Meghan Klingenberg of the Portland Thorns was the last player interviewed Wednesday night after an evening of three NWSL games, the first ones played since Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim shared their stories about Paul Riley in The Athletic last week.

In front of an online audience of media members, Klingenberg sat calmly in a black folding chair, wearing a casual jean jacket, as she would for any normal postgame press conference. But this evening, in the midst of a league-wide reckoning over a power structure that enabled alleged abusers like Riley, was anything but normal.

The simplest question — “How are you?” — took the longest to answer.

“I feel sad,” she said. “I feel angry. I think it depends on what I feel, depending what time of the day it is. I feel a little bit of guilt … so yeah, I feel a wide range of emotions.”

If there had to be four words to sum up the entirety of Wednesday night, it would be that phrase: “wide range of emotions.”

The evening began with NJ/NY Gotham FC and Washington Spirit taking the pitch at Subaru Park in Philadelphia. At the six-minute mark, both teams’ players and coaching staffs gathered at the center of the field to link arms for one minute in solidarity with Farrelly, Shim, Kaiya McCullough and others who’ve been silenced over the years.

pic.twitter.com/mlzE5Q8q8F

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) October 6, 2021

As the teams congregated, the NWSL Players Association released a statement on social media that included a list of demands for the league.

This is not business as usual. #NoMoreSilence pic.twitter.com/9GKkZW09g3

— NWSLPA (@nwsl_players) October 6, 2021

Commentator Kaylyn Kyle’s voice shook on the Paramount+ broadcast of the second game Wednesday night as players came together at midfield.

“If this isn’t a shut-up-and-listen to these players moment, I don’t really know what is,” said Kyle, who played in the NWSL from 2013 to 2016. “I’m devastated, disgusted, but I’m not shocked and that’s the problem. I played in this league where this was normalized. That’s not OK … These players that are on the pitch tonight, I genuinely don’t know how they’re doing it.”

The players formed the circle in the sixth minute to symbolize the six years it took for Farrelly and Shim to have their stories heard.

‘This is a league of strong, strong women’

Half an hour after the demonstration in Philadelphia, Racing Louisville FC and the North Carolina Courage — Riley’s team before he was terminated in the hours after The Athletic report came out — took the same action of solidarity at the sixth minute of their own game.

Later, Portland Thorns FC and the Houston Dash did the same.

Originally, the NWSL Players Association had wanted teams to stand for six minutes to illustrate how long six minutes feels and compare it to six years of being silenced about sexual abuse.

“That was what our movement was about,” said Louisville goalkeeper Michelle Betos. “We honestly decided not to go with a full six minutes because players didn’t think emotionally they can handle it. You may not see it in the way teams are playing right now, because this is a league of strong, strong women, but people are hurting.”

Even though four teams playing Wednesday night had coaches and general managers who were fired this season for violations of the NWSL’s anti-harassment policy, the night was strictly about supporting Farrelly, Shim, McCullough and others. Spirit midfielder and NWSLPA president Tori Huster made that clear to reporters after their game, a 0-0 draw with Gotham.

“What they did was some of the bravest things I’ve ever seen,” she said. “They went through a lot and we are happy to support them. Honestly, all our love to them. They helped. Whether they’re the catalysts of the change that’s needed in this league or not, we are on our way to that change and we’re trying to take this league back and push it in the right direction.”

Absolutely blown away 😭. Tears and chills watching this happen. My heart goes out to every single player-former and current- who has lived through this culture of silence. We are demanding change and we are not going away. https://t.co/0dm9UDbb2Y

— Sinead Farrelly (@lord__shin) October 7, 2021

‘My greatest hope for them was to play like they were kids again’

For probably the first time in NWSL history, all six coaches approached the night with the same game plan. The last week of training was similar for everyone, too.

Players’ well-being was the focus; soccer was the distraction. Training sessions and meetings were optional. When players needed to talk, the coaches were there. If players requested to end the drill early, the coaches did it.

“If they want to watch video, we’re there to provide that, but we’re not demanding that at the moment because there’s so many other things going on,” Spirit interim coach Kris Ward said. “It’s just trying to listen. That’s a big part of it — just giving them the ability to speak and then being ready to listen.”

Multiple teams are fighting for a playoff spot as the NWSL enters the last month of regular season. For now, though, soccer is meant to provide an escape.

None of the players in Wednesday’s postgame press conferences dwelled on the results. That included Gotham FC, who were celebrating Carli Lloyd’s homecoming game before she retires at the end of the season.

“Tonight when I was hyping the team up, I told them my greatest hope for them was to play like they were kids again,” said Klingenberg. “To remember what it felt like when you were on the schoolyard or on the streets or in your backyard, and play with that type of passion and joy.”

“I think when you’ve got 10,000 fans out there, and it’s the GOAT’s last game, and them going through what this group has been through, it’s a pretty easy talk,” Gotham coach Scott Parkinson said. “It’s, ‘Let’s go out there and enjoy this for 90 minutes.’”

‘I hope and wish that this is a huge reset for this league’

Lloyd grew up just 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia in Delran, N.J. Gotham moved Wednesday night’s game to Subaru Park from their usual home at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J. to make it easier for Lloyd’s family and friends to attend.

The crowd of about 10,000 was three times bigger than Gotham’s average attendance size, and more than the average of every NWSL team besides the Portland Thorns.

Lloyd, the two-time FIFA Player of the Year, has played at Subaru Park with the United States women’s national team, but Wednesday marked her first-ever professional club match at a Philadelphia pro sports venue.

“Tonight was an amazing atmosphere,” the star forward said. “This team and the league deserve to play in front of so many fans. So, I think for the team and the league, for Gotham, for the union, for the NWSL to have this little farewell game for me was truly special.”

While showing her gratitude for the celebration, the 39-year-old also described the night as part of “one of the worst weeks this league has ever seen.” She told the Philadelphia Inquirer ahead of Wednesday’s game: “We need to speak out and demand better for ourselves and the generations after us. They deserve it. We all deserve it.”

The farewell of one of the best to ever play the game on a night heavy with emotion seemed to symbolize a turning point — the end of one age and the start of something new.

“I hope and wish that this is a huge reset for this league to just start doing things right from the top down,” Lloyd said. “I think that’s the most important thing. We as players deserve the best. I’m going to be leaving this sport and all of these women deserve to have the best — to be playing on the best playing surfaces, to have the best coaches, to have the best owners. So I am hopeful that will happen.”

As Klingenberg addressed the room late into the night, gathering her “wide range of emotions” while sitting in her black folding chair, she perked up a bit.

“I also feel joy,” she said. “That things are starting to change and there’s discussion, and maybe we can see a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Jessa Braun is an editorial intern for Just Women’s Sports. She is also the Head of North American Content for the Women’s Sports Alliance. You can find her on Twitter @jessabraun.

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.