When Sloane Stephens walks out of the tunnel at Arthur Ashe Stadium for her opening match of the US Open, it will be understandable if she has déjà vu. Four years ago, Stephens won the tournament with a straight-set victory over Madison Keys, her first-round opponent Monday.

Stephens’ unprecedented run to the trophy in 2017, in which she became the lowest-ranked US Open champion ever, remains her only Grand Slam title. She reached a career-best No. 3 world ranking the following year after winning the Miami Open and finishing as runner-up at the French Open.

Since then, Stephens has had mixed results.

Her form started to slip in 2019 and this year she fell out of the top 60 for the first time since before the 2017 US Open. Stephens has also had to cope with tragedy after losing an aunt, a grandmother and a grandfather to COVID-19 in the past year. She attended her grandparents’ funerals virtually from the bubble at the Australian Open in February and later said she regretted not going in person.

Stephens, 28, enters the US Open this week with a clearer mind. She has played better since the Australian Open and prioritized her mental health through the adversity. For Stephens, the last Grand Slam of the year also carries special meaning.

“It’s obviously the first Slam that I won,” she said. “And when I was 12, my mom and stepdad took me to the US Open. I have those experiences from when I was very young, and I think that’s what makes it so special.”

Stephens spoke with Just Women’s Sports about Naomi Osaka reigniting the conversation around mental health, her charity work off the court and what she’s learned about herself and her game since 2017.

The past year has brought several ups and downs, but you’ve had some good finishes at recent tournaments including making it to the fourth round of the French Open and the third round at Wimbledon. How do you feel about your game right now?

Good. Obviously the pandemic has been rough, and the point situations and the travel have been rough, and everything’s been difficult not just for me but for everyone. So getting matches every week and getting that confidence back is super helpful. I’m not where I was or where I want to be, but I think I’m headed in the right direction. So I’m happy with that, and I’m just trying to work through it, manage every day and just keep going.

I saw you recently changed coaches. What has that setup been like and what have you been working on with them?

I stopped working with Kamau Murray, but I kind of work with the same people. It’s always a different experience working with new people and so far, so good. I’m just trying to get into a space where I can be competitive and win matches again and be happy on the court. I think that’s the most important thing.

You were recovering from a knee injury this summer after a fall at Wimbledon. How has that recovery gone and how are you feeling physically?

The recovery went well. Obviously not enough time, but this is the most important time of the year. So I’m just trying to manage and make sure that I’m ready for the biggest tournament, which is the US Open, but also making sure that these next few weeks I put out good performances and good matches and am really competitive because this is the most important time.

You’ve dealt with injuries throughout your career and battled back from many different types of adversity. As you’ve gained experience from being on tour longer, have you learned to cope with those types of ups and downs better?

Yeah, we’re doing a lot of adjusting and coping. I would say the pandemic isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever dealt with in my career, but injury is like nothing compared to this. Injuries you can kind of put in perspective, like you know what you’re working for, you know what you have to do to get back and you know what it’s going to take. In the pandemic, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know if the tour’s going to stop again. You don’t know what the circumstances are going to be week in and week out. So I think being injured is tough, but I’ve definitely put it in perspective more. I’ve dealt with it a lot in my career, but nothing compares to obviously a pandemic.

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Since Naomi Osaka pulled out of the French Open and Wimbledon for mental health reasons, how has her message resonated with you and how important do you think it is that mental health has become part of the conversation?

Yeah, I’ve been talking about mental health and taking care of yourself for years now. And I think she was the perfect person to step up for herself when the time wasn’t right for her and to say what she needed to say. I think you have to support that and you have to applaud her because she did that when a lot of people wouldn’t, and I think that shows strength. She chose what was best for her and a lot of people didn’t like that. This pandemic has taught a lot of people that you do have to put yourself first and you have to choose yourself over making other people happy and making decisions based on what other people think. That’s just my personal experience, so I’m obviously happy to be around to see her strength and her will to do what is best for her.

It’s especially true in tennis because the schedule is so grueling during the year. Have you developed any tactics over the years to help with your own mental health?

Yeah, I do what’s best for me and I have been for a while. Obviously everyone is different and they handle everything differently. I have my own ways of coping to make sure that I’m in the best possible shape and form. It’s not easy, but I think that acknowledging whatever it is that you need to make sure that you feel good about yourself or feel good about what you’re doing is really important, with whatever method you use to determine that.

You’ve been on the WTA Player Council since 2019. Are you having more conversations about mental health now with the group?

I think it’s always been something that’s at the top of the list for everyone. We have a grueling schedule, it’s a long year, we’ve never been in a position where we’ve had to adjust to so many things and face so much adversity. The pandemic has put everything in perspective and it’s a different type of adjustment. So, being able to put this first and put the players first and put the group of players that really are struggling first, I think that’s been really important. We’ve discussed it a lot, we’ve kept it top of mind, and I think that’s the most important thing.

And speaking of lifting other people up, you’ve done a lot of work off the court with the Sloane Stephens Foundation and other charities in recent years. What have you been most proud of there and why is it so important to you?

When I started my foundation, it was more about giving the kids the opportunity through tennis and through education to see all of the possibilities and all of the goals and accomplishments you can reach. We’re based in the Compton Unified [School District], so a lot of our kids don’t have Internet, don’t have WiFi, don’t have computers, don’t have any access to keep up with their studies. They don’t have any tutors or they don’t have the necessary things that a lot of kids have access to. So for us over the pandemic, the most important part was making sure that our kids that were in our program not only had WiFi, but they had food to eat.

A lot of our families struggled with having meals. My mom was buying bulk food from Costco to take to our families. We don’t have that many kids, we don’t have 7,000 kids, but we have enough that we can make progress. And our girls that graduated high school this year that are going to four-year colleges, first-generation college students, that for us is a win. What we’ve done over the pandemic, it’s just been really great to see that through my tennis and the things that I’ve been able to do in my life and the things that I’ve been given in my life, I can give that back and be of help and assistance to another family who may need it. I think that’s what giving back is all about.

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You were also a part of a WTA panel for young girls exploring future careers. Based on your own experiences, what was your message to those girls?

Put yourself first. There are always going to be ups and downs, but I think it’s important to be able to manage day-to-day. Like, have fun, enjoy your life, enjoy playing tennis, enjoy learning, enjoy whatever it is that you’re doing, because life is too short to not be happy. I think at a young age, when you have that mindset of enjoying yourself, being productive and setting a goal and going out and getting it, that determines how you live and how you choose to execute whatever it is on a daily basis. That’s what I try to tell them.

It’s been four years since you won the US Open. What have you learned about yourself as a player and a person since then?

I think a lot has happened. As a person, I’ve developed, I’ve learned, I’ve grown. As a player, there’s been adversity and ups and downs, but I try to navigate it as best I can and have a good attitude about it. That’s really all you can do.

You said at the beginning you’re feeling pretty good about your game right now. What are your goals going into the US Open?

Just winning matches, being competitive, trying to do my best. It’s been a long season and it’s been very hectic and chaotic. So I think going into every tournament ready to play and looking for wins is what the goal is. That’s pretty much all I can ask of myself, just to give my best effort and see how it goes.

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.