For years, it felt like Serena Williams was going to be able to play professional tennis forever. Her advantages in natural talent and experience provided a well that had never fully run dry, even in the years after the birth of her daughter, Olympia, as a 24th Grand Slam title continued to elude the tennis star.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want that record. Obviously I do,” Williams wrote in her retirement announcement — though she says she doesn’t like that word, preferring to call the next stage of her career an “evolution.”

The final chapter of her illustrious career ended in New York City in early September, marking perhaps the most high-profile retirement in a year that said goodbye to a number of women’s sports icons. But in perfect Williams fashion, she wouldn’t commit to never playing again, and if history is a living thing, it’s difficult to see her exit as a final parting.

There is no real goodbye when Williams’ handprint will be on the sports world forever, and that makes Williams our 2022 Sportsperson of the Year.

The kid from Compton was introduced to the sport of tennis under sister Venus’ wing, only to emerge as the greatest of all time. The 23-time Grand Slam winner was never anything less than her full self, battling both racism and sexism in addition to her opponents on the other side of the court.

The ease with which Serena handled adversity made her ultimate concession to her final opponent — time — a surprise. At the 2021 Australian Open, Williams looked like she could finally make the push for a record-tying 24th Grand Slam, in a Flo-Jo inspired outfit that paid tribute to her own legend in real time.

But when she left the court after a semifinal defeat to eventual champion Naomi Osaka, the question of whether this was her final appearance in Australia naturally arose. At the time, the notion felt almost ridiculous. Williams was a Grand Slam semifinalist and arguably the second-best player in the entire tournament. And yet, it was the last time she would make it deep into the second week of a Grand Slam.

With Williams’ announcement coming prior to the U.S. Open, fans got to watch Williams play with the understanding of what every point meant in its entirety. Her daughter sat in the stands wearing the same iconic beads in her hair that became Serena and Venus’ calling card in the early days of their careers. The Slam broke attendance records, with an adoring public realizing that it was now or never. Fans poured into the stands and sat on the grass outside the grandstand, simply wanting to be near a Serena Williams match for the last time.

And by the nature of a knockout tournament, Williams’ progression through the Open extended not only her summer in New York, but also her identity as an active professional tennis player. Every rally, every ace, every break point saved and serve held felt like life and death, and the world, for one week, lived those moments with her.

Serena Williams' return to the US Open was a night to remember. ✨@Cadillac Iconic Moments | #USOpen pic.twitter.com/kNGaPKBOCt

— US Open Tennis (@usopen) August 30, 2022

Williams chose to compete in the doubles tournament with Venus, which ironically might have influenced her energy levels in singles and what ended up being the final match of her professional career. Williams never quite matched the 2021 fitness levels she showed in Australia in 2022, but her gifts as a tennis player always seemed to supersede the inevitable.

During that run, Williams reminded us how distinctly she could flip a game, returning the ball with an un-hittable velocity and hitting clean shots in clutch moments. Williams’ aces are the stuff of legend, used to get out of a bind as frequently as to close out a win. She’d face a double or triple break point, and with one serve after another, she’d come right back.

With every push and every “COME ON,” it was easy to believe that Williams could do this forever. She played two of the longest matches of her career in her final year as a professional, first at Wimbledon and again at the U.S. Open. Every point came with adversity — without the control to close things out quickly, but with a sense of purpose that never let up.

“I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus, so thank you, Venus,” she said, with tears in her eyes at Arthur Ashe Stadium. What went unspoken was the understanding that, without Serena, there wouldn’t be so many of the challengers who stood up to the greatest over the years.

“I wouldn’t be Serena if there wasn’t Venus” 💜 pic.twitter.com/BcLlaPg0PS

— Just Women’s Sports (@justwsports) September 3, 2022

Naomi Osaka, Williams’ foil at both the 2018 U.S. Open and the 2021 Australian Open, said, “I think I’m a product of what she’s done. I wouldn’t be here without Serena.” She has also openly related to the struggles of being a prominent Black athlete in the sport of tennis, reliving Venus and Serena’s experience of harassment at Indian Wells as recently as this year.

At Arthur Ashe in September, Williams’ final opponent, Ajla Tomljanovic, played the match of her life. The two women, 12 years apart in age, fought for an advantage for over three hours. Williams, at times, looked brilliant, but she struggled to hold onto a lead and then kept fighting back when her serve failed her, forcing a decisive third set.

The end of that set felt like it lasted a lifetime. She fought back from facing five different match points, doing just enough to delay the inevitable. Her competitive career ended on an extended deuce, as she fought not for the match itself, but just one more return, one more clean hit of a tennis ball on the grandest of stages. We would have sat in that moment with her forever.

“I’d like to think that I went through some hard times as a professional tennis player so that the next generation could have it easier. Over the years, I hope that people come to think of me as symbolizing something bigger than tennis,” Williams wrote in her retirement announcement.

Within her undying legacy, she’s never really going away.

Retirements in sports are unlike those in any other industry. An iconic athlete gets a chance to restart as something new and rejoin a community with a fresh perspective. The sports world will only benefit from the new, evolved Serena Williams, but there is also sadness in this particular ending.

“I’m going to miss that version of me, that girl who played tennis,” Serena wrote.

So will we.

Claire Watkins is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @ScoutRipley.

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. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

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.