women’s sports bandwagon on social media, lending their support with statements and catchy phrases. But both Sam and Brent say Under Armour is taking that next step by putting action behind its words.

“When Under Armour came out and said, ‘We want to support you,’ it was like, we kept getting, ‘No, no, no,’ from everyone. To finally have someone to say, ‘We’re here and we’re on your side,’ that meant a lot to me,” Brent says.

He knew Under Armour wasn’t just going to put Sam in a commercial and call it a day. They were going to support the league by providing uniforms, front some of the operating costs and facilitate getting the championship games played at the University of Utah — just like the boys.

Under Armour also helped organize two girls’ tackle football summer camps, one in California and the other in Utah, each for 100 participants. Both were fully attended.

For Sam, it’s yet another affirmation that girls’ tackle football is growing and evolving.

“It isn’t known that football is a sport that women/girls can play. It’s difficult to battle the stereotypes that go hand-in-hand with women and contact/physical sports,” she says. “You have people who are pushing against it sometimes, like those YouTube comments. And you’ve got to not look towards those but find like-minded people who are willing to fight the fight and get to that next level.”

“All the time, I tell Sam this, ‘You know, we don’t need to change people’s opinions,” Brent adds. “What we need to do is find people who already agree with us.’ And that’s what we’re doing.”

The ongoing fight for women’s football

Sam never imagined having to give up playing tackle football. But after graduating high school, she didn’t have much of a choice. Sam aged out of the UGTFL, and there’s no option to play women’s tackle football at Columbia — nor at any college or university. Joining a semi-pro league would cost money and require a generous time commitment, two things a college student can’t readily afford.

“I miss [football] so much, I joined the rugby team,” Sam says. “It’s such an untapped opportunity.”

Sam Rapoport, NFL senior director of diversity, equality and inclusion and a UGTFL board member, is actively invested in growing women’s football and providing opportunities for women to become involved in football through NFL programs. She views the lack of a sustainable and consistent pipeline as a glaring issue.

“The problem is that girls growing up don’t get to see the future of the sport and what they could do with it,” Rapoport says. “Girls’ tackle football needs to be further legitimized. Girls need to play it across the entire country. It needs to be a high school sport, which would then lead into all divisions of college football so girls could get college scholarships — not just in NAIA but other places as well — and then that would ultimately lead up to women’s professional or semi-professional.”

Brent agrees. It’s part of the reason why he filed a Title IX lawsuit against the Utah School District in 2017.

“Our goal from Day 1, and it might sound a little far-fetched, but for real, when we started the lawsuit in 2017, the goal was to create a pipeline,” he says. “Our goal is to see girls have high school football teams, then college football teams, and now you’ve got a pipeline to fill talent on a professional league roster.”

The lawsuit stipulates that the Utah School District is in violation of Title IX because they do not offer the same athletic opportunities for girls at the high school level as they do for boys. What it comes down to, Brents says, aren’t the number of sports available but the number of participants across the board.

“So you have football over here. And some of these boys’ high school football rosters are 120 to 140 deep,” he says. “And then say you have girls’ golf on the other side, and you only have eight to 12 participants. That doesn’t comply with Title IX. And I knew that.”

The solution, Brent told the Utah School District, is to offer girls’ tackle football.

“They were like, ‘No, we’re going to pass,’ so I sued them,” he says.

Under Title IX and the equal protection clause, Brent is confident they can mandate the district to offer girls’ football. Arguments in the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals — on whether Utah schools can avoid liability for Title IX by being part of a high school activities association but refusing to sanction girls’ tackle football — began the first week of October. A decision is expected to be reached in three months to one year.

In the meantime, the UGTFL soldiers on as one of the few girls’ tackle football leagues in the country. And Brent continues the fight for equality, as both the proud father of a football phenom and a women’s sports advocate.

As for Sam, she’s focused on enjoying college. Her time in the spotlight was exciting, but she learned at such a young and vulnerable age to not let it define her.

Not long after the highlight video went viral, Sam began uploading other clips to YouTube showing her hanging out with friends, telling stories and being a goofy teenager. She wanted the world to know she was more than just a ponytailed kid in a football helmet. The balance helped her navigate her sudden fame and kept her grounded.

“She didn’t set out to be this pioneer or anything like that. She just wanted to play the sport that she loved. But she is that for people — she is the pioneer that started the girls’ tackle football movement,” Rapoport says. “And in 10, 15, 20, 100 years, when girls are finally playing tackle football in leagues that have been created to give them the opportunity, it will be because of Sam.”

Even though Sam isn’t able to play tackle football anymore, she’s still looking for a way to be a part of the sport and its continuing evolution. But much like a Hail Mary pass, what that means for her in the future is up in the air.

“I’ve definitely thought about staying involved with football, and I don’t know what route that is,” she says. “One of the reasons I’m picking film [for my major] is being a sports broadcaster or something like that, where I’m getting to be involved in the game and still be in a space where there needs to be more women involved. Coaching and all that might be on the plate.

“I’m still figuring it out.”

Lyndsey D’Arcangelo is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports, covering the WNBA and college basketball. She also contributes to The Athletic and is the co-author of “Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League.” Follow Lyndsey on Twitter @darcangel21.

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.