SEATTLE — At 8:21 p.m., Georgia Amoore dribbled out the clock. At 8:35, she climbed a ladder and cut her piece of the net. And at 8:37 — that’s 2:37 p.m. in Victoria, Australia — Amoore stole a moment to grab her phone and FaceTime her parents.

From anywhere in the arena, Amoore’s joy was visible. Her eyes creased as her smile grew wider. On the other end of the call, Phil and Kelly told her they were on their way. Tomorrow, they’d be on a plane to Dallas to watch their daughter play in the Final Four. Her coach, Kenny Brooks, joined in on the call, and then he and Amoore shared a hug.

In his arms, on this court, so far away from the place she grew up, Amoore was at home.

Before the ACC tournament, Georgia Amoore was a name not everyone knew. In the postseason, that quickly changed. Amoore has been the engine making No. 1 seed Virginia Tech’s offense go in the NCAA Tournament, including Monday night with a 24-point performance in the Hokies’ 84-74 Elite Eight win over Ohio State. As the point guard dismantled defenses and led her program to its first-ever Final Four, Georgia Amoore became a name that casual fans and basketball greats committed to memory.

“I saw that Sue Bird shared her on her Instagram story,” said Amoore’s cousin, Keeley Frawey. “She’s getting noticed and it’s such a tribute to her. And that’s not her main focus. She just really wants to win.”

No one in Climate Pledge Arena knows Amoore better than Frawley, not even her teammates or coach. The two grew up together, playing basketball in Australia at Frawley’s family beach house in Portarlington.

Now, they both play college basketball in the United States. Frawley’s Portland Pilots also earned an NCAA Tournament bid, falling to Oklahoma in the first round. Amoore was almost a Pilot, too. Portland was the only other school to give her a scholarship offer, and at the time, Frawley hoped they would play their college basketball together.

Now, watching Amoore pose next to her trophy in a pile of confetti, with an Australian flag draped over her shoulders, Frawley knows that she is exactly where she’s meant to be.

“She’s absolutely thriving,” Frawley said with a smile.

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Amoore had a standout regular season, averaging 16.1 points and 5.1 assists per game while leading her team to the ACC championship. But as the competition gets more intense and the stakes get higher, Amoore gets better. She had 24 points against Duke in the ACC semifinal, then 25 to top Lousiville and hoist the conference trophy. The junior guard opened NCAA Tournament play with 22 points, then 21, then 29 against a talented Tennessee team, and finally 24 against Ohio State to help Virginia Tech make history.

And Amoore did something no other team has been able to do in this tournament: She dismantled Ohio State’s signature defensive press, the same one that forced UConn into 25 turnovers in the Sweet 16. The Hokies had heard about the press. It was the main line of questioning leading up to the game: “How will you handle the pressure?”

The answer? With Georgia Amoore.

A couple of early turnovers caused Brooks to call a timeout. He and Amoore stood side by side, and he pointed to various spots on the floor. Amoore says she’s a visual learner. Often in practice, Brooks will demonstrate a move for her, and his point guard will mimic it. There was no time for that on Monday in Climate Pledge Arena, so they made due with words and gestures.

“I think for the press, it got a bit choppy when we started passing it too much,” Amoore said. ”I really just needed to break it by dribbling through it.”

After that, Amoore started to dissect the Ohio State defense off the bounce. She skillfully crossed halfcourt, dribbling around multiple defenders, head up, one eye on the clock, the other surveying the offensive possibilities.

Her technique was so clinical that, after the game, Amoore’s teammates marveled at her skills.

“Georgia, I don’t know how you do it, man,” Taylor Soule said with a piece of the net tucked under her Final Four hat. “I honestly sit back in the backcourt and just watch what you do in awe.”

She’s not the only one.

Frawley saw many moments throughout the win that were quintessential Georgia.

Like when Ohio State cut the lead down to two points with 3:16 left in the third quarter. A sloppy Virginia Tech possession had broken down, and after the ball bounced off both Buckeyes and Hokies players, it found its way into Amoore’s hands. She glanced up as the shot clock ticked down. Then, with one quick dribble, she blew by her defender for a layup.

Or when she made a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to end the third quarter, creating space from her defender with a dribble and a dramatic fade to the left.

Our PG 👌🤩 pic.twitter.com/LaUEkmDNSl

— Virginia Tech Women's Basketball (@HokiesWBB) March 28, 2023

Or when yet another shot clock neared expiration, with 6:57 left in the fourth quarter, and Amoore put her head down. She worked her way to the basket to find Elizabeth Kitley for a dump pass that turned into an and-1, giving Virginia Tech a 10-point lead and an extra dose of momentum.

All those moments were Georgia being Georgia, but one stood out to Frawley more than the rest.

The Virginia Tech guard took a hit to the face with 8:31 left in the second quarter. A wayward limb caught Amoore in the jaw and she flew backwards, her curly, brown ponytail cushioning a fall to the court.

Frawley didn’t see the play happen, but her mom did. Frawley received a concerned text from her, wondering if Amoore was going to be OK.

Moments later they had their answer.

Amoore left the court with assistance from trainers, appearing to head toward the locker room. But 44 seconds later — the only 44 seconds in the game when she wasn’t on the court — Amoore was back. The hit, she said, motivated her. And once she caught her breath, and shook off the initial shock of the blow, Amoore was ready to attack the game with new ferocity.

“I just had a little bit of rage and some catching up to do,” Amoore said. “They’re a strong team, and I think they were playing physical. I don’t like when people beat down on my teammates, so as soon as I copped the beating, I went back and refreshed and I came out with a different mindset.”

Two minutes later, Amoore hit a pull up 3-pointer in transition. Before getting hit, Amoore had two points. Afterward, she went on to score 22 more, including going a perfect 6-for-6 from the free-throw line and connecting on four 3-pointers. Hitting from long range, she says, is her favorite way to score.

She made a record 20 3-pointers over the first four rounds of the tournament.

“I just like to shoot the 3-ball,” she said with a laugh and childlike grin. “And I don’t know what else to say about that.”

G's good 😏

👌 » https://t.co/GlM7J1XBOz pic.twitter.com/iiMRdqV2mu

— Virginia Tech Women's Basketball (@HokiesWBB) March 28, 2023

But before she could set any records, Amoore needed to get back in the game.

“I knew that in every ounce of her bones and body, she was wanting to get back on that court,” Frawley said. “She’s so tough.”

And sure enough, before the crowd had any real time to worry, Amoore was back on the bench. Frawley watched as she approached Brooks, reading her lips as she told him, “I’m ready.”

And she was. Ready to take her team all the way to the Final Four.

“That’s just Georgia,” Frawley said.

Eden Laase is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @eden_laase.

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.