The second season of Athletes Unlimited Volleyball begins Wednesday night, and there is plenty to be excited about as athletes new and old take the court in Dallas.

Bethania De La Cruz, the runner-up to Jordan Larson in last year’s inaugural AU Volleyball season, returns for a second shot at the title. She’ll be up against many exciting newcomers who could challenge for the top spot. Here are the key storylines to follow as the season gets underway.

Can Bethania De La Cruz win it all?

De La Cruz is AU’s top returner and the favorite to earn the crown in Season 2, especially with Larson missing the season while playing overseas in Italy.

De La Cruz, a native of the Dominican Republic, will have competition in the form of powerhouse returners Karsta Lowe, who finished fifth last season, and Aury Cruz, who finished fourth. Lowe led the league in kills with 230, and De La Cruz was third with 193. A mere 108 points separated Cruz and De La Cruz on last year’s leaderboard, while Lowe finished just 16 points behind Cruz to make it a tight race at the top.

Newcomers like Carli Lloyd and Alisha Glass Childress will also look to disrupt the leaderboard. Glass Childress was recognized as Team USA’s best setter during their run to the bronze medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics and has come out of retirement to join Athletes Unlimited. While it might take some time for Glass Childress to back into game shape, she’ll undoubtedly be hungry to win as she returns to the court. Lloyd, a dominant setter in her own right, was named MVP of the 2015 Pan Am Games MVP after helping lead Team USA to a gold medal. A 2016 bronze medalist along with Glass Childress, Lloyd most recently played with professional club Pomí Casalmaggiore in Italy.

How will the inaugural draftees fare?

Of the nine athletes selected in the inaugural AU College Volleyball Draft in December, two have signed on to play in the league’s second season: Lauren Stivrins and Dani Drews.

Stivrins joins the league from Nebraska, where she won a national championship as a redshirt freshman in 2017. In the national title match against Florida, she tallied nine kills on a .316 hitting average. A three-time AVCA All-American (2018, 2020 First Team; 2019 Second Team), Stirvrins finished her five-year college career with 1,236 kills and 547 total blocks.

To make an impression in her rookie season, Stivrins will look to outperform other middle blockers on the AU roster. That group is headlined by Lianna Sybeldon, who finished 11th last season, Taylor Morgan, Jenna Rosenthal and Ronika Stone.

Drews, an outside hitter, finished her career at Utah as the program’s all-time leader in career kills (2,268). As a fifth-year senior in 2021, Drews led the Pac-12 with 5.24 kills per set and 5.80 points per set and finished the season with 545 kills, 32 aces and 273 digs. She is the only player in school history to reach 2,000 career kills and 1,000 digs.

Drews will be up against a competitive group of outside hitters that includes De La Cruz, Cruz, Leah Edmond, Lindsay Stalzer and Deja McClendon, who finished sixth on last year’s leaderboard.

AU Volleyball’s second season gets underway Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET on AU’s YouTube channel.

Emma Hruby is an associate editor at Just Women’s Sports.

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.

With recent transfers Talia von Oelhoffen and Kiki Iriafen joining first-team All-American JuJu Watkins and the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class at USC next season, the Trojans look to transition from an up-and-coming squad to a legitimate title contender. 

Former Oregon State graduate student von Oelhoffen is the latest collegiate talent to commit to the program, announcing her transfer Monday via ESPN. She follows ex-Stanford leading-scorer Iriafen in the jump to the pair’s one-time Pac-12 rival.

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The 5-foot-11 Washington native was a two-time All-Pac-12 guard during her time at Oregon State. But after the recent dissolution of the Pac-12, the Corvallis side found themselves without a permanent home conference going forward. Many big name players opted to take their skill elsewhere as a result, with von Oelhoffen’s fellow ex-Beaver Raegan Beers announcing her own departure to Oklahoma on Monday.

According to DraftKings, USC is now tied with UConn for the second-best betting odds to win the 2025 NCAA women’s tournament. Dawn Staley’s tested South Carolina side, poised for a repeat performance, holds down the number one spot.

Last year, LSU loaded up in the transfer portal after beating Iowa to win the 2023 national championship. The Tigers were clear favorites coming into the 2023-24 season, but were bounced in the Elite Eight by Caitlin Clark’s Hawkeyes. Shortly thereafter, star transfer Hailey Van Lith opted to transfer a second time, this time signing with TCU. 

Yet while history proves that an excess of star power doesn’t always translate to on-court chemistry, on paper, USC sure looks ready to hold their own — in 2025 and beyond.

The United States and Mexico have withdrawn their joint bid to host the 2027 Women’s World Cup, per a Monday afternoon release from U.S. Soccer and the Mexican Football Federation.

According to the statement, they will instead focus on developing a "more equitable" bid for the 2031 tournament, with the ultimate goal of "eliminating investment disparities" between the men’s and women’s tournaments.

The federations went on to cite the upcoming 2026 Men’s World Cup in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as an opportunity to build support for local infrastructure, improve audience engagement, and scale up media and partnership deals in preparation to "host a record-breaking tournament in 2031."

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"Hosting a World Cup tournament is a huge undertaking — and having additional time to prepare allows us to maximize its impact across the globe," said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. "Shifting our bid will enable us to host a record-breaking Women’s World Cup in 2031 that will help to grow and raise the level of the women’s game both here at home as well as across the globe."

The decision leaves just Brazil and a joint bid from Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands in the running for the 2027 host spot. Brazil — the rumored frontrunner — has never hosted a Women’s World Cup, while Germany hosted the 2011 tournament as a solo venture. 

Furthermore, this postponement doesn’t mean the U.S. is a shoo-in for 2031, as it's been previously reported that 2022 UEFA Women's EURO host England is considering their own Women's World Cup bid. FIFA is scheduled to confirm the winning bid after the FIFA Congress votes on May 17th.