A new women’s sports podcast has hit the scene, with Kate Fagan and Jessica Smetana bringing a magazine-style podcast that enters sports “through the side doors of pop culture and comedy.”

The podcast offers up a mix of interviews, skits and discussions that offer up a different viewpoint on women’s sports and “those who have critiqued them.”

First up as a guest on the podcast is none other than four-time WNBA champion and current Los Angeles Sparks’ assistant coach Seimone Augustus. At roughly the 14:30 mark of the podcast, Fagan and Augustus get to talking about the Team USA basketball process, the protection players are under as part of the team and the Olympics snub of Nneka Ogwumike, which was hotly contested amongst basketball circles.

“Once you’re under that USA Basketball shield, they’re celebrating you more than anything,” Augustus said on the podcast.

“Everybody heard the buzzing about Nneka and what happened,” she continued. “But you didn’t hear it at the Olympics, you didn’t hear it during the exhibition games. You didn’t hear it throughout that time. It was just like, let’s focus on celebrating the women more than anything.”

Still Augustus says that more of those hard discussions need to happen in regards to USA Basketball.

“Nneka isn’t the first and she probably won’t be the last in those situations,” she said, adding that as a former player she wants to see the process improve and for the basketball talent to have a greater say.

“Everybody can agree that Nneka was a player that, her talent is definitely there, has been there and will always be there. But for whatever reason, that particular situation didn’t allow for her to be a part of that team.”

Fagan then gets into how, while there is plenty of scrutiny on the men’s side of the game, not enough people understood on the women’s side why Ogwumike did not make the team. At times, Fagan feels as though this can be attributed to UConn’s influence on the women’s game.

“I don’t know that there’s another program in any sport that has as much influence at every level of a sport,” Fagan said. “I don’t think Alabama football has an outsized influence in the NFL. Yeah, they’ve got a lot of players, but I look at UConn and I’m like, the power of UConn at every different level and where it gets you? I don’t think there’s another model like that across sports.”

“Haven’t seen it,” Augustus said. “Like you said, there’s a lot of [Alabama] players in the NFL, but not to the point where it’s kind of controlling the system and the flow in which certain organizations or entities operate. UConn has definitely had a stronghold on those situations.”

Still, Augustus asserts she wants to see the whole process leading up to Olympic selection addressed — not just UConn’s so-called stronghold on the game of basketball.

“The issue that needs to be addressed is the process,” she said. “What is the process? Why does it vary or change for certain players at certain times in certain moments?

“Because this is the second time that Nneka’s going through this, [2016] was the first time in which, same identical thing: didn’t miss a camp, didn’t miss any assignment, showed up for every event. Everything that is always asked of us was done.

“So, what am I supposed to do when the line is moved and it’s like, ‘oh well you didn’t do that much, you wasn’t popular enough.’ I didn’t know popularity was a part of the thing. I thought it was talent. I thought we were basing it on what I was able to bring to the team. But, you know, depending on the player. Depending on who, when, where, it’s your personality. It’s your hair. It’s your attitude.”

You can listen to more of the podcast, and the discussion about Team USA and UConn, here.

After missing the NWSL semifinals on Sunday due to COVID-19 protocol, NWSL MVP runner-up and Chicago Red Stars forward Mallory Pugh could also miss the championship game based on NWSL policy.

Both Pugh and defender Kayla Sharples entered COVID-19 protocol prior to the team’s semifinal game against the Portland Thorns, a 2-0 Red Stars win.

In accordance with the NWSL’s COVID-19 protocols, a player who tests positive for COVID-19 must clear a 10-day isolation period before returning to play. During this time, they must be isolated from the team and are not allowed to exercise. The player must also be symptom-free for at least seven days before returning to play.

That means that if Pugh tested positive last Friday, she would not have cleared the 10-day isolation period by Saturday, when the championship game will be played in Louisville.

However, if Pugh did not test positive, and was only placed in protocol due to exposure to COVID-19, she could return to play if she produces a series of negative tests on days 5 and 7 of her quarantine.

The NWSL does note in their policies in regards to COVID-19 exposure that “each case will be evaluated and may present unique circumstances not covered by these protocols.”

As of Monday, Red Stars head coach Rory Dames was uncertain about the status of both Pugh and Sharples. Dames did not explicitly say whether either player had tested positive, only that they were both symptom-free while in protocol, he was unsure of their timeline and he hoped to have them back for the championship game.

There is wide speculation within NWSL circles that Pugh is unvaccinated against COVID-19. Earlier this month, she opted out of the latest U.S. women’s national team camp, to be held in Australia later this month with a pair of friendlies against the Australian national team. Australia requires everyone entering the country to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski has confirmed that, per Australia’s mandates, “everybody that travels to Australia will be fully vaccinated.”

After entering COVID-19 protocol, Sharples tweeted that she was fully vaccinated and had gotten the booster shot.

When reached for comment, a Red Stars spokesperson told Just Women’s Sports: “At this time the club has no comment on the status of Mal or Kayla and would rather wait until the injury report is released by the league to provide any updates.” The NWSL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Forward Kealia Watt’s status is also unknown after she exited Sunday’s semifinal early with a knee injury.

Crystal Dunn is going to be a mom.

The USWNT and Portland Thorns star announced on Thursday that she and husband Pierre Soubrier are expecting a baby due in May 2022.

Dunn has been a member of the USWNT since 2013 and a member of the Portland Thorns since 2020. She met Soubrier when she was playing for the Washington Spirit, and the two were married in 2018. Soubrier is now the head athletic trainer for the Thorns.

The baby will be joining an already somewhat large family, as the Soubrier’s have five chickens and three cats.

Upon the USWNT roster for the Australia friendlies being announced, coach Vlatko Andonovski announced that both Dunn and Christen Press had “decided to take off until the end of this year,” resulting in their absences from the team over the past few camps.

Dunn is also currently in the midst of the NWSL postseason, with the Portland Thorns set to face off against the Chicago Red Stars in the semis on Sunday.

For the nearly 20 months Cindy Parlow Cone has been president of U.S. Soccer, the sport has been heading toward multiple inflection points. While the U.S. men’s national team tries to qualify for the 2022 World Cup and find stability before playing host to the 2026 tournament, the women’s national team has been in an ongoing and very public legal battle with the federation over equal pay.

All of that is hanging over negotiations with the men’s and women’s player associations for new collective bargaining agreements. For the USWNT, that deadline is approaching quickly, with their current CBA set to expire at the end of the year.

As those proceedings unfold, Wednesday provided a jolt of positivity.

U.S. Soccer announced it has reached a long-term agreement with Nike to extend its partnership that began in 1995. The deal, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023 once the current contract ends, marks the largest commercial agreement in U.S. Soccer history and one of the largest investments in soccer globally. While specific terms were not provided, a pillar of the partnership is the growth of the women’s game, an issue that is dear to Parlow Cone’s heart.

“They’re just top class in marketing and they’re a global brand, and their values and vision just align perfectly with ours here at U.S. Soccer,” Parlow Cone told Just Women’s Sports.

“The men’s game has continued to grow at a steady pace, but I feel like the women’s game is poised for exponential growth, and with that, commercial growth for the organizations as well as the players themselves. I think we’re at a point in time where we can quite literally invest in the women’s game to help change the world for the better.”

Parlow Cone played for the USWNT from 1995-2006, winning two Olympic gold medals and a World Cup with the 1999 team that helped change the trajectory of women’s soccer in the U.S.

Now 43 and years removed from the sideline, she believes her history with the program has allowed her to connect with the players in a way previous administrations might not have been able to. Carlos Cordeiro, Parlow Cone’s predecessor, resigned in March, 2020 amid intense scrutiny over U.S. Soccer’s handling of the USWNT equal pay lawsuit. In court filings, the federation argued that women “do not perform equal work” based on the physical differences between men and women.

“They know that I’m not a politician … and I get where they’re coming from,” Parlow Cone said. “And I understand that, in the end, we’re on the same team. Everyone at U.S. soccer wants the women to continue to be the best in the world and to win every day. So I think there’s a solution there, and I’m hopeful that we can come to it sooner rather than later.”

On Sept. 10, Parlow Cone penned an open letter to the unions of the men’s and women’s national teams asking them to reach an agreement that would allow the USWNT to earn the same FIFA World Cup prize money as the USMNT. Currently, the financial discrepancy between the men’s and women’s World Cups is gaping: FIFA awarded $400 million to the 32 teams at the 2018 men’s World Cup and $30 million to the 24 teams at the 2019 women’s tournament.

“We want to find a way to equalize the World Cup prize money, and we can get creative on how that happens,” Parlow Cone said. “But until FIFA actually equalizes their own prize money, I would love for the men’s team and the women’s team to come together with U.S. Soccer to find a solution.”

Since releasing her letter, Parlow Cone said the men’s and women’s teams haven’t had discussions together with U.S. Soccer. At the time, the USWNT Players Association criticized the federation’s plan to make equal contract proposals to the USWNT and USMNT, calling it one of their “PR stunts” as tensions escalated on social media.

“We continue to have discussions with both teams in parallel,” Parlow Cone said. “Our goal is still to come to one agreement, but the only way that can happen is if we all get into the same room together.”

Parlow Cone said she is hopeful that U.S. Soccer will reach new CBAs with the teams and solve the USWNT litigation outside of court by the end of the year, even as the holidays threaten to slow down negotiations.

“My ideal vision is for FIFA to equalize not only the World Cup prize money, but to equalize their investment in the women’s and girls’ game,” she said. “It’s a broader vision for me than just solving the litigation — although I would love to just solve the litigation, too. But until FIFA equalizes it, it’s up to us. And by us, I mean U.S. Soccer, the women’s team and the men’s team coming together to find a solution.”

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.

Portland Thorns goalkeeper coach Nadine Angerer took to social media on Wednesday to defend embattled GM Gavin Wilkinson and address the allegations against former coach Paul Riley.

“As somebody who has been a part of the organization since 2014, I wanted to share my feelings on what we’ve recently learned,” she wrote, adding that it has been “heartwarming” to see how much fans care about the team.

The Athletic’s initial report, in which players accused Riley of sexual coercion and emotional abuse, included an incident between Wilkinson and Mana Shim when she played for the Thorns. Shim said Wilkinson instructed her during a one-on-one meeting before the 2014 season to “not be as vocal about off-the-field matters.”

Shim, who had come out as gay before the 2013 NWSL championship, took the message to mean that she should keep quiet about her sexuality and focus only on soccer. Wilkinson told The Athletic that Shim’s account was “bullshit” and pointed to his behavior with the Thorns and Timbers over the past 10 years as evidence of his support of the players.

The Thorns then added in a statement: “Gavin categorically never communicated to Mana, or any Thorns or Timbers player for that matter, to not discuss political or personal views.”

Angerer appeared to back Wilkinson’s side in her statement on Wednesday, calling him “supportive.”

“I can only speak for myself, but since my arrival in Portland, I have felt fully supported by Gavin and the Thorns,” she wrote. “Gavin has always been supportive of me and my wife living openly, honestly, and has never discouraged us from being our authentic selves.”

Beyond the reported conversation with Shim, Wilkinson and the Thorns have come under fire for their handling of complaints made against Riley when he was coach of the team from 2014-15. The Thorns investigated Riley and decided not to renew his contract before the 2016 season as a result of their findings. At the time, however, the club made no mention of the investigation, and public perception was that Riley had been let go due to poor on-field performance. Thorns owner Merritt Paulson has since apologized for not being more forthcoming about Riley’s departure.

Wilkinson has been on administrative leave since early October after players released a statement demanding he be placed on leave until an outside investigation can be completed. Thorns’ supporters groups had also announced a boycott of the team’s stores and concessions, calling on the club to remove Wilkinson.

Sources told Just Women’s Sports that players around the NWSL were also upset that Wilkinson had not been fired immediately after The Athletic published its story.

Angerer, who played for the Thorns from 2014-15, also addressed the allegations against Riley in her tweet.

“I feel I did not do enough to make sure everybody in our locker room was safe,” she wrote. “I will always be disappointed with myself that I didn’t do more to help my teammates. It’s my promise to you that I will always, from this moment forward, do everything in my power to make sure that these abuses are no longer ignored.”

A’ja Wilson says she is still processing the Las Vegas Aces’ Game 5 semifinal loss to the Phoenix Mercury.

“Five games, I don’t know what it is but it must be like a semifinal five-game thing with us, because we went to five games with Conn [the Connecticut Sun] last year and five games with Phoenix this year,” she said.

“But it was a hard-fought series. I feel like we could’ve done better in some games and it put us in a bad situation,” said Wilson on the latest Tea with A & Phee podcast.

Wilson and the Aces fell to the Mercury in a down-to-the-wire Game 5, with Phoenix pulling out the last-minute 87-84 win to advance to the WNBA Finals.

“This was probably the worst I’ve ever felt, I thought last year was tough… but this year, I don’t know what it was, but it was one of the toughest games that I’ve ever had to deal with, and I still feel like I’m kind of dealing with it honestly.”

Following the heartbreaking defeat, Wilson said she first called her South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, who helped her process the setback.

“Before I went into media, the first person I called was coach Staley, because I feel like she is the only one that could really understand how I felt, because she’s seen me in these positions so many times,” Wilson said. “She just really said, If you dwell on this you’re going to miss out when your time comes, so the biggest thing is just take it and just understand, okay this wasn’t my year, and then say, okay how can I be better? What can I do differently?”

Even with Staley’s advice, the game was still difficult for Wilson to deal with, saying what hurts the most is feeling like “you didn’t do what you needed to do or that you could’ve done more.”

Though Wilson is still coming to grips with the season’s end, her focus is on what’s ahead, declaring, “We got next year.”

Listen to A’ja Wilson and Napheesa Collier’s full conversation about the WNBA Playoffs on Tea with A and Phee.

Napheesa Collier is giving the Chicago Sky all the credit after the Minnesota Lynx fell to the eventual champions in the WNBA playoffs.

“Chicago came out playing no games with us,” Collier said on the Tea with A & Phee podcast, referring to Minnesota’s single-elimination defeat. The Sky went on to win the WNBA Finals in a storybook ending that was almost too good to be true.

“It’s the story that you see in movies, like someone that gets drafted, they go away, they win there, they come back home and win it in the first year,” said A’ja Wilson of Candace Parker’s WNBA championship with her hometown team.

“When she called Lailaa over, the joy on her face,” remarked Collier of the now-iconic moment where Parker embraced her daughter following the Finals win, with Wilson adding, “I lost it at that part.”

Chicago’s slow start to the season and perseverance through the team’s playoff push also inspired both Collier and Wilson.

“Those are the moments you say ‘cherish,’ but when they look back on this, this is an epic story, huge, especially for a team like Chicago that was what — 16 and 16 to end the season.”

The Sky’s sixth seed makes the WNBA title even more unlikely and remarkable. “That shows that anyone can make it, too, everyone is good,” said Collier.

“I don’t want one or two seed,” joked Wilson. “Let me grind it out.”

The standout performer for Chicago was undoubtedly Finals MVP Kahleah ‘KFC’ Copper, who both Collier and Wilson shouted out.

“KFC was killing it. She took over the whole series,” said Wilson. “It was like a different mode, she was just so locked in. To see ‘Kah’ playing like that… she is so hard to guard because she is one of the quickest players in our league.”

“Do not let her get in transition, stop the ball because you will lose,” warned Collier.

Overall, Wilson says Copper and the Sky’s success showcases the depth of the WNBA. “It goes to show how good our league really is from top to bottom.”

You can listen to Collier and Wilson’s full playoffs recap on Tea with A & Phee.

Wrapping up its second year on track (its 2020 season having been cancelled due to Covid-19), the W Series is headed to the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas on October 23-24 for a double-header race event. Best of all, the two preseason favorites, Alice Powell and Jamie Chadwick, are tied in points for the championship. 

Below is a primer on the W Series, an overview on how it’s breaking ground for women in racing, and what to expect in this suspense-filled season finale.

Why the W Series?

Motorsport is one of the hardest sporting arenas to break into if one’s path isn’t well paved by family legacy and financial backing. It has been dubbed by critics as the “billionaires boy’s club,” which partially explains what has made Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 1 career so compelling. The irrefutable GOAT of F1, and the only Black F1 driver ever, Hamilton broke into the sport as an outsider while his father worked multiple jobs and provided the mechanical work to support his son’s natural gift for racing. 

The number of women who’ve successfully broken into the ranks is similarly few and far between. Out of 900+ Formula 1 drivers who’ve ever lined up on the grid for a Grand Prix event, only two of them have been women (Maria Teresa de Filippis in 1958 and Lella Lombardi in 1975 and 1976). For Catherine Bond Muir, a British lawyer and corporate financial advisor, those numbers were so bleak, she felt compelled to take matters into her own hands by founding the W Series, an international all-female driver racing league.

Some don’t like the idea of a segregated series for women and believe efforts should be focused on bringing more women up through the standard pathways of racing. Pippa Mann, a British IndyCar race driver, has argued, “We [women] grew up dreaming of winning races, and winning championships, against everyone—the same as every male racer does. We did not grow up dreaming of being segregated, and winning the girl’s only cup.”

For Bond Muir, the fact that the number of women in single-seater motor-racing series globally was on a downward trend convinced her that the existing pathways for women weren’t working. In a sport where individual sponsorship is fundamental, there is a dismal number of companies willing to spend big money on female drivers who are as yet unproven against male drivers on the biggest stage. And without preemptive funding, the opportunity to go out and prove themselves doesn’t exist for these drivers. 

This is where the W Series comes in. With a structure that covers all expenses for drivers, the financial barriers into the sport are made null and void, allowing the W Series to showcase the best female drivers from all over the globe, racing some of the fastest machines on the most iconic racetracks.

The W Series Structure

Unlike Formula 1, where a driver’s individual financial sponsorships are a major factor in being selected for one of the coveted 20 driver seats, the athletes in the W Series are selected solely on their racing ability. Applicants are put through rigorous on-track testing, simulator assessments, technical engineering and fitness evaluations, and then the top 18 make the cut. 

Another critical difference from F1 is that every driver in the W Series competes in an identical race car (the Tatuus T-318 Formula 3 car). In F1, there are certain parameters for the vehicles, but the ten teams are allowed to customize much of the car, which results in the wealthiest teams dominating for years on end as they pour money into either buying or creating the latest and greatest technology.

During this second season of the W series, even though they are in identical vehicles, the drivers are divided into nine teams sponsored by partner companies. A team championship based on overall points accumulated by each team’s two drivers will be debuted in 2022. Currently, there is a $1.5 million allotment for the individual driver championship. The overall winner will be awarded $500K with the remainder trickling down from second to eighteenth place. 

Another new aspect for this 2021 season is that all eight races are being held alongside Formula 1 Grand Prix events, giving these women the grandest of stages to showcase their abilities.  

The 2021 W Series Championship

With six of eight total races completed, the top two drivers, Alice Powell and Jamie Chadwick, are deadlocked in points at 109 apiece (a 1st place finish is worth 25 points, 2nd gets 18, 3rd gets 15, and so on). The two Brits have been neck and neck throughout the series, trading the top podium back and forth with only one other driver, Emma Kimilainen of Finland, snatching a single race win in between. 

Twenty-four-year-old Chadwick is the reigning W Series champion from 2019 and has been a steadily rising star, coming up through karting and junior racing programs in the UK and then moving on the Formula 3 series in both her home country and Asia. During the inaugural W Series season, she was also named a Williams development driver for the F1 team.

Powell’s path to competitive racing has been a bit more stop and go depending on when funding has been available. After several years competing in Formula Renault series in the UK and abroad, Powell (28) had been out of competitive racing since 2015 and was doing building renovation work for her father when the W Series opportunity arose. 

“Racing has been the sport of privileged billionaires for years and it’s hard for women to get sponsorship. Despite writing hundreds of letters to businesses and race teams my funding dried up in 2015,” she once vented. “Then W Series came along and changed the game. I had just been unblocking a urinal when I got the call.”

With three 1st-place finishes to Chadwick’s two, Powell currently has the upper hand to edge out Chadwick for the overall title if things remain equal after the final two races. With 50 first place points up for grabs between the final two races, Kimilainen is also still within striking distance of a come from behind victory. And in racing it doesn’t take much—a tire puncture, engine issue, rainy weather—to drastically change the fate of title contenders.

For Bond Muir, she couldn’t have hoped for more as her brainchild heads into a suspenseful finish of its sophomore season: back-to-back races at the Circuit of the Americas to determine who walks away the champion. 

“If you had told me then that we would stage two races on the same weekend at one of F1’s flagship events in just our second season, I would have pinched myself,” Bond Muir said. 

“It will be a fitting way to end our breathless and action-packed eight-race season and promises to be a very special weekend as we celebrate everything that W Series stands for and the giant strides we have made since launching three years ago.”

A door in Wintrust Arena reportedly needs replacing after the Phoenix Mercury lost in Game 4 of the WNBA Finals. According to eyewitness reports from The Next Hoops, Diana Taurasi took out her frustration with the loss on the door to the visiting locker room.

Photos show the door severely cracked through the middle, which reportedly came from Taurasi slamming the door multiple times. The WNBA and Phoenix Mercury have yet to provide a comment.

In addition to the door incident, Taurasi and the rest of the Phoenix Mercury declined to talk to the media after the season-ending loss. Head coach Sandy Brondello did speak with the media.

Many were quick to point out that Taurasi took the time to congratulate every single player on the Chicago Sky team after the game. Finals MVP Kahleah Copper said she had “so much respect” for Taurasi on Monday.

Alex Morgan is ready for her daughter Charlie to hit the soccer pitch. The Orlando Pride forward sat down with Ali Riley for the season premiere of Off the Ball, telling Riley she is looking forward to shuttling Charlie to and from soccer practice.

When asked about her favorite memories from her own childhood, Morgan cites all the sports she played.

“Growing up… [my favorite part was] just having soccer games and all different sports. Going from basketball practice to soccer practice and having our parents shuttle us around.

“I’m excited for that.”

When it comes to following in her soccer footsteps, however, Morgan is taking a no-pressure approach to Charlie’s career.

“I think Charlie’s going to be really into all different sports, and so I’m looking forward to just being mom on the sidelines and not too serious.”

Watch the latest installment of Off the Ball for more on Morgan’s life as a new mom and her journey returning to the field.

You can learn more about Alex Morgan’s return to play after giving birth to daughter Charlie by listening to her appearance on the Just Women’s Sports podcast.