On Wednesday afternoon, the Kansas City Current abruptly parted ways with second-year head coach Matt Potter. The decision was “related to issues around his leadership and employment responsibilities,” the club said in a release.

“We watch the play on the pitch, we keep a pulse on the locker room, and we are constantly evaluating ways to improve our club,” said general manager Camille Ashton. “Through our ongoing process of continuous improvement, we believe now is the right time for this change.”

Assistant coach Caroline Sjöblom will take over as interim head coach, including for the Current’s Challenge Cup opener Wednesday night against the Houston Dash.

While the terms of Potter’s termination haven’t yet been made clear, to say that Kansas City’s start to the 2023 season did not go as planned would be an understatement.

In the wake of a very active offseason, this appeared to be the year the Kansas City Current would level up. After going on an underdog run all the way to the 2022 NWSL final, the Current took the league’s first free-agency period very seriously, picking up a number of top players who tested their value on the open market.

The Current acquired Brazilian superstar Debinha and Chicago midfielders Morgan Gautrat and Vanessa DiBernardo through free agency. They followed that up by drafting USWNT U-20 forward Michelle Cooper and Virginia standout Alexa Spaanstra through the draft, and signing Swedish defender Hanna Glas. Suddenly the task at hand was to get the best out of a stacked group, rather than getting a scrappy team to punch above their weight.

Amid high expectations, Kansas City has begun the NWSL season with three losses, in which they’ve conceded nine goals while only scoring three of their own. Most recently, the Current allowed four goals apiece to the Portland Thorns and Chicago Red Stars. While the Current have time to right the ship after parting ways with their head coach, it’s also possible that an early run of bad luck could disrupt their plans for the rest of the season.

Ill-timed injury bug

One explanation for the Current’s early struggles is an obvious one: health. Kansas City began the season with Debinha, DiBernardo, Gautrat, Glas and Kristen Hamilton all out with injuries, while Desiree Scott, Claire Lavogez and Sam Mewis continue to recover from their own long-term injuries.

The Kansas City team that kicked off the 2023 season in North Carolina didn’t necessarily reflect the roster they had so painstakingly constructed, with rookies thrown into the fire instead of veterans steadily integrating into the lineup and bolstering the squad. Adding to the Current’s injury woes was the loss of defender Elizabeth Ball in the team’s first regular season game, affecting the position with the least amount of depth.

While DiBernardo and Debinha have returned to the midfield, Kansas City’s defense has had to continuously adjust to a lack of personnel. The team has relied heavily on rookie Gabby Robinson and signed undrafted defender Croix Soto recently to provide emergency depth.

Hamilton’s absence has also proved challenging, as the team has struggled to turn positive play into the payoff of goals. The Current are at their best when their midfield is set up to generate goals, a system that enabled Lo’eau Labonta to have a breakout 2022 season as both a playmaker and a goal-scorer.

As the team works their new midfield pieces onto the field, a fair amount of weight has been placed on the shoulders of rookie Michelle Cooper, who is still honing her work rate and shot generation into quality opportunities. The Kansas City frontline hasn’t had enough time to gel, and Hamilton’s eventual return could make a huge difference.

Adjustments on the fly

With so many players missing, Potter had tinkered with his team’s formation, moving away from the high-risk, high-reward patterns of a three-back in favor of something more traditional. The team came out in their season opener in a four-back defense, progressing the ball through a fluid 4-3-3 / 4-2-3-1 formation. The system gave them the basic structure they needed while managing so many changes in personnel.

Potter admitted the changes didn’t necessarily reflect the way the Current want to play when all of their heavy-hitters are available, but the adjustments also haven’t shaped results in the way they had hoped. Hailie Mace and Kate Del Fava, who excelled last year as wingbacks pushing the team forward in attack, have focused more on defense as traditional outside backs, limiting the team’s ability to create overloads on the wings.

When the Current did move the ball quickly in their most recent match — a 4-2 loss to the Red Stars — rather than play through their formidable midfield to hold the ball and make the Red Stars chase, Kansas City stretched the game with longer passes over the top. When challenged by the Chicago defense, they committed turnovers that quickly sent the ball in the other direction and caught the Kansas City defense lacking numbers in support. Those situations led to scoring opportunities (on admittedly well-taken shots) for their opponent.

Getting away from the system that worked for them in 2022 has led to quick defensive breakdowns, including goals allowed in the first five minutes of their last two matches, and made it difficult for their attack to recover. It’s possible that shots simply need to start landing for Kansas City’s front three, but a commitment to one system might serve them better as the season progresses.

Relying on identity

Player health (to say nothing of stability at the head coaching position) will be the most significant factor in the Current beginning to turn results around. But even in this week’s loss, you could see progress being made. Debinha’s excellent chip goal after sneaking in behind the Chicago backline showed just how dangerous Kansas City’s attacking midfield can be once players get used to each other’s movements on a consistent basis.

The Current aren’t currently set up to make significant adjustments to their defense, but a never-say-die mentality combined with an ability to score in transition served the team well in 2022 and could be the key to getting back to basics. The Current are not a conservative team at heart. They might be best served abandoning the structure they’re unfamiliar with and instead letting games play out, with the belief that their midfield advantages will win out.

In other words, the Current of 2023 might benefit from looking a bit more like the Current of 2022. The team’s defense might continue to deal with moments of pressure, but getting their fire back could go a long way.

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 16 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.