Racing Louisville FC is having an unprecedented debut season — one that would have been the envy of expansion clubs everywhere until the unceremonious (and still mysterious) firing of Christy Holly.

Despite the unexpected coaching change, it’s still been a season to remember for the club, the highlight of which was winning the Women’s Cup. A little over a year after announcing the club’s name and colors, Racing Louisville FC lifted its first trophy as a team in front of their home crowd at Lynn Family Stadium.

Hosting the Cup, which welcomed the Chicago Red Stars, FC Bayern Munich and PSG to Louisville in the club’s first year, would’ve been impressive enough, but Racing went on to win the four-team competition in dramatic fashion. The moment highlighted just how swift Racing Louisville’s rise through the league has been.

First piece of silverware as a club: Earned. 🏆

A look 🔙 at our unforgettable night. 🎬 pic.twitter.com/p2Ab7IVxqM

— Racing Louisville FC (@RacingLouFC) August 22, 2021

Racing Louisville entered the NWSL in 2021 after first announcing the development of an expansion club in October 2019. Team officials moved quickly to acquire top talent before the 2021 season, executing a trade with Chicago for Yuki Nagasato and Savannah McCaskill. The trade has clearly paid off, with both Nagasato and McCaskill establishing themselves as reliable franchise cornerstones.

Yuki scores.
Yuki soars. pic.twitter.com/wrZBP2ZkD7

— Racing Louisville FC (@RacingLouFC) August 22, 2021

Racing continued to build out their squad, selecting the likes of Michelle Betos and CeCe Kizer in the expansion draft. The club also acquired the rights to Tobin Heath and Christen Press, a gamble that ended in Racing trading Press to NWSL expansion club Angel City FC for Los Angeles’ first-round pick in 2022, $75,000 in allocation money, and full roster protection from the club in the expansion draft in December.

For the players that have taken the pitch for Louisville, perhaps none has shown up quite like Michelle Betos. It’s no secret that the league veteran knows how to perform at the highest level, winning NWSL Goalkeeper of the Year in 2015 during her stint with the Portland Thorns. However, Betos seems to have reached a new level in her first year with Louisville. The 33-year-old currently leads the league with 83 saves and four clean sheets, keeping Racing in close games all season long.

.@MichelleBetos coming up BIG 💪#LOUvCHI | https://t.co/0LtSAUK1Jw | #NWSL21 pic.twitter.com/qqg9GEOpmG

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) August 19, 2021

International additions Ebony Salmon and Nadia Nadim have added a jolt of energy to Louisville with their respective June and July debuts. At 20 years old, Salmon has quickly emerged as one of the most disruptive forwards in the league. The English striker has scored five goals in her ten appearances with Racing, adding her name to the scoresheet in three of Louisville’s four wins this season. She’s currently No. 2 on Just Women’s Sports’ rankings of the league’s top rookies.

Nadim has likewise had an impressive start with the club as well, notching two goals in her first four matches.

OH MY GOODNESS @ebony_salmon ‼️#LOUvHOU | https://t.co/0LtSAUK1Jw | #NWSL21 pic.twitter.com/VUSFHX2UUv

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) June 20, 2021

The team’s developing success on the pitch is matched by the investment in facilities and resources off the field. In July, Louisville unveiled the Lynn Family Sports Vision & Training Center on social media, showcasing the club’s $15 million state-of-the-art facility.

“I entered the women’s professional league in 2013. We had a classroom as a locker room. We brought our clothes in. We wore them for training, then brought them home to clean them. That was my professional experience,” said Betos during the Training Center’s debut.  “To be totally honest, it wasn’t until I came to Louisville that I felt like a true professional.”

Racing’s investment in top-notch facilities has legitimized its place in a league that has previously deprioritized adequate playing environments (see Sky Blue FC).  Louisville’s effort to build from the ground up has now set the standard for future clubs entering the NWSL.

You've seen glimpses. Now get a full look at the Lynn Family Sports Vision & Training Center.

Thanks to tour guides @MichelleBetos and @pdp03! pic.twitter.com/ifVsmiQAwO

— Racing Louisville FC (@RacingLouFC) July 16, 2021

The final piece of the puzzle for Racing is the committed Louisville fan base. The team played to a COVID-constricted sold-out crowd of 5,300 for its debut match in Lynn Family Stadium. According to Soccer Stadium Digest, attendance has only grown since then, with Racing Louisville averaging 6,417 at Lynn Family Stadium. Louisville is second only to powerhouse Portland in attendance, which welcomes an average of 15,321 guests to Providence Park per game. Those numbers are impressive for a club’s first year in the league and speaks to the soccer community Louisville is tapping into and helping to cultivate.

Fresh off the Women’s Cup win, Racing Louisville FC has put the NWSL on notice. While the near future may be consumed with discussion of what happened to force Holly out the door, it would be a mistake to not look at the bigger picture and realize that this season has been a smashing success for the expansion club. With an invested community and a promising roster, the future is looking bright for the team in lavender.

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.

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.

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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.

With recent transfers Talia von Oelhoffen and Kiki Iriafen joining first-team All-American JuJu Watkins and the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class at USC next season, the Trojans look to transition from an up-and-coming squad to a legitimate title contender. 

Former Oregon State graduate student von Oelhoffen is the latest collegiate talent to commit to the program, announcing her transfer Monday via ESPN. She follows ex-Stanford leading-scorer Iriafen in the jump to the pair’s one-time Pac-12 rival.

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The 5-foot-11 Washington native was a two-time All-Pac-12 guard during her time at Oregon State. But after the recent dissolution of the Pac-12, the Corvallis side found themselves without a permanent home conference going forward. Many big name players opted to take their skill elsewhere as a result, with von Oelhoffen’s fellow ex-Beaver Raegan Beers announcing her own departure to Oklahoma on Monday.

According to DraftKings, USC is now tied with UConn for the second-best betting odds to win the 2025 NCAA women’s tournament. Dawn Staley’s tested South Carolina side, poised for a repeat performance, holds down the number one spot.

Last year, LSU loaded up in the transfer portal after beating Iowa to win the 2023 national championship. The Tigers were clear favorites coming into the 2023-24 season, but were bounced in the Elite Eight by Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes. Shortly thereafter, star transfer Hailey Van Lith opted to transfer a second time, this time signing with TCU. 

Yet while history proves that an excess of star power doesn’t always translate to on-court chemistry, on paper, USC sure looks ready to hold their own — in 2025 and beyond.

The United States and Mexico have withdrawn their joint bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup, per a Monday afternoon release from U.S. Soccer and the Mexican Football Federation.

According to the statement, they will instead focus on developing a "more equitable" bid for the 2031 tournament, with the ultimate goal of "eliminating investment disparities" between the men’s and women’s tournaments.

The federations went on to cite the upcoming 2026 Men’s World Cup in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as an opportunity to build support for local infrastructure, improve audience engagement, and scale up media and partnership deals in preparation to "host a record-breaking tournament in 2031."

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"Hosting a World Cup tournament is a huge undertaking — and having additional time to prepare allows us to maximize its impact across the globe," said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. "Shifting our bid will enable us to host a record-breaking Women’s World Cup in 2031 that will help to grow and raise the level of the women’s game both here at home as well as across the globe."

The decision leaves just Brazil and a joint bid from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands in the running for the 2027 host spot. Brazil — the rumored frontrunner — has never hosted a Women’s World Cup, while Germany hosted the 2011 tournament as a solo venture. 

Furthermore, this postponement doesn’t mean the U.S. is a shoo-in for 2031, as it's been previously reported that 2022 UEFA Women's EURO host England is considering their own Women's World Cup bid. FIFA is scheduled to confirm the winning bid after the FIFA Congress votes on May 17th.