Around June of last year, Angel City FC’s Head of Community Catherine Dávila called up Lily Barrett-O’Keefe, executive director of Common Goal.

The two had worked together when Angel City helped launch the Anti-Racist Project in February, and Dávila had an idea to build off of that initiative.

“LGBTQ+ issues and inclusion are at the center of everything the NWSL does and is,” she said to Barrett-O’Keefe. “We should do a project like the Anti-Racist Project but with LGBTQ+ issues.”

Homophobia has been a prevalent issue in men’s and women’s soccer around the globe, while anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-trans legislation sweeps across the United States. The Major League Soccer-Liga MX All-Star Game last August was halted due to homophobic chants from the crowd. Recently in the NWSL, the Orlando Pride apologized in a joint statement with the Black Swans supporters’ group for asking the group to take down a banner that read “GAY” in accordance with signage policies. The North Carolina Courage faced backlash from fans in December after signing Jaelene Daniels, a formerly retired U.S. women’s national team player who has spoken out against gay marriage and refused to wear the USWNT’s Pride jersey.

Coming out of her conversation with Dávila, Barrett-O’Keefe was all in. She proceeded to bring the idea to life with the help of Common Goal, a global social impact collective.

Dávila called the San Diego Wave FC, who were also eager to get involved, and the Wave then recruited clubs from the other major professional soccer leagues in the U.S., Canada and Mexico: Tigres UANL, Chicago Fire FC, Oakland Roots, Pacific FC, Philadelphia Union and San Diego Loyal SC.

Ahead of hosting the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the clubs came together to launch a 12-month program for stakeholders that includes over 100 hours of LGBTQ+ inclusion training led by the Common Goal project, Play Proud and its partners — Inside Inclusion, Impact International and Stonewall UK. Included in each club’s delegation are a leader of their supporters’ group and a community-based coach from their city.

Angel City hosted the first five-day residential event in Los Angeles last week.

“We went into it saying Pride, LGBTQ+ inclusion and issues and conversations and voices are not just June, and especially when we’re Angel City and especially when we’re in women’s soccer,” Dávila said. “This is year-round for us.”

Angel City plans to develop club policies for the season based on what they learn in the workshops, which will then translate into a long-term strategy of inclusivity. Until the second residential event in December, hosted by Tigres, the clubs that attended the event in L.A. have an accountability system in place. They also have the opportunity to schedule ongoing meetings with Play Proud’s experts, which Dávila hopes Angel City holds on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Thank you @CommonGoalOrg @stonewalluk @IMPACTIntl and @weareangelcity for the Play Proud residency program for this incredible group of people who will end homophobia in North American soccer. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 pic.twitter.com/KaB2uvUDzp

— Nichole Peterson (@nicholepeterson) April 14, 2022

Angel City players could sit in on the Play Proud workshops last week if they wished. Defender Paige Nielsen only planned to be there for the morning, but when noon hit, she asked if she could stay for the rest of the day.

Nielsen didn’t know anyone in the room except teammate Madison Hammond, but she felt like she did because of the way everyone empowered each other with their personal stories and moments of vulnerability.

“We don’t have that many safe spaces anymore,” she said. “People call you out all the time, whether that’s online, in school. There’s Don’t Say Gay bills. You can’t talk about things. And this is a safe room.”

Nielsen recalled the instructor using a saying about calling people “in” instead of “out,” emphasizing how to react to issues in a way that’s educational and positive.

A quote that Nielsen and Dávila reflected on was: “The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”

“That really hit home for me because I’m such a hippie and I’m like, ‘No words or anything will bother me. I know my worth.’ But that comes from a place of privilege,” Nielsen said. “The more conferences and the more things we learn about how much you are privileged versus a lot of people, it makes me want to do a lot more and help others.”

In one of the many ways privilege was demonstrated throughout the week, the instructor set up four different rows of chairs with four people in each row. The leader of the session put a trash bin in front of the first row. Everyone had 10 seconds to get their crumpled piece of paper into the bin.

As papers flew overhead, the people in front of the bin simply reached out and placed theirs in. One person in the back row made their shot. The woman next to him gave up because she couldn’t even see the bin; she just believed it existed. Meant to reflect privileged people in society, the participants in the front row of seats had the advantage over people in the back, who could only take a chance with their throw and hope for the best.

Check out @CommonGoalOrg’s new Play Proud merch! It’s Augment Reality (AR)-activated merchandise that links fans to inspiring, bilingual storytelling about the topic of LGBTQIA+ inclusion in soccer 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️⚽️⬇️ https://t.co/M3pxjPVqw4 pic.twitter.com/fOVeXlAIBE

— Kai (@hiyakaiya) April 12, 2022

Every conversation Angel City has this season will have been touched by Play Proud. The goal is to make the learnings feel so routine that they won’t need to be reactive when new issues arise, internally or externally.

“If we’re going to take a stand on inclusivity, on diversity, on the importance of these things, not just morally but to our businesses, we have to be OK talking about them,” Dávila said. “We have to be excited talking about them.”

Since the beginning of preseason in February, Angel City players have been vocal about how much they appreciate playing for a club that aligns with their values of inclusivity, equality and empowerment. ACFC’s efforts to put the LGBTQ+ community front and center is just another step in that direction.

“It gets me excited because I’m around amazing people, amazing staff who want to do something bigger than just play a sport,” Nielsen said. “They want to use the sport as an avenue to help kids, inspire others.”

Jessa Braun is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering the NWSL and USWNT. Follow her on Twitter @jessabraun.

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.