Evann Smith is a goalkeeper for the UC Santa Barbara women’s soccer team. Following the police killing of George Floyd, Smith and a group of fellow athletes created a GoFundMe fundraiser in the hopes of raising $1,000 for Black Lives Matter. They ended up raising almost $80,000. Below, Smith spoke with Just Women’s Sports about her experience over the last few weeks, and how she’s working to create change in America. 

Can you walk me through these past few weeks and how things have developed for you? 

When I saw the video of George Floyd’s murder, I was really sad and angry. It was really hard to see that happen. And then I saw the protests. I felt frustrated and helpless because I couldn’t attend any big protest in Los Angeles because my parents thought it was dangerous. Then, I got a text in our team group chat that Lauren Moss and Hannah Wendelken had come up with the idea to run for Black Lives Matter. That idea morphed into ‘Athletes for Changes.’ Our initial goal was to raise $1,000. It blows my mind that we have $79,000 now. I feel blessed to be a part of it and blessed that the team was able to organize together.

Have your teammates and coaches been supportive throughout this process? 

Oh, yes. I feel like it’s a difficult conversation because we were raised to not be controversial. Before we started the fundraiser though, Hannah was texting in our group chat about how we should support BLM and how all of the white players on our team can be allies — how they should check their white privilege. I was astonished because I’ve never heard any of my teammates in my entire history of playing soccer ever say that. It made me feel so welcome and loved and supported. I’ve had conversations with the black girls on my team, and they feel just as supported as I do.

Our entire team is built on love and support. We have a black coach, named Goffin Boyoko, and he was so emotional about what we were doing — he said his wife was crying about it. He texted us saying how grateful he was and how much love he felt.

Why do you think it’s important to speak out? 

I think it’s important to speak out because if we don’t speak out and have these uncomfortable conversations, then nothing’s ever going to change. We need to have these conversations because Black lives do matter. It is insane how many Black people are being killed and not getting any justice. It’s been going on for over 200 years. We are the generation that can change things. We have the platforms to change things.

What do you think specifically needs to change? 

I think it needs to start with the education system. It’s important to accurately teach youth about systematic racism and how many struggles Black people have actually gone through — how many barriers have been implemented by the government.

We also need to educate ourselves about who we are voting for at the local level. Change starts at the local level. Everyone needs to go out and vote in November because this election is super important for our democracy. You need to be the change that you want to see. Now is not the time to be docile, to be silent.

Why do you think it is important for athletes, in particular, to speak out? 

Athletes are like heroes. People listen to athletes because athletes are like Captain America, but realistic. I do think that athletes should use their platforms because they do have opinions and people, especially fans, respect those opinions. The past few weeks have also made me realize that activism is not just about going to protests. You can use different avenues to support positive change. I think we chose athletics as our avenue because it’s what we knew best.

Can you talk me through the process of how you and your team started the fundraiser? 

As I said, Lauren had the idea that we should run and raise money for the Black Lives Matter movement. That was a stepping stone in the process. We then created ‘Athletes for Changes’ and, in the future, we are hoping to promote change throughout the athletic community. We are now in the works of making a website. We used athletics because it’s what we know best and because a lot of people can relate to it. People ask, “Wow, you’re about to run 8.46 miles. For what?” When we say that we are doing it for Black Lives Matter, they understand and want to get behind it. It really shows how far you can go to do something for a good cause.

How did you decide to donate all of the proceeds to the Black Lives Matter organization? 

Initially, we were going to donate to a couple of different organizations. There was a problem, though, because the NCAA doesn’t let you donate to organizations that aren’t 501C3s. And then there was a problem because GoFundMe doesn’t allow you to divy up the money — it all has to go to one beneficiary. After all of this, we chose Black Lives Matter because we felt like they were so strong on both a national and worldwide level. We thought that they were the strongest organization to get the money and do something with it.

Did UCSB help you in any way? 

It’s actually a crazy story. One day, after we had set everything up and created the GoFundMe, we got a text in the group chat saying, “What about compliance?” At that point, we had already raised about $2,000 and we realized that we hadn’t reached out to compliance, yet. We went and talked to our coach, Coach Paul Stumpf, and he got in contact with Sean Strauch and Kelly Barsky from UCSB immediately. The two of them were such a great help. They worked with the legal team at NCAA and figured out how we could make the fundraiser legitimate. I know when I got the email saying that everything worked out, I literally jumped for joy. I was crying the whole day.

Did you ever expect to raise as much money as you did? 

Not at all. When we were setting up the GoFundMe, we had to create a goal. My teammate Hannah said a hundred dollars. I said a thousand dollars. I felt like that was the limit. I thought that if we raised a thousand dollars, it would be amazing and we could give $330 to each organization that we were planning on donating to. But then, in the first six hours, we raised almost $3,000. It was awesome. We saw the potential in how many people appreciated college athletes stepping up and trying to make a difference. So then, I thought, let’s make this bigger. We went onto the national level and that’s when it went crazy.

How did it feel watching the donations numbers keep climbing and climbing? 

I remember it exactly. My brother came home on Sunday night and I was telling him how we were at $18,000 earlier in the day, but we had reached $25,000 at that point. It was insane. The day before we were only at $5,000. The next morning, I woke up and we were at $50,000. I just kept thinking, “There’s no way.” I would go to my phone and see all of these people tagging us on Instagram. It was so amazing. There were people in Nebraska tagging us and I remember thinking, “That is so awesome — that is the most random state ever.”

What was your reaction to seeing how many people participated in the workouts honoring George Floyd? 

I started crying. I was so overwhelmed by how many people were actually doing it. People were doing it in groups and they were expanding on the concept. I saw one athletic trainer who was doing 8.46 workouts and circuits. It was incredible to see people take our 8.46 mile run and put it in their own realm. It inspired me to do more and to keep pushing. We’re going to keep on moving forward and forward, until there is actual change in this country.

How do you hope the BLM movement will use your donations? 

Black Lives Matter does a couple of things: they focus on legislation, they do positive outreaches, and they spread the word. For me, personally, I want the money to go towards changing legislation. That way there is actual physical change — something concrete — that is happening. It’s great to keep protesting and spreading the message, but for there to be change, we need to enact concrete laws that stop all of the injustices and inequalities.

What’s next for ‘Athletes for Changes’? 

We are taking steps to become a nonprofit so that we can receive donations directly. I don’t know exactly what we will do with the donations yet because we have so many ideas. There are so many potential avenues that we can go down with this. I think the next step is trying to create change in our own communities — in the athletic and collegiate communities.

Do you have anything else you would like to add? 

I would just like to be clear that this is a team effort — it’s not just me. I would love to say that this was my idea because it is ingenious, but it wasn’t. Natasha and Darrian and Hannah have helped to make this bigger and more attainable for other people to join. I don’t want to take credit for it because it wasn’t just me.

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. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

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.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Just Women’s Sports (@justwomenssports)

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.