Trinity Rodman can still feel the jolt she received from Brooke Hendrix in the first minute of a bruising NWSL game last month.

Rodman, 18 years old at the time and playing in just her second professional game with the Washington Spirit, received a through ball from Ashley Sanchez in full stride toward Louisville’s backline. Looking to slide past Hendrix with her speed, Rodman took a touch and got a shot off just as the seasoned Louisville defender knocked her off balance.

Instead of a breakaway goal, it was a “welcome to the NWSL” moment for Rodman.

“Being so young and being so new to all of this physicality, I was going against her, trying to run behind and she gave me a big bump,” Rodman says, her voice soft and reflective while recalling the play from the May 21 game. “That’s when I realized there’s a lot of strong players in this league and I obviously need to learn to become a bigger body and be able to maneuver out of it.”

Many of those lessons for Rodman have come in real time. Since the Spirit selected her with the second overall pick in January’s draft, making her the youngest player ever drafted into the NWSL, there’s been no easing into the professional game.

Even before Rodman touched an NWSL field, people knew her name. She’s the daughter of five-time NBA champion Dennis Rodman and a teenage phenom who essentially bypassed college for the pros, where the expectations have only intensified. Rodman scored in her debut for the Spirit during the NWSL Challenge Cup and has started four of five games in the regular season. She’s ranked second in the league in shots (16) and fourth in shots on goal (8).

What Rodman has accomplished in just four months in the NWSL doesn’t surprise Spirit coach Richie Burke. Rodman first came onto his radar in 2019 through Laura Harvey, Rodman’s coach with the United States U-20 team.

“She said to me, ‘Look Richie, she’s legit, absolutely legit,’” Burke says. Following that conversation, Burke had one of his assistants pull some clips so he could watch Rodman in action, including at the 2020 U-20 CONCACAF Women’s Championship, where she scored nine goals and made her case to be nominated for the U.S. Soccer Young Female Player of the Year award.

“You can’t teach that innate instinct, that feel for the game, when the ball is going to get to certain places, or you get there a little bit before the ball arrives,” Burke says. “Her football instincts are just fantastic.”

Rodman made her professional debut for the Spirit on April 10 against the North Carolina Courage in the Challenge Cup. Entering the game in the 55th minute, she needed only five minutes to make her mark on the match with a textbook, two-touch finish. She used her pace to slice through the Courage’s backline and her technique to bring the ball down in the air and place it into the near post.

💥 @trinity_rodman is here, and she is not. messing. around. pic.twitter.com/OY6i28k3ct

— National Women's Soccer League (@NWSL) April 10, 2021

It’s those types of plays that have Rodman not only on NWSL scouting reports but on U.S. women’s national team coach Vlatko Andonovski’s watch list.

“Vlatko and the national team staff have been coming to games. She’s very much on the radar,” Burke says. “I was telling Vlatko when we were in Louisville talking about her a little bit that when you play with her and you’re around her, you realize how quickly she closes you down. She’s unbelievably fast and unbelievably quick across the ground, so when you’re in there playing with her, she changes your mind. You’re like, ‘Bloody hell!’ She’s on you like a flash.”

Running fast, cutting hard, defending until the ball is won and scoring goals have always been hallmarks of Rodman’s game. Even when she was 4 years old, growing up in Newport Beach, Calif. and just getting started in soccer, she couldn’t wrap her head around the kids who wanted to pick flowers and chat with their parents rather than attack the opposing defense.

“I would get so frustrated and try to gather the whole team while the game was going on,” Rodman says. “That’s when I knew soccer was going to be my thing.”

Rodman played for the fabled SoCal Blues soccer club her entire youth career, leading the team to a five-year undefeated streak and four ECNL national championships.

“Being on such a good club team, I got to experience the real competitive side of it,” she says. “When we started winning, my competitiveness started taking over and I was like, yeah, this is the sport I want to play. I feel the most confident and at home when I’m on the field.”

Rodman, the No. 1-ranked forward coming out of high school, intended to play at Washington State last fall. When the season was pushed back to the spring because of COVID-19, Rodman used the downtime to reconsider her priorities, eventually deciding to declare for the NWSL draft.

“I started getting impatient in a way, and I had pushed myself so hard and done so much extra work that I wanted to be at that level that I had been working hard to be at my whole life,” she says.

In her first practices with the Spirit, she realized just how much more work she had to do, starting with her strength and conditioning.

“I don’t think anyone could really be prepared for it being 18 years old,” Rodman says. “Every time at practice I got beat to the ball. I got pushed off the ball. I missed shots. Every single mistake I made, I learned from it, being around such talented and experienced players.”

Burke recalls one practice early in training camp when Rodman was having a hard time finding her rhythm in a passing square drill. As coaches examined every first touch and players whipped passes around, Rodman heard Burke’s commentary and assumed he was mad at her.

After practice, Spirit forward Ashley Sanchez spoke with Rodman and told her not to take Burke’s words so personally, that they were just his unique way of welcoming her to the team. That became official after a preseason game when Burke made up a song for Rodman, an annual tradition for his first-year players.

Rodman’s humility and constant drive to get better have endeared her to her older teammates. She mentions Andi Sullivan, Kelley O’Hara and Emily Sonnett as her biggest mentors on the team.

“I think that she could have come into preseason so big-headed — didn’t play in college, drafted high. But she’s been so professional in her approach to training and learning more,” Sullivan says. “For someone like her, she’s not just a star — she’s studying, she’s working hard and she’s showing up.”

Watching film has been integral to Rodman’s progress as a rookie. She’s noticed, for example, that her runs in the final third have been too slow and straight, making them predictable and easier for the defense to pick up, and she’s adjusted accordingly.

In the first minute of the Spirit’s game against the Orlando Pride on June 6, Rodman received the ball with her back to goal. She took a touch with the outside of her right foot and chopped it behind her back, spinning out of pressure and finding space down the right wing. She then whipped the ball across the box to Hatch, giving the Spirit their first scoring chance of the game.

“I think the greatest thing for Trinity is that she’s holding her own right now,” Harvey says. “For someone at her age to just be able to hold her own is a huge compliment right now.”

TRINITY RODMAN ➡️ ASHLEY SANCHEZ@WashSpirit jump out in front in the 93’! pic.twitter.com/mfV1ELRWlB

— CBS Sports Soccer (@CBSSportsSoccer) April 16, 2021

Although she’s improving and growing more comfortable with every training session and game, Rodman still calls her mom, Michelle, many times a day. When she has a practice that’s not up to her standards, she knows her mom will always say the right thing.

“You’re doing the best that you can do,” her mom will tell her. “If in your head you’re working your hardest, that’s all you can do and you just have to take it day by day because there’s nothing you can do about the practice you had an hour ago. Think about the next practice and how you can get better.”

The advice has stuck with Rodman, who turned 19 last month. Only five months have passed since she made history at the NWSL draft, and she feels like a different player now when she takes the field.

“I have already learned so much, and I think being able to see how much progress has happened in a short amount of time gets me excited for what’s in the future,” she says. “Before I was like, ‘Wow, I’m good.’ Now I’m like, ‘Wow I wasn’t that good.’”

Even Rodman can see she is just cracking the surface of her potential. And as her work continues to translate to the field, she’s making a name for herself.

“I’ll play the hardest I can ever play for my team,” she says. “I’ll do anything and put my body on the line so my team can succeed.”

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony on Friday 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. 

"I'm surrounded by so many extraordinary people in so many different fields," Ledecky told Just Women's Sports on Friday. "I feel like I've made a lot of friends today among that group, and their families and their friends."

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.

Ledecky said she was surprised to learn how recent it has been that athletes in women's sports have been considered for the honor. Billie Jean King was the first to receive the award in 2009. "That kind of blew my mind that it was that recent," she said.

"There are so many great female athletes that I've looked up to for so many years," she continued. "And I know we're just going to keep pushing ahead, and doing our best to continue to get a seat at every table."

Like Biles, Ledecky receives the Medal of Freedom while she's still actively competing in her sport, a fact not lost on the 27-year-old. "My goals in the pool are to continue to push forward and swim good times, hopefully win some more medals. And then secondly to continue to do good things out of the pool, whether that's inspiring young kids to learn how to swim, get into the sport, set big goals in whatever pursuits they're interested in."

"I've recognized I've had a long career now, and it's important to reflect every now and then. But at the same time, I'm still competing and still working hard into the future."

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.