Washington State’s all-time leading scorer, Morgan Weaver was selected by the Portland Thorns as the second pick in the 2020 NWSL Draft. Weaver led the Cougars to their first ever College Cup in 2019 and was soon after invited to the USWNT’s senior team training camp in December.

CONGRATULATIONS ON BEING TAKEN NO. 2 IN THE NWSL DRAFT. IT’S BEEN AMAZING TO WATCH YOUR PERFORMANCE THIS PAST SEASON AND TO SEE HOW FAR WASHINGTON STATE HAS COME SINCE YOU ARRIVED. GOING BACK IN TIME, HOW DID YOU END UP AT WASHINGTON STATE? 

My mom made me come on a visit. 100% honesty — I did not want to go to Washington State. I wanted to be a Husky. I grew up about 45 minutes from UW, and I wanted to go there my whole entire life. I was all, go Huskies, go Dawgs. And my club coach said, hey, you should go check out Washington State, they would really love to see you. And I said, yeah, whatever. So they ended up calling my mom to say they wanted to have me on a visit. I said I wouldn’t go, but she said I had to just see what it was like. And then of course I got here and just fell in love with the school. It only took one visit. On the way home I called my dad and said, “I’m going to Washington State. I’m going to be a Coug.” And he goes, “What?!”

THE PROGRAM MADE SO MANY STRIDES DURING YOUR FOUR YEARS. WHAT WAS IT ABOUT THE CULTURE THAT ALLOWED IT TO MAKE THE LEAP? 

I can remember being that freshman on the first road trip who was asking everyone if they needed water, asking the catches after practice if they needed me to pick up the balls. I was absolutely that nervous new player who just wanted to help. And that was true for all the girls in our class, which really showed the upperclassmen that we were committed. And our coaches got on us, they told us we should be competing at the top of the Pac 12. And after we didn’t make the tournament my freshman season, everyone in my class just said we weren’t going to let that happen again. We had practices in the snow while the tournament was going on, and we just kept telling ourselves that we deserved to be playing in it. There was a huge mentality shift. We wanted to be at the top of the conference, and we wanted to show everyone what Washington State was about every time we took the field. And this year, we really did that.

YOU GUYS WENT ON TO BE THE CINDERELLA TEAM OF THE TOURNAMENT. DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE CAPABLE OF THAT KIND OF RUN TOWARD THE END OF THE SEASON? 

We knew going into two of our last games against Utah and Colorado that we had to win them both to make the tournament, which we did. But then we lost to Washington, and everyone was just like, “What just happened?” You can’t lose to your rivals. And credit to UW for beating us, but all of us were disappointed. We were furious, and we hated that feeling. I think that took everyone to another level. Once we got back to Pullman, the mentality was just that we weren’t going to lose again. You could feel the intensity at practice.

YOU GUYS KNOCKED OFF TWO TOP-5 TEAMS DURING YOUR RUN. WHAT WAS YOUR MENTALITY LIKE FOR THOSE GAMES? 

Before the Virginia game, there was definitely some nerves. We knew how good they were. But a few of us just grabbed everyone before the game, and we said, look, we’re Washington State. People are scared to play us because we’re physical, we’re athletic, and we don’t stop. And before the game, in the locker room, on the bus, we were all singing. High School Musical, Hannah Montana. Everyone was having fun. That’s when we knew we were going to win the game. When we have that crazy energy, we don’t think there’s anyone that’s going to stop us.

There were also so many families that traveled to every game supporting us. And there were a lot of older players, even from other programs, who kept sending us messages. Abby Wambach even sent a video, which was amazing. But really, we just loved getting to show people that, you know, we’re a small little school in Pullman. We don’t have the No. 1 recruits. But we’re fighters, and we give everything we can. Since I arrived here as a freshman, we’ve been proving to people that we can compete with the best. Honestly, I don’t even think it was a Cinderella story. We were just showing people what we could do. They might have been shocked, but we always felt like we deserved to be there.

EVEN AS YOU KNOCKED OFF TEAMS, THERE WEREN’T A LOT OF PEOPLE IN THE MEDIA WHO BELIEVED IN YOU. HOW WERE YOU ABLE TO STAY CONFIDENT? 

I think the other captains and I always did a good job of bringing everyone in and saying, this is just another game. It shouldn’t matter who were playing. We’re going out there to win and to be the best we can. It comes from the coaches, too. They always believed. And I think they did an amazing job proving to us that we’re entitled to have that mentality where it doesn’t matter who we are playing. I mean, we could be playing Chelsea, and we’d still say, it’s just Chelsea, we got this. That’s just who we are. It sounds crazy, but that’s our team. And we loved having the opportunity to prove all the doubters wrong.

BY THE END, YOU ALL HAD A LOT OF NEW FANS ACROSS THE COUNTRY WHO WERE ROOTING FOR YOU AT THE COLLEGE CUP. WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? 

It was awesome. There were so many girls who messaged me throughout the tournament and this year saying how much they loved watching our team, saying how much we inspired them. I kept reminding everyone on the team that this is what we were playing for. And there were so many girls who said they want to come to Washington State, who said they wanted to be Cougs because of what we had done. That doesn’t happen all the time, and we knew it was special.

FAST-FORWARDING TO THE DRAFT, WHAT WAS THAT LIKE WHEN YOU HEARD THEM CALL YOUR NAME AT NO. 2? 

I thought, dang. I was so excited. And kind of shocked. I mean, I never fully believed I’d be a No. 2 pick in the draft. That’s a pretty high number. I’ve always just gone out there and worked as hard as I could, and now I can’t wait to be in Portland. The team is amazing. Lindsey Horan, Tobin Heath, Christine Sinclair, and so many more. And Portland is only two and a half hours from my house. I’m so close to home. My hard work is finally paying off, but it’s not done.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PERSONAL GOALS FOR THIS YEAR?

I think for me it’s just showing everyone that I can compete, that I’m not just content to be there. I want to prove myself to everyone. I want them to really be excited about having me as a teammate.

BOTH YOU AND SOPHIA SMITH WILL BE HEADING TO PORTLAND. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON PARTNERING UP? 

I’m really excited to get to know her more. We played together at this last national camp in December. She seems really nice, really fun. And I’ve heard great things about her. I had some friends at Washington State who played club with her and who all talked very highly about her.

ANY SHOUT OUT TO THE PORTLAND FAITHFUL? 

Oh yes — I’m so excited to be playing in Portland. I already met some fans at the draft. They gave me a scarf and were incredibly nice. So many people have also reached out over social media to say how excited they are to have me in Portland. It’s amazing, and I’m so excited to get to know them.

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.

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.

View this post on Instagram

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

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.