When Brooke Elby found herself suddenly traded from the Utah Royals to the Chicago Red Stars in a three-team deal in 2018, she considered quitting the sport of soccer entirely.

Staying in a Chicagoland hotel room while her car sat in a Salt Lake City parking lot for weeks with all of her things, Elby reflected on her position in the NWSL, a 6-year-old league where player rights were not yet protected under a collective bargaining agreement.

“That was the first time I ever really felt like I was such a pawn in this league, and really like no one valued me,” she says.

During her stay in that hotel room, Elby reached out to a number of trusted friends to figure out what to do. One of the people she contacted was Yael Averbuch West, president of the NWSL Players Association at the time, who presented Elby with a different path: Instead of walking away, she could get involved.

The NWSLPA has had only three presidents in its five-year history: Averbuch West, Elby and current president Tori Huster. The PA hired Meghann Burke as executive director in early 2021 to oversee operations and negotiations, but only active players in the league can serve on the board.

The work those three have put in behind the scenes led to a landmark achievement to start the year. On Jan. 31, before the 2022 preseason, the NWSL and the players association ratified the league’s first CBA, ushering in a new era of player protections and compensation.

As all three know, the responsibility of balancing playing and litigating is something you can’t prepare for until you’re in the thick of it.

Averbuch West played in Women’s Professional Soccer for three years before the league folded in 2012, making way for the birth of the NWSL in 2013. When she founded the NWSLPA four years later, she had to focus on her game while making sure she could pay her bills and commit enough time and energy to getting a fledgling union up and running. It didn’t help that the average NWSL salary at the time was far below a living wage.

“There was relationship-building, there was education, there was organization — fortifying our own constitution and bylaws — and going to preseason to meet with the players to explain what a union is,” says Averbuch West. “None of us were part of a union ever before; we’ve not worked in other industries.”

The NWSL officially recognized the Players Association as an exclusive bargaining representative after the 2018 season, but at the time, both parties agreed that progress had to be made before they could sit down and negotiate a CBA. So, Averbuch West threw herself into the groundwork.

“Yael has a knack for getting things done,” Huster says. “Her ability to just figure out the small tasks that need to get done, and then mobilizing people, has been super important in starting what is a small business.”

When Averbuch West suspended her playing career in 2019 and moved to an executive director role with the NWSLPA, Elby was ready to take over as president. In her second year in Chicago, Elby tackled administrative work with enthusiasm. She redid the website, opened a bank account, filed tax forms and created social media accounts for the NWSLPA.

The tasks were overwhelming for an active professional athlete, but Elby found solace in Averbuch-West’s support during the dark times, and the clarity that comes with a shifting of priorities.

“It was almost a freeing feeling,” Elby says. “I stopped caring if I had a job or not. If somebody was going to waive me, that’s fine. I cared about the players, and I was like, if I have to be the one to say something that nobody wants to hear, or that’s going to get somebody cut from a team, I’m willing to say it because this isn’t a career that I love anymore.”

In 2019, the NWSLPA began conceptualizing the CBA process knowing that, in order to make a contract happen, they’d need some outside help. Elby reached out to Becca Roux, executive director of the U.S. women’s national team players association, and Roux put the NWSLPA in contact with the NFLPA. The advice they gave to the NWSL players was simple: If you don’t yet have the legalities in place, you need to have the structure — and that comes with a staff.

With no extra income to work with, Elby started scouting outside sponsorships. Roux connected her with Hulu, a streaming platform that was already running a campaign with USWNT stars called “Hulu has Live Sports.” Spending the offseason in Los Angeles, Elby had the chance to stop by the Hulu offices and speak with executives, who wanted to help the players in any way they could. But because the NWSL unilaterally owned the name, image and likeness rights of all of their players, the PA couldn’t commit to a content deal alone.

“[Hulu] told me their vision for what they want to do with women’s sports, and my first answer to them was, ‘This is amazing,’” says Elby. “But as players, we had no rights to anything. So I can’t sit here and be like, ‘Yeah, let’s do content,’ because we couldn’t.”

So, they got creative. Hulu agreed to donate one dollar to the NWSLPA for every juggling video posted with the company’s official hashtag, for a total of $100,000. While the production didn’t quite meet the vision — the fans generated somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 videos, boosted through the PA’s still modest social media followings — the Hulu execs stuck to their word and made sure the PA got the full $100,000.

I’m selling out for a cause with @hulu 1️⃣ Say ‘Hulu has live sports’ while juggling. 2️⃣Add #HuluHasLiveSportsChallenge 3️⃣ Tag your friends! 4️⃣ Hulu will donate $1 to the @NWSL_players for every post, up to $100k. You’re up @saverbuch and @sammweber! pic.twitter.com/1knM4qetT0

— Yael Averbuch West (@Yael_Averbuch) May 16, 2019

“That was probably the coolest experience to be a part of,” Elby says, “just being able to talk to these executives who didn’t care about how it was going to benefit them directly, but cared about in the future, how this was going to benefit women’s sports.”

In 2022, revenue from group licensing largely covers the costs of the NWSLPA, and the union was recently able to hire former player Sydney Miramontez, effectively doubling full-time staff. As part of the new CBA, the NWSL has agreed to pay the players $255,000-$300,000 per year for group licensing rights. The PA also accepts direct donations from the public. NWSL sponsor Ally, which signed on as the union’s first official partner earlier this month, will match any contributions of up to $25,000 made to a recently established players fund.

Elby’s work in 2019 not only set the NWSLPA up to become a legitimate business, but also prepared the players for collective action. It was actually during that season under Elby’s presidency that the NWSL had its first, albeit brief, work stoppage.

In late April, the Red Stars and Reign FC had to make a call on whether to play an early-season match in Chicago, despite inches of snow covering the field. The league determined the game was to be played as scheduled, but after attempting to warm-up on the slippery surface, players weren’t so sure. Elby, acting as PA president, asked her team’s locker room and the Reign’s captain whether they believed they could play the game safely, and both sides expressed concerns about possible injuries.

“These are our bodies you’re asking us to use and to put at risk for a game that you just don’t want to reschedule,” says Elby, who called many members of the league office that night to make the players’ wishes known. The game was ultimately called off and rescheduled for the next day.

“It was all these women. They were the ones who really stood up for what mattered,” she says.

Elby retired from professional soccer at the end of the 2019 season, and Huster took over as president in early 2020. Instead of diving right into CBA talks, however, Huster began her tenure navigating the pandemic and fighting for player protections heading into the NWSL’s first-ever Challenge Cup.

The experience actually proved pivotal in setting the stage for the current CBA. The NWSLPA arranged guaranteed contracts for players uncomfortable with competing during the pandemic, a model the WNBA Players Association adopted ahead of the league’s 2020 Wubble season. They also maintained constant communication with leadership, particularly Managing Director of Competition and Player Affairs Liz Dalton, to ensure the proper protocols were in place.

The Challenge Cup successfully sheltered players from COVID-19, but even then, the fissures forming within the league began to crack. Players struggled with their mental health during a long month in a strict quarantine bubble, and the league failed to reckon with the conversation about racial equality that swept the nation during the summer of 2020.

Elby and Averbuch West shared the responsibilities of co-executive director until Burke came aboard officially in early 2021. That was when CBA talks became more serious, and the PA started interviewing outside legal counsel. Amid the instability of the 2021 season, with multiple abuse scandals rocking the league, Huster had to juggle playing, contract bargaining and standing in as a player advocate for basic safety.

“Through the entire process, I’ve just tried to be somewhat of a vehicle,” Huster says. “And we’ve had so many conversations even all through last season with the player group at large, and just trying to, through myself and through my position, reflect what it is that the players are trying to say.”

“She’s just one of those people who gets it,” Elby says of Huster. “She knows what all the players are thinking. She will put their opinions over hers first, she will always listen.”

For Huster, there are very few silver linings in what players had to go through last year, but she does find solace in the way players fought for each other and the progress they made along the way.

“These former players felt this pain, and we still can see their pain. And without their pain, this wouldn’t be possible,” Huster says. “We wouldn’t be where we are together as a collective, or able to come together as we did.”

It took the threat of a work stoppage to finally get the deal done, but in 2022, the players will enter their first NWSL season with rights protected under contract. Those include a 60 percent increase in the minimum salary and guarantees for maternity and mental health leave. Hanging over all of it is the understanding that the sacrifices players made for decades in women’s soccer led to this moment.

“I don’t think there was any point that I was like, ‘Well, I wish this existed when I was there,’ but I can be like, ‘This exists now because I was there,’” Elby says.

Even with the huge milestone behind them, for all three women, the work goes on. Averbuch West has transitioned into a new role as general manager of Gotham FC. She envisions a future where players are part of the decision-making process and work with ownership to create a better league for everybody. Elby is currently in business school at Columbia University, expanding her knowledge base before returning to the world of women’s soccer (she’d love to be commissioner one day).

Huster is rehabbing an Achilles tendon injury and hopes to be back on the field with the Washington Spirit in 2022. In the meantime, she knows that a ratified contract is just step one. Unless teams are held accountable to the terms, the contract is just a piece of paper. Huster intends for the PA to serve as a support system for players whenever they need help.

In that sense, the work will always be bigger than soccer.

“I really think it’s not supposed to end,” Huster says. “I think we have to continue to adapt, and just be ready. Things are constantly changing and evolving, and if we don’t, we’re gonna potentially get left behind, or somebody will get left behind.”

“I think that’s the hardest balance that I’ve seen Tori and Yael manage so well,” Elby says. “You’re not just doing something for you, but you’re doing it for your friends. And they’re not just your co-workers, they’re your life, the people who are going to stand next to you at your wedding.”

Advocacy for a group of over 250 people will never be simple, and as the league expands, the hurdles ahead are daunting. But as the NWSLPA continues to evolve in the image of its first three leaders, the next generation of players can feel more secure in their freedom to get involved.

Claire Watkins is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering soccer and the NWSL. Follow her on Twitter @ScoutRipley.

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.