With the Division I NCAA Tournament done and dusted — capped by Florida State winning a third national championship — focus in women’s soccer shifts to the 2022 NWSL Draft.

There is plenty of uncertainty hovering over the college draft, set to take place in 10 days. For starters, players granted an extra year of eligibility from the NCAA have the chance to return, potentially depleting the talent pool of available players. Along with that, several college stars who just finished the season (think Mikayla Colohan, for example) were selected in the 2021 NWSL Draft, and those teams still hold their rights.

With those factors in mind, putting together a mock draft has an even greater degree of difficulty. Here’s a look at how things may shake out in the first round on Dec. 18 as NWSL rosters continue to come together and players decide whether or not to return to school.

1. San Diego Wave FC

Jaelin Howell, M, Florida State

At the end of an impressive collegiate career at Florida State, Howell’s reputation and quality give her the edge as the top candidate for the expansion side. She’s a defensive midfielder who can connect play, throw herself into challenges and compete for minutes right away. Adding a two-time national champion is a great opportunity for the first-year NWSL team.

2. Racing Louisville FC

Naomi Girma, D, Stanford

Another decorated youth international with the United States, Girma bounced back from a serious knee injury to excel as a center back for Stanford. She’s a ball-playing defender who will need to adjust to the demands of slowing down higher-level attackers in the NWSL. Her background with U.S. youth squads is sure to help — not to mention, her role in winning a national championship with Stanford in 2019 — and Louisville will take as many NWSL-ready players as they can get for their second season.

3. North Carolina Courage

Penelope Hocking, F, Southern California

The California native piled on the goals in her decorated four-year career at USC. In 72 games, she’s managed 54 goals and 22 assists. That record is not necessarily a guarantee of success in the NWSL, but the 5-foot-5 striker has the skills and ability to slot in as an option right away for new head coach Sean Nahas.

4. Racing Louisville FC

Emily Madril, CB, Florida State

Emerging as one of Florida State’s key players over the past couple of seasons, Madril is a ball-playing central defender who excelled this fall, in particular. Her versatility and skill with the ball add to her value in the draft since she has the potential to play as a holding midfielder, too. One of the nation’s best center backs in the fall 2021 season, Madril would give Louisville needed depth.

5. Orlando Pride

Mia Fishel, F, UCLA

A junior who’s declared early for the draft, Fishel finished a strong career at UCLA with back-to-back All-American honors from United Soccer Coaches. In 59 games, she scored 32 goals and added 14 assists. The longtime U.S. youth international could be set for a reunion with Amanda Cromwell, who was named head coach of the Pride on Tuesday after nine seasons at UCLA. One underlying factor is that Fishel is a native of San Diego, so one of the new California teams could make a push for her on draft day.

6. Houston Dash

Diana Ordoñez, F, Virginia

Another player who left school early, Ordoñez recently finished her third season at Virginia with 45 goals in 62 games. On the surface, her goal-scoring record is matched by few during her time at school. She’s a classic penalty-box striker who needs teams to get her the ball in the box to score. The Dash have had success with drafting UVA products in the past, and Ordoñez brings the added connection of being a Texas native.

7. North Carolina Courage

Alia Martin, CB, Michigan

The depth pool at center back is going to be more certain once all the declared players are sorted after next Monday’s deadline. Regardless, Martin looks to be one of the top prospects for the spot. She played almost every minute of the season for the Wolverines and was a key part of their run to the Elite Eight. A handful of Michigan seniors could get picked in the draft, including Sarah Stratigakis and Nicki Hernandez, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Martin goes off the board first with the pick the Courage received as part of the Sam Mewis trade.

8. Orlando Pride

Sydney Cummings, CB, Georgetown

Projecting Cummings as a first-round pick might be a reach, but she is talented, tough and a decorated central defender. After playing three seasons (2017-19) at Brown, she took her grad year at Georgetown this fall and was named Big East Defensive Player of the Year. She reads the game well defensively, is sound with the ball at her feet and could be a good building block for Cromwell. The Pride added this pick as part of the deal that sent Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger to Gotham FC.

9. San Diego Wave FC

Sydny Nasello, F, South Florida

The expansion team can go in any number of directions here. Nasello has officially declared for the draft and has the talent to be a late first-round or early second-round pick, depending on who declares and how the draft unfolds. She’s a tricky dribbler and a wide attacker who enjoyed a career year this fall with 11 goals. She’s also a candidate to shift to an attacking outside back role, though she should stick as a depth forward at the very least.

10. OL Reign

Summer Yates, M, Washington

Attacking midfielder is perhaps the position most difficult to project for players making the jump from college soccer to the pro ranks. Yates played underneath the striker and up front at UW, enjoying a very solid career in the Pacific Northwest that included 20 goals and 17 assists in 74 games across four years. A team like OL Reign is sure to have a lengthy scouting profile on her, and if she can play a bit deeper and dig in defensively, her attacking abilities could really shine.

58' | GOAAAAAALLLL HUSKIES! Summer Yates finishes with the left foot and it's now a 3-0 Washington lead!#GoHuskies pic.twitter.com/Rap7fKZPnM

— Washington Women's Soccer (@UW_WSoccer) October 31, 2021

11. Chicago Red Stars

Frankie Tagliaferri, M/F, Rutgers

There are a lot of similarities between Tagliaferri and Yates, both attacking midfielders who are looking to stick in the NWSL. Tagliaferri transferred to Rutgers for her fifth season after four years at Penn State, enjoying a stellar fall season. Finishing the campaign with 13 goals and nine assists, Tagliaferri earned Big Ten Midfielder of the Year honors and boosted her draft stock. The Red Stars need players at a number of positions after making several high-profile trades, and Tagliaferri makes plenty of sense here.

12. Kansas City Current

Cameron Tucker, F, BYU

The speedster from Utah was a huge part of BYU’s success over the past few seasons. She knows how to find he back of the net, scoring 43 goals and added 29 assists in 97 games for the 2021 NCAA runners-up. A back-shoulder runner who could feature anywhere across a front three, her combination play with Colohan indicates that she can also drop in and combine. With a big roster at the moment, Kansas City can go with the best player available here, and Tucker is arguably the strongest forward left at this point.

Travis Clark is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports, covering college soccer and the NWSL Draft. He is also the Director of Content at Top Drawer Soccer. Follow him on Twitter @travismclark.

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.