For longtime Tennessee basketball fans, it’s easy to place their hopes of a return to national title glory in the hands of third-year coach and Tennessee basketball alum Kellie Harper. That narrative has storybook ending written all over it.

Pat Summitt, one of the most iconic and successful coaches in all of college basketball, started out at Tennessee in the early 1970s and served as team coach, athletic trainer, tutor, driver and equipment launderer, as so many women of her era did. Eventually, Summitt built a dynasty at Tennessee, winning eight national championships between 1988 and 2008. In 2012, Summitt stepped down after the symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer’s started to impede her ability to coach. Over the next seven seasons, the women’s basketball community watched the program slowly slip down the ladder of national prominence, while also mourning the loss of Summitt when she passed away in 2016.

Tennessee’s hiring of Harper in 2019 ignited new hope around the team. Kellie Harper (then Kellie Jolly) had been a starting point guard for Summitt and was integral to the Vols’ national championship three-peat from 1996-98. After leading her new squad to a 21-10 record her first year at the helm, and following it up with a 17-8 season last year, Tennessee caught everyone’s attention by going 18-1 through the first half of this season and grabbing a top-four national ranking.

Supporters and media were abuzz with talk of Tennessee’s “resurgence.” Harper was fulfilling the promise she represented; Pat Summitt’s student was now the teacher, and a return to glory seemed imminent. Those who’ve watched women’s college basketball become more and more unforgiving, however, know there is no such fairytale.

Harper knows that as well as anyone, but it hasn’t stopped her from focusing on the little things. When she first took the job at her alma mater, there were certain aspects she wanted to focus on right away.

“Establishing how I wanted it to look, how I wanted it to feel was really important early on,” she recalled in a recent conversation with Just Women’s Sports. “For me, I know what it needs to look like to be successful and that we’ve gotta be gritty. We’ve gotta be tough. We’ve gotta be competitive, have a little chip-on-our-shoulder type of feel.”

Another important task for Harper has been to educate her team about Tennessee’s legacy, while not making it a burden for her players who may have been too young to have even watched Summitt on TV.

“When I was a player, Pat shared the history with us. It wasn’t forced. It was just important to her that we know who came before and what they did,” Harper said. “I think that’s important for our team. I think it’s important that they know the history and we’ve done different things to learn that. But at the same time, you can’t be successful off of your past. You’ve gotta be successful based on what you’re doing now. So, it’s important to carry on the tradition and the legacy of so many great people that came before, but also at the same time, they can still carve out their own piece in history.”

That's our coach 🔥

🎥 𝙎𝙀𝘾 𝙄𝙣𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚 pic.twitter.com/UPrHbi69SQ

— Lady Vol Basketball (@LadyVol_Hoops) February 15, 2022

Keeping two feet planted firmly in the present moment has helped Harper maintain a level head during the past few weeks. In their Jan. 23 game against Georgia, grad student Keyen Green, a valuable leader and on-court producer, suffered a season-ending ACL tear. The Vols went on to lose three of their next four games and dropped from No. 4 to No. 13 in the AP Poll. Now at No. 12, Tennessee suffered more adversity Thursday night, falling to Alabama 74-64 in an SEC matchup despite a 20-point, 13-rebound double-double from Tamari Key.

When losses come in such bundles, an overreaction from those on the outside is all but guaranteed. Harper’s job has been to keep things in perspective for those on the inside.

“The mindset that we have to have is this isn’t catastrophic. It feels like it is because we haven’t dealt with it all year,” Harper said. “Another thing is that getting into the top five is maybe easier than staying there … there’s pressure there. The expectations are high, and our players have to learn how to live in that space. This is new for a lot of our players.”

It would be easy after the Feb. 6 loss to UConn to regret signing on for the marquee matchup in the middle of conference play, but Harper wasn’t letting their recent rough patch cloud her judgment of the bigger picture.

“There’s a lot of talk, a lot of attention on those games and I thought it was good. I think it’s a good situation to put a team in,” she explained. “It’s a loud environment, good crowd, really good for team discipline. If you want to be the best, you’ve gotta be able to perform in those situations.”

Heading into Storrs as the seventh-ranked team in the nation, and taking on the 10th-ranked Huskies, was definitely new for her players. Until this season, the Vols hadn’t outranked UConn since the preseason poll in 2012, causing diehard Tennessee fans to do an extra little jig when they surpassed UConn in Week 6 this year.

Although losing Green was a significant blow to the team both on and off the court, it’s 6-foot-2 junior Jordan Horston who leads the team in points, rebounds, assists and steals. She’s also second in blocks, behind 6-foot-6 center Key. Horston has played her way onto the midseason list for the Naismith Player of the Year Trophy and the top-10 list for the Ann Meyers Drysdale Award, given to the top shooting guard in the nation. Playing under a brighter national spotlight has been important developmentally for Horston.

“Jordan has really matured over her career here at Tennessee. She’s very competitive. She’s a great teammate. She wants to win,” Harper said. “You have to understand you’re going to make mistakes. You’ve gotta play through those mistakes. That’s mental toughness. I think that’s one of the biggest areas that Jordan has improved.”

JORDY AT THE 🚨

16 PTS / 13 REB / 7 AST

( @ladylynn22_'s 12th double-double of the year ) pic.twitter.com/SlMiPCDuJc

— Lady Vol Basketball (@LadyVol_Hoops) February 14, 2022

With back-to-back conference wins against Missouri and Vanderbilt last week, Tennessee has shown it can weather the storms in an otherwise stellar season, lessons that could prove useful come tournament time. With big matchups ahead, including against top-ranked South Carolina on Sunday and Kim Mulkey’s LSU a week later, Tennessee has the chance to add ample fuel to the “resurgence” storyline before March.

Regardless of how the rest of the season plays out for the Vols, Harper will continue to shape the pieces that are essential for getting Tennessee back into national championship contention.

“One of the big things for me is our players have to actually love the game, because this is hard. What we do is hard,” she said. “And doing it at Tennessee is harder than most places because of the set of eyes on you.”

She’s not expecting the fairytale version. Kellie Harper is here for the real thing.

Tessa Nichols is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports.

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.