Allie Quigley lifted the championship trophy in front of a packed arena in July after winning the 3-Point Contest during the WNBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas. The longtime Chicago Sky guard hit shot after shot from beyond the arc, making it look easy and effortless on her way to claiming the title for the third time.

Quigley’s success in the contest has become so automatic that players joked in Las Vegas that the league should name it after her.

“I’m just not surprised at all by her,” says Sky center Stefanie Dolson. “If she’s not making shots in a game, we’ll have a last-minute shot or a last-chance play to win a game, and we’ll still go to Allie. She is one of the greatest shooters. We always have the most confidence. So even during that 3-point contest, I was like, she’s still got it.”

In her 13th WNBA season, Quigley certainly still has it. Connecting on a career-high 45.4 percent of her 3-point shots during the regular season, she posed a constant scoring threat whether she started or came off the bench. She helped the Sky turn around their season after a 2-7 start to earn the No. 6 seed in the playoffs, where they’ll face the Dallas Wings in the first round Thursday.

It’s hard to imagine that a sharpshooter as calm and effective as Quigley struggled to get a foothold in the WNBA. But there was a time when the 35-year-old wondered if she’d ever find her place in the league, when she lacked confidence in her abilities.

In 2008, when the Seattle Storm drafted her in the second round out of DePaul, Quigley was so excited to hear her name called that she didn’t consider the next steps.

“I didn’t know too much about the team. Didn’t really know much about the coach or the process involved, either,” Quigley says. “You’re a little bit naïve to think, I’m drafted so I’m on the team. Then, the more you look at the roster and you get to camp, you realize, OK, I really have to make this team. And it’s looking like it’s going to be pretty hard to do that actually.”

Landing in the right situation means everything for a draft pick in a 12-team league where roster spots are limited. For Quigley, being in Seattle meant sitting behind veteran players who already had defined roles with the team.

During 2008 training camp, then Storm head coach Brian Agler had Quigley playing backup point guard. It was a position she wasn’t used to after a standout four-year career at DePaul, where she graduated as one of only four players to score 2,000 career points. But Quigley did her best to soak up professional basketball knowledge and be flexible while learning a whole new system in order to stick with the team.

It didn’t work. Just before the start of the season, the Storm waived Quigley. From there, she landed with the Phoenix Mercury as a free agent but was cut the next season. In 2010, she had brief stints with the San Antonio Stars and the Indiana Fever. She returned to Seattle in 2011, appearing in only seven games.

When Quigley showed up for Storm training camp in 2012, her mind was in Europe, where she’d found success playing in Hungary and in the EuroLeague.

“I was contemplating getting my Hungarian passport to play overseas for the year or to try and make the Storm roster,” Quigley says. “I was feeling good about my chances, but the passport was going to help me out with getting better basketball opportunities over in Europe.

“I talked to Brian about it, and he knew the European process and the league, and he said, ‘I think you need to get the passport and we’ll keep you in mind.’ Went and got the passport, was in Hungary for a month or two, and Seattle never called back.”

In 2012, as the WNBA season continued on without her, Quigley played basketball overseas. At the time, she was dealing with confidence issues and questioned whether she was good enough to play in the WNBA.

Quigley comes from a basketball family. She spent her childhood playing with her brothers and sister in the backyard or at the YMCA in their hometown of Joliet, Ill. They grew up loving the game. So it was hard for them to watch Quigley struggle when they knew how hard she was working.

“We Skyped a lot, just talked about like, what are some other things [she] could be doing?” says Quigley’s younger sister, Sam. “Coaches would sit her down and say, ‘You’re doing everything right, you had a great training camp, but we’re gonna cut you.’ And she was like, ‘Wait, I don’t understand.’

“I remember her saying that she sat down with Agler and just said, ‘Why? Can you just tell me why?’ And he gave her some truths and probably some pretty blunt answers of things she needed to improve on.”

While playing in Europe, Quigley focused on ball-handling, reading pick and rolls, learning how to score off the pick and knowing when to shoot or pass. The more experience she gained overseas, the more confident she felt. When she went up against players in the WNBA, she realized she could not only hold her own but flourish.

Others noticed her improvement, too. Pokey Chatman was the head coach of Russian basketball club Spartak during Quigley’s early years in the WNBA. Although her team never played against Quigley, Chatman kept a close eye on the guard. She liked what she saw in her and, as the head coach of the Chicago Sky by that time, she wanted Quigley on her team.

“I was watching her game evolve, not just watching the stats and highlights, and watching her compete and not just be a catch-and-shoot player,” Chatman says. “Her handles were getting better, everything. It was a no-brainer.”

For Chatman, seeing Quigley’s basketball evolution in real time was the difference. It also helped that there was a fit in the Sky’s system.

“I think some people hear that a player bounced around and think, oh, that’s never gonna work,” Chatman says. “I just saw this silent assassin-type mentality, like her emotions very seldom changed. She just knocked down shots. I always said, ‘If you can space the floor, you have a shot to have some success.’ And that was the initiating factor in it — adding someone who had some pro experience, a little bit of grit and a chip on her shoulder, like, ‘Sh—, this is my last go-round, I’m gonna make this happen.’

“And that was the beginning of Allie having a beautiful impact on the Sky program.”

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Quigley spent her first season with the Sky on the bench. She averaged only 9.4 minutes per game in 2013 but tried to make an impact whenever she got on the floor. Chatman was still feeling her out as a player at the time, but told her she’d have a bigger role the following season.

In 2014, Quigley’s minutes jumped up to 24.8 per game. She took full advantage, averaging 11.2 points, 2.2 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game on 47.2 percent shooting from the field and earning the Sixth Woman of Year award. In 2015, she repeated the same production off the bench and won the award again.

Her career hasn’t waned since.

Quigley became a full-time starter in 2017 and was voted to her first All-Star Game. Now in her ninth year with the Sky, she’s one of the best 3-point shooters in the history of the league, ranking fifth all-time with a 39.9 3-point percentage.

Quigley’s career renaissance started and very well may end in Chicago. Looking back on her time in Europe, Chatman giving her an opportunity, winning back-to-back Sixth Woman of the Year awards — even her marriage to Sky teammate Courtney Vandersloot — Quigley can’t help but think it was destined.

“Just having been with different teams before that and thinking about giving it up, just to have that chance to be in Chicago and have my family be at every single game, it was perfect,” she says. “It was meant to be, to know that the previous five, six years of struggles were kind of worth it.”

Those who know Quigley best always believed her WNBA career would pan out.

“We weren’t surprised because of all the success she had growing up. I mean, she was phenomenal in many sports,” Sam says. “For us, it was like, we’re not surprised that Allie did this. What we’re most surprised about is her transformation as a person and as a woman. She’s become a professional.”

“Allie probably knew at some point, ‘I’m a great shooter. It doesn’t matter what else I can or can’t do on the court. I’m really good at shooting and people are gonna need that,’” Dolson adds. “And I’m just glad that Chicago took that chance on her and really committed to her being on the team and has stuck with her for so long.”

Alli3 Quigl3y with 11pts in the 1Q 🔥 pic.twitter.com/YwXD67iHfU

— Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) September 19, 2021

Chatman will always revel in the memory of helping bring Quigley back to the WNBA, and she couldn’t be more proud of the player Quigley has become.

“She deserves it because she’s put in the work. And it’s not just the shooting anymore. That’s what I want people to highlight — she’s not just catch and shoot,” Chatman says. “Of course, she’s a laser. We called her ‘laser.’ But it’s just the evolution of her game to positively impact it in different areas of offensive play. I think it was timing, environment. She just rocked it, and I’m glad she did.”

As the Sky head into the playoffs, Quigley is calm and confident. The days of questioning her skill and place in the WNBA are a distant memory. These days, she has the same belief in herself and her basketball abilities as she does in her teammates.

“We’ve beaten almost every team ahead of us so far. Especially the top three teams,” Quigley says. “So I think we just need to use that confidence, to know that we can do anything.”

Lyndsey D’Arcangelo is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports, covering the WNBA. She also contributes to The Athletic and is the co-author of Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League. Follow Lyndsey on Twitter @darcangel21.

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.

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.