NEW YORK — Cathy Engelbert spent her Monday in an unfamiliar position.

After overseeing the last two WNBA Drafts from her home in New Jersey amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the WNBA commissioner traversed New York City with the prospects and their families Monday morning before calling players’ names and greeting them live on stage in a bustling, intimate draft room. As the selections were made from Spring Studios in TriBeCa, the top of the Empire State Building shone bright orange in honor of the WNBA’s signature color and courtesy of a lighting ceremony with Engelbert and New York Liberty forward Betnijah Laney earlier in the day.

Engelbert, entering her third full season as commissioner, embraced the opportunity to send the players into the next phase of their basketball careers with an in-person celebration.

“I get to see and shake hands and hug these players who, as I call them to have them attend the draft tonight, you hear things like, ‘You’re making my dreams come true,’ and you hear things like, ‘It’s an honor. It’s a real honor,’” she said.

“I can see a lot of really powerhouse marketing storytelling opportunities amongst this group. They really have personality.”

Not everyone who heard their name called early in the draft had the chance to shake Engelbert’s hand. The surprises began as early as the sixth pick of the night, when the Indiana Fever selected Stanford guard Lexie Hull, a player many mock drafts had going in the second or third round. Hull was not in attendance Monday, as one of seven players taken before all the prospects who were invited to New York City came off the board.

The draft shake-ups are especially notable this season, when even fewer draftees are expected to make WNBA rosters due to salary cap limitations. The Minnesota Lynx got out ahead of their current roster restrictions Sunday, trading two picks to the Las Vegas Aces in favor of future selections.

From the risers to the fallers, we break down the biggest surprises of draft night.

Lexie Hull: Indiana Fever, No. 6

Given the trades and draft-board maneuvering that ensued in the days leading up to the draft, there were bound to be a few shockers on Monday night. I’m not sure anyone, however, expected it to come this early and this forcefully.

Hull was a standout four-year player at Stanford, helping them win a national championship her junior year and playing some of her best basketball this past year as a senior. She is a lengthy guard at 6-foot-1 and brings scrappy defense and efficient 3-point shooting, but there are questions as to how her game will translate to the speed and physicality of the WNBA.

The Fever had four picks in the first round and seven overall. Could they have waited and scooped up Hull at No. 10 or No. 20? It’s possible — JWS analyst Rachel Galligan had Hull going 16th to the Los Angeles Sparks in her mock draft — but if the Fever wanted her that badly, they avoided the risk by taking her early and still managed to get a potential steal in South Carolina guard Destanni Henderson at No. 20.

Mya Hollingshed: Las Vegas Aces, No. 8
Kierstan Bell: Las Vegas Aces, No. 11

For as long as the odds seemed for Hull to go off the board in the first round, the chances (based on projections) were slimmer for Hollingshed. A third-round pick on JWS’ mock draft, the Colorado scoring star appealed to Aces general manager Natalie Williams because of her ceiling and her fit in first-year head coach Becky Hammon’s offense.

Hammon has said she wants to stretch the floor with a high-pace and high-volume shooting attack. So, after acquiring the No. 8 and No. 13 picks from the Lynx on Sunday, the Aces went out to add length, athleticism and shooting ability to their roster. They liked Hollingshed enough to avoid the risk that she might not fall to them at No. 11.

“Mya Hollingshed is not only an incredible athlete, but her 3-point shooting is hard to come by,” Williams said. “The coaches, the staff, everybody’s super happy.”

The Aces got a bit of a surprise themselves when the draft came back around to them and Florida Gulf Coast guard Kierstan Bell, who was a projected top-five pick in many mock drafts, was still available with the 11th pick. Bell said afterward that she, too, was surprised she was heading to Las Vegas since she hadn’t talked to the team’s staff during the pre-draft process.

Christyn Williams: Washington Mystics, No. 14

The Mystics have a case for being the ultimate winners of the draft. After trading away the No. 1 pick for the third and 14th selections and a 2023 first-round pick, the Mystics took Ole Miss center/forward Shakira Austin, a player they believed was good enough to go No. 1, and Williams in the second round.

Washington coach and general manager Mike Thibault didn’t hide his excitement after the draft, indicating that the Mystics believe they got a steal in Williams. The 5-foot-11 guard was a top scorer at UConn during her four-year career and has traits — speed in transition, ball-handling and long-range shooting — that should translate immediately to the pro level.

“Christyn Williams is the kind of player that we were hoping would be at the 14th pick when we made the trade,” Thibault said. “She is an effective offensive player both on and off the ball. She can create her own shot and get good shots for her teammates. She can also defend all three perimeter positions. This is an exciting pick for us.”

Naz Hillmon: Atlanta Dream, No. 15

Hillmon heard the knocks on her size and offensive skill set as a post player entering the draft. One of the all-time greats at Michigan, Hillmon didn’t let the criticisms or the outcome faze her as she fell out of the first round and to Atlanta with the third pick of the second round.

“This has been a dream of mine for a very long time. So just being picked up by a team, for somebody to believe in me, first round, third round, I’m excited to be where I’m at,” she said from the podium in New York.

Hillmon acknowledged that while she can’t change her 6-foot-2 height, she will continue to expand her game to be able to compete with physical bigs in the WNBA. She worked on her footwork and outside shooting during her four years at Michigan, where she became the first player in program history — men’s or women’s — to record 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in her career. Hillmon’s motor and tenacity on the boards are unquestioned, and the rebuilding Dream walked away Monday night feeling pretty good about their selections of Hillmon and top pick Rhyne Howard.

“Everything is motivation. I could have been picked No. 1 and I still would have been motivated to get better, to perfect my craft,” Hillmon said. “I wouldn’t say disappointed, but always ready to work.”

Hannah Withiam is the Managing Editor at Just Women’s Sports. She previously served as an editor at The Athletic and a reporter at the New York Post. Follow her on Twitter @HannahWithiam.

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.