It will be three years ago this coming February that the United States women’s hockey team defeated Canada in a shootout at the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang to capture Olympic gold.

Much has transpired since that historic day.

While the global COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the women’s hockey calendar over the past two years, new faces emerged on the Canadian and American teams. The IIHF Women’s World Hockey Championship returned in August, with Canada regaining its form and defeating the United States in the gold-medal game on Marie-Philip Poulin’s overtime winner.

Now, the Rivalry Series, which features a total of nine games over four months, gives the teams a chance to reignite the competition in different American and Canadian cities. And with the Beijing Olympics under 100 days away, the longtime rivalry is peaking once again.

“It motivates you and helps build on your successes,” Hilary Knight said after Team USA’s Game 3 victory in the Rivalry Series. “You can sit back and say, ‘OK, what worked well? What didn’t work?’ But winning always feels good. That’s why we sign up as competitors.”

The storied battles between these two teams began with the United States defeating Canada 3-1 at the 1998 Nagano Games, the first time the Olympics featured women’s ice hockey. For the next 16 years, Canada dominated at the Games, completing a run of four straight gold medals with a dramatic overtime win in Sochi in 2014, courtesy of Poulin. Team USA’s win in PyeongChang not only snapped Canada’s streak but also proved to the world that the Americans weren’t going away.

Every time the players lace up their skates and put on their respective jerseys, the rivalry is reborn.

“I think both teams match up well against each other and we can expect a battle moving forward,” said Canada head coach Troy Ryan.

Canada took Games 1 and 2 of the Rivalry Series in October. On the ice in Hartford, Conn. and Allentown, Penn., the Canadians outscored the Americans 6-3, with Sarah Fillier and Emily Clark leading Team Canada with two goals each.

As the series shifted to Kingston and Ottawa for Games 3 and 4 last week, fans packed the arenas to watch the best women’s hockey players in the world. Game 3 started well for Team Canada. Poulin fired a blazing wrist shot through traffic on the power play to open the scoring. Not even two minutes later, Fillier’s shot off the faceoff made it 2-0 Canada.

But then Team USA found its form, wearing the Canadians down with physical play on the boards and winning puck battles. Hayley Scamurra brought Team USA within one before Game 3 turned into the Hilary Knight show. The star forward scored to tie the game and and then slotted home the overtime winner to give the U.S. a 3-2 victory.

😱 Add this to the list of @HilaryKnight game-winners! #MyWhyTour pic.twitter.com/6PnjaDmcgz

— USA Hockey (@usahockey) November 22, 2021

Goalkeeper Maddie Rooney led the way for Team USA in Game 4, helping the U.S. overcome Canada’s 26-20 shot advantage to win 2-0 behind goals from Knight and Amanda Kessel.

“It’s never easy losing to the Americans,” Poulin said.

The U.S. team has a new look to it three years after PyeongChang, most notably behind the bench. Interim head coach Joel Johnson will lead the U.S. into Beijing after Bob Corkum, who succeeded Robb Stauber in 2018, stepped down earlier this year due to COVID-19 concerns. While mainstays Knight, Kessel and Brianna Decker return, Team USA will replace stars like Meghan Duggan, Monique Lamoureux-Morando and Jocelyn Lamoureux-Davidson with an influx of young players looking to make their mark in Beijing.

Jincy Dunne, a 24-year-old defender, made Team USA’s 25-player roster for the 2014 Sochi Olympics but was cut when the roster had to be trimmed down to 21. Just 17 years old at the time, Dunne would have been the youngest player ever to skate for a U.S. women’s hockey team at the Olympics.

Over the years, she’s picked up valuable experience, winning gold at the U18 World Championship and the 4 Nations Cup. At Ohio State, Dunne was named the university’s Female Athlete of the Year and was a two-time AHCA First-Team All-American.

“Each squad is going to be different,” said Team USA blueliner Megan Keller. “We have a whole new team with veterans and rookies. You have to find your chemistry as a team and who you are. We’re looking ahead to 2022, focusing on one step at a time and getting to the next level.”

Team Canada is taking a similar approach, with veterans like Poulin and Natalie Spooner mentoring the talented newcomers.

Fillier, 21, is one of those players who can make an impact now and into the future for Canada. The Princeton alum made her Canadian national team debut in 2018 at the 4 Nations Cup before being named Ivy League Rookie of the Year after the 2018-19 college hockey season. Fillier’s playmaking and ability to create offense have made her a potential top-six forward on the Canadian Olympic squad.

“She’s a highly skilled player who plays the game with a lot of speed,” Ryan said. “She’s gained a lot of confidence over the last year. She’s made some great adjustments to her game to consistently contribute, whether it’s on the power play or 5-on-5. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot of her moving forward.”

Since the win at the World Championships, Ryan has preached the importance of showing up to work to get better every day and taking each game as it comes.

“The focus has been primarily on us being the best version of ourselves,” Ryan said. “The more we stick to what makes us successful, the better we’re going to be against our opposition.”

Every Rivalry Series game is an opportunity for the coaching staffs to evaluate players as they prepare to name their Olympic rosters.

“It’s fun to be around them every day,” Johnson said of the U.S. players in camp. “They’re making each other better. They’re making me better. They’re challenging me as a coach.”

Hockey Canada CEO Tom Renney said that the Canadian Olympic team will be announced in the middle of December. Team USA is expected to unveil its final roster on Jan. 1.

The final games of the Rivalry Series, taking place in Canada in January after the announcement of both Olympic rosters, will serve as the most compelling tune-ups for Beijing. When the puck drops on the Olympic ice in February, the players will be ready to add another chapter to the storied rivalry.

“It gets your blood flowing in a different way, and it brings the best level of a competitor in you,” Knight said about facing Team Canada. “There’s nothing like suiting up, throwing the jersey on, and going out there with all the pride on the line.”

“We’ve got a great group here and we are just focusing on the process,” said Canada forward Jamie Lee Rattray. “Every day, we get up to go to work and take it day by day. We show in these games against them that we can play with a lot of grit, that we have our backs out there, which is something that builds a team over the year.”

Lukas Weese is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports. He also serves as Associate Editor at Sportsnet and has contributed to other outlets such as The Toronto Star and The Undefeated. Follow him on Twitter @Weesesports.

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.