The NWSL schedule for the 2023 season finally has arrived.

The league released the long-awaited schedule on Wednesday afternoon, 45 days before the first games kicks off on March 25. The season runs through the championship match on Nov. 11, two weeks later than in 2022.

Why the longer season? Thank the 2023 World Cup, which will run from July 20 through Aug. 20 in Australia and New Zealand.

While the NWSL will not break for the full tournament, the league will take two separate weeks off during the World Cup. The league will not play any matches from July 10-20 and from Aug. 7-17, which will leave two weekends free of competition.

Also to accommodate the World Cup, the NWSL will avoid regular-season matches from July 10 through Aug. 17. Instead, the league will concentrate on the in-season edition of its Challenge Cup tournament during that timeframe.

“For me personally, I don’t want to miss a lot of games with San Diego,” Wave and U.S. women’s national team forward Alex Morgan told CBS Sports. “I also don’t think that fans should have to choose between watching an NWSL game and a World Cup game.”

It's a new season!

Let's gooooooo 🏆

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) February 8, 2023

USWNT players also were concerned about when exactly the league would release them for international duty.

While the NWSL only is required to do so during established FIFA international windows, the league agreed to release players to their national teams on June 26, two weeks before the FIFA window opens on July 10. The move came only after pushback from players, The Equalizer reported.

Each of the league’s 12 teams will play 22 games in the regular season, the same number as they played in 2022, for a total of 132 games. For the first time in NWSL history, all 12 teams will compete on the final day of the regular season as clubs jockey for final playoff positioning. Casey Stoney, San Diego Wave manager and the 2022 NWSL Coach of the Year, had advocated for this format last season.

Each team will also play six Challenge Cup matches, either played on Wednesdays across April, May and June or during the World Cup window in July and August. The tournament will culminate in the semifinals on Sept. 6 and the final on Sept. 9.

Five NWSL matches to watch in 2023

March 25 (2 p.m.): North Carolina Courage vs. Kansas City Current

The first day of matches brings a barn burner, as 2022 MVP finalist Debinha returns with her new team to face the new-look Courage.

April 1 (12:50 p.m.): Kansas City Current vs. Portland Thorns

The Thorns visit Kansas City for a rematch of the 2022 NWSL Championship. Portland claimed a 2-0 victory and the crown in October, but the Current look ready to challenge for the title again.

April 23 (8 p.m.): Angel City FC vs. San Diego Wave

The two California expansion teams made quite the impression in their inaugural seasons, and they’ll aim to keep that momentum in their sophomore campaigns.

May 28 (5 p.m.): Washington Spirit vs. Gotham FC

Kelley O’Hara made the biggest splash of NWSL free agency when she joined Gotham FC. This match will mark her first return to Washington, the club with which she won a title in 2021.

Sept. 16 (10:30 p.m.): Portland Thorns vs. OL Reign

The top two finishers from the 2022 season meet in this late-season contest, which could hold significant playoff implications.

*All times ET

25-year-old American pro golfer Nelly Korda secured her spot in LPGA history on Sunday, notching her fifth-straight title at this weekend's Chevron Championship in The Woodlands, Texas.

Ranked No. 1 in the world by Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, Korda joins Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sörenstam (2005) as just the third LPGA player to rack up five consecutive tour wins. She is also the third No. 1-ranked player to capture The Chevron Championship victory since the rankings debuted in 2006, accompanied by Lorena Ochoa and Lydia Ko.

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The Florida native shot three-under 69 in Sunday's final, besting Sweden's Maja Stark despite Stark's valiant come-from-behind attempt in the 18th. Korda finished with a four-day total of 13-under 275, celebrating her two-stroke win by cannonballing into Poppie's Pond, much to the crowd's delight. She left The Club at Carlton Woods with $1.2 million from an overall purse of $7.9 million.

It wasn't long ago that the two-time major champion's current winning streak seemed unimaginable. After maintaining her No. 1 position for 29 weeks, Korda underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from her left arm in 2022. She returned to the course not long after, but failed to win a single tournament in 2023 before seeing a surge in form during the first four months of 2024. As of today, she hasn't lost a tournament since January.

Korda will attempt a record sixth-straight win at next week's JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, where she'll vie for a cut of the $3.75 million purse.

USWNT regulars Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson furthered their cases for Olympic inclusion with their respective club victories on Saturday and Sunday.

After a roller coaster of a week that saw former Thorns head coach Mike Norris reassigned and a flurry of last-minute roster reshufflings as Friday's trade window closure loomed, the NWSL sprung to life over the weekend with standout performances from ninth-place Portland and third-place Chicago, among others.

After her blocked attempt at goal set up a volleying sixth-minute opener from veteran Christine Sinclair — now the only player in history to record a goal in all 11 NWSL seasons — Smith swiftly netted her own in the 27th minute off a breakaway run that eluded Houston's backline. The goal represented Smith's third of the season as well as her 35th for the Thorns, ultimately leading to the home side's first win of the season in a 4-1 routing of the Dash.

But that wasn't Smith's only stat of the evening. The star forward also lapped former Chicago Red Star Sam Kerr to become the youngest player to reach 50 NWSL goal contributions across all games, chalking up 40 goals and 10 assists at the age of 23 years and 254 days.

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"Obviously it feels good to get a win," said Smith in a post-match press conference. "But this is the standard the Thorns have always had. So a win is great, but a win is the expectation — we're hungrier than ever after the way we started."

170 miles up the road, Lumen Field similarly showcased some promising Olympic prospect footwork on Sunday. In Chicago's 2-1 victory over the lagging 13th-place Seattle Reign, striker Mallory Swanson racked up an impressive counterattack assist on fellow forward Ally Schlegel's fourth-minute goal. Swanson went on to find the back of the net herself before halftime, lacing an explosive ball into the top corner in the 31st minute, her second of the season after returning from a lengthy sidelining injury.

Speaking of injuries, fellow USWNT favorites Alex Morgan and Tierna Davidson were not as fortunate as their national squad teammates this weekend. Each exited their club matches early, Morgan with an ankle knock in San Diego's loss to Orlando and Davidson with an apparent hamstring incident early on in Washington's win over Gotham.

LSU came out on top at the 2024 NCAA women's gymnastics championship in Fort Worth on Saturday, besting Cal, Utah, and Florida to capture their first-ever title.

The Tigers' win was far from a landslide. LSU took the first rotation handily thanks to 2024 All-Around winner Haleigh Bryant's team-leading 9.9375 backed by four additional 9.9+ scores from her teammates. But Utah then responded with three strong beam performances of their own, causing the Red Rocks to slide confidently into second place by the end of the second rotation.

By the halfway point, all four teams fell within .288 points of one another before Utah overtook the pack with a dominant floor showing after three rotations. LSU then went on to ace the beam event with Konnor McClain's meet-leading 9.9625 score, coming away with the highest collective score ever awarded to the event in NCAA championship history. The achievement propelled the Tigers to victory, ensuring them the title after the final rotation.

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"This team is full of individuals that have incredible character and integrity and love for each other and all the things you hear from coaches when they sit at a podium like this in a moment of victory, but I promise you it's a real thing," said LSU coach Jay Clark in a post-meet press conference. "I'm just so happy for them."

Contributing to Saturday's atmosphere of excitement was the absence of last year's champion and this year's heavily favored Oklahoma Sooners. Hot off earning the highest team score in NCAA history just last month, the top-ranked Norman squad suffered a shocking loss in the semifinals, where five major mistakes contributed to a third-place finish and a season-low team score of 196.6625.

With Oklahoma out, it was truly anyone's game.

"Every team was out there fighting for their lives — all four teams, it could have gone any of four ways out there," Clark told reporters. "As much as I feel for what happened to Oklahoma in the semifinals, I think it made for a championship that became so packed with emotion because every team out there believed they could do it. It was just tremendous."

LSU is now the eighth program in the sport's history to earn an NCAA women's gymnastic championship.
They share the honor with Georgia, Utah, UCLA, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, and Michigan.

Cameron Brink already has her rookie of the year pick for the upcoming WNBA season, and it’s Indiana-bound star Caitlin Clark. 

In the latest edition of Kelley on the Street, host Kelley O'Hara caught up with Brink in New York hours before the Stanford phenom went No. 2 overall to the Los Angeles Sparks at the 2024 WNBA Draft. When O’Hara asked who would win the WNBA's rookie of the year, she answered without pause.

"Caitlin Clark," she said, while a fan commented that she thought Brink would take home the award. Brink later added that the extra foul granted to WNBA players will be "good for me."

"I hope it’s me," Charisma Osborne, who was later drafted by the Phoenix Mercury, said when asked her ROY prediction. "But, I don’t know — we’ll see."

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