Carli Lloyd and Gotham FC will look to clinch a spot in the NWSL playoffs against Racing Louisville FC on Thursday.

As they head into the first of two back-to-back meetings with Louisville, Gotham FC sits in fifth place in the standings and is in a win-and-in decision day scenario. The club has had a strong away-from-home record, earning 17 points in 11 road matches. With a win, they would set a team record for most away points in a season.

Racing Louisville, meanwhile, is looking to end their season on a high note. Following a 3-1 win over the Orlando Pride on Oct. 16, a victory Thursday night would give Louisville (5-12-5) their first back-to-back wins this season.

Ebony Salmon has led the way for Louisville with six goals this season, putting her in 10th place on the NWSL’s leaderboard. Louisville has won or drawn every match Salmon has scored in this year.

It’s unclear how much Lloyd will play after playing her final game for the U.S. women’s national team on Tuesday. Midge Purce leads Gotham with nine goals this season, just one away from first in the Golden Boot race.

Gotham FC will meet Racing Louisville FC at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Recently retired WNBA superstar Candace Parker has her next gig lined up: president of women’s basketball at Adidas.

Parker announced her retirement at the end of April, bringing a close to a 16-year professional career spanning three WNBA championship titles with three different teams. And now, she’s stepping into a slightly different role — this time off the court — with longtime sponsor Adidas.

"The brand and I have grown together, and we’ve done some amazing things," she told Fast Company in an exclusive interview published Wednesday morning. "I’m excited about what the future holds on this side of things, because I’m so passionate about growing the game of basketball."

Parker initially signed with Adidas at the end of her first professional season in 2008, going on to spend the vast majority of her illustrious WNBA career linked to the German athletic brand. In 2010, she became the first woman to receive a signature Adidas shoe: the ACE Commander.

Her most recent Adidas collaborations include basketball sneakers Exhibit B (2022) and Exhibit Select (2023) in a variety of different colorways, as well as limited edition off-court apparel.

In 2022, Parker led a mentorship program for the brand’s first class of NIL-sponsored college athletes, a stacked roster that involved the likes of rising star Hailey Van Lith, among others. In her new position, she’ll be "overseeing pretty much everything" when it comes to the brand’s women’s basketball operations.

That "everything" includes weighing in on shoe and clothing design, navigating new and existing athlete partnerships, and taking control of Adidas' grassroots growth strategies. She’ll also help with "how we actually speak to the women’s basketball consumer," Eric Wise, who leads the brand’s global basketball business, told Fast Company.

According to Parker, the decision to accept the offer hinged on her desire to be more than just "the face" of Adidas women’s basketball.

"I said to [Adidas], 'I don’t want to be a mascot,'" Parker said. "'I really want to be in the meetings, and I want to be a part of making decisions.'"

Charter flights are on the horizon for the WNBA, with commissioner Cathy Engelbert saying on Tuesday that the league will provide teams with full-time private travel services beginning as soon as this season. 

The move is set to address years of player safety concerns, among other issues. Engelbert told AP Sports Editors that the league aims to launch the program "as soon as we can logistically get planes in place."

The initiative is projected to cost around $25 million per year over the next two seasons.

The WNBA has previously provided charter flights on a limited basis, including during the postseason and when teams were scheduled to play back-to-back regular season games. Individual owners seeking to independently provide their teams with private travel — such as the New York Liberty’s Joe and Clara Wu Tsai back in 2022 — faced significant fines for using unauthorized charters.

While players and team staff have been calling for league-wide charters even before Caitlin Clark and other high profile rookies joined the league, Engelbert has routinely cited steep year-to-year costs as the reasoning behind sticking to commercial flights. 

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However, the WNBA's surging popularity means increased visibility, and a subsequent uptick in security concerns — especially when it comes to big name newcomers like Clark — has Englebert reconsidering her previous decision. 

WNBA Players Association president Nneka Ogwumike called the move "transformational," and credited the WNBPA as well as the league for its implementation. 

"Our league is growing, the demand for women's basketball is growing," Ogwumike told ESPN. "That means more eyes on us, which is what we want, but that means more protection from the organization that we play for, the whole W that we play for.

"Chartering flights not only is a safety measure, the biggest thing, and then obviously what it means to be able to play a game and go home and rest and recover and be the elite athletes that we try to be every single night when we step out onto this court."

Aces coach Becky Hammon called the immediate response to the charter announcement "great" but noted that there are still kinks to be worked out. 

"What it all looks like, we’re still gathering information, we don’t know," she said Tuesday.

Several players emphasized the importance of safety, highlighting how last season the Phoenix Mercury’s Brittney Griner was harassed in an airport while traveling commercial.

"All these players and these faces are becoming so popular that it really is about that as much as it as about recovery," Minnesota Lynx forward Napheesa Collier said.

"Above everything else, I think it's the safety of our players," Mercury player Natasha Cloud added. "We have a prime example with BG on our team that needs to be safe. At airports, it's like a madhouse. You see Caitlin Clark walking through airports, people following her, people trying to touch her, get pictures with her. It's just a safety measure, through and through. You would never have an NBA team walk through an airport."

Prior to Tuesday's announcement, the league had said it would charter flights for the playoffs and back-to-back games via a program introduced last year. The latest news, however, promises that teams will also be provided charters to and from all regular season games.

"Our safety is being taken seriously now, finally. In no world should our security not be a priority," Griner told ESPN. "If we want to be the league that we want to be and have the respect that we have, it comes with some risks. Sometimes people want to get close to you and it's not people you want, so I'm just glad that we don't have to deal with that anymore."

Deja Kelly has landed on her final destination, with the former North Carolina star announcing her commitment to Oregon on Monday. 

A three-time All-ACC guard, Kelly averaged 15.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, and 3.0 assists per game in her four years in Chapel Hill. She led the team in scoring in each of the last three seasons, but opted to transfer elsewhere for her fifth and final year of NCAA eligibility.

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The 5-foot-8 Texas native finishes her UNC career eighth on the team’s scoring list, having helped carry the Tar Heels to a Sweet 16 in 2022. 

Kelly is the seventh new addition for Oregon Ducks coach Kelly Graves this offseason, as the program faced a number of big name departures at the close of the 2023 NCAA tournament. She will join Texas' Amina Muhammad, Arizona's Salimatou Kourouma, Washington's Ari Long, BYU's Nani Falatea, UC Santa Barbara's Alexis Whitfield, and Siena's Elisa Mevius in Eugene this fall.

Kelly wasn't the only noteworthy transfer shaking up women's college hoops this week, with Marquette's Liza Karlen and Pitt's Liatu King both announcing their commitments to Notre Dame within a span of roughly 18 hours.

The San Diego Wave are without some key players, and they don’t expect to get them back anytime soon. 

Alex Morgan, Sofia Jakobsson, Melanie Barcenas, Abby Dahlkemper, and Naomi Girma are all currently on the team’s injury list. On Monday, head coach Casey Stoney was asked if she expected any of them to return to the pitch in the near future. 

"No, unfortunately not," was her response. The Wave is set to play Utah on Wednesday.

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While Stoney hasn't yet provided anything else definitive, absences from Morgan and Girma leave behind a pretty big hole in the team roster, particularly with the Olympics — not to mention the preceding USWNT send-off friendlies — just around the corner. Morgan has been sidelined with ankle trouble since the team's late April match against Orlando, while Girma’s first game on the injury list was against Seattle. 

Stoney, however, has said that the Wave doesn’t play any differently with or without the missing players.

"It doesn’t really affect the way we play," she said following the team’s recent loss to Seattle. "We just needed to have more patience. We still had some senior players out there tonight that could have impacted that and needed to impact that and did in the second half."

San Diego currently sits in 10th place with seven points, having won two games in their last five matches.