Every once in a while, the CBS broadcast will cut to a spectator that somehow found his way into Zions Bank Stadium for the NWSL Challenge Cup. On closer inspection, it’s former Reign head coach and current USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski.

Often, Andonovski is seen writing in his notebook. While he may be journaling about the playground, sunset or the farm, it is much more likely that he is taking notes as he evaluates a roster for the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Before the Olympics were postponed, the likelihood of roster turnover was low given the one year gap between the World Cup and Tokyo. Teams can only carry 18 players at the Olympics, and it was widely expected that those 18 would be chosen among the 23 who won in France.

The postponement of the Olympics has changed all that. Players for whom the Olympics would have likely been their last tournament with the national team are now another year older. Their spots are less secure. Someone like Alex Morgan, on the other hand, would seem to be a shoo-in; originally it was unclear whether she’d be able to come back in time after just giving birth in May.

The extra year of preparation also gives the Challenge Cup added significance, as it may be the only opportunity for many national team hopefuls to play competitive games this calendar year.

Be like Vlatko. Wear a mask ???? pic.twitter.com/uW8gto54cp

— U.S. Soccer WNT (@USWNT) July 6, 2020

Heading into the tournament, the opportunity seemed perfect for someone like Mallory Pugh, an immensely talented player, still young, who looked to have apparently been left off the initial Olympic roster. Traded to a new team in Sky Blue FC and playing with a chip on her shoulder, there was a chance she could have played herself back into contention. Instead, an injury has forced her to miss out on the tournament.

Megan Rapinoe, Tobin Heath, Christen Press and Morgan all opted out of the tournament, but their spots are all but assured. Ali Krieger, Emily Sonnett and Ashlyn Harris likewise won’t have it held against them that Orlando was unable to play. And while Kelley O’Hara, Becky Sauerbrunn and Carli Lloyd have either been limited or unable to play due to injuries, they can feel confident about heading to Tokyo, even if Lloyd will be 38. Tierna Davidson, on the other hand, has struggled with injuries since her final (junior) year at Stanford and could have used a strong showing to cement herself as the future of the defense.

As Andonovski looks towards the future, my bet is he’s currently feeling a bit overwhelmed with the number of world-class goalkeepers he’s seen performing at the Challenge Cup.

So far, Aubrey Bledsoe, who has brought into Andonovski’s first camp for friendlies against Sweden and Costa Rica, has been a brick wall for the Washington Spirit. Jane Campbell of the Houston Dash has also looked strong after being invited to a January camp alongside the three keepers who went to France.

What about the surprise of the tournament, Bella Bixby? Bixby leads the Cup in saves and has allowed one goal per game. She has also allowed 2.03 fewer goals than expected according to American Soccer Analysis, which is second in the league.

Honestly this save is just rude.

This MASSIVE stop from @bellageist is worth another look. #BAONDX pic.twitter.com/5CqSE3Wpwr

— Portland Thorns FC (@ThornsFC) July 6, 2020

Andonovski is familiar with Casey Murphy from her time with the Reign and brought her in for December camp last year. There has probably not been much added to her page in the notebook, but she did keep a clean sheet against Sky Blue and has four saves across two games.

Of course, this all comes with the caveat that Alyssa Naeher still looks the part of the best goalkeeper in the world.

On the other side of the pitch, Lynn Williams is making a very convincing case that she should be on the Olympic roster. She had three goals during Olympic qualifying and has carried that form over to the Challenge Cup. She has three goals in three games and leads everyone in both shots and shots on goal. Her goals added score according to American Soccer Analysis, which measures the goal value a player adds compared to an average player at their position is 1.25. The next closest player is Julie Ertz with 0.50.

LYNN WILLIAMS. That's the tweet. @lynnraenie #NWSLChallengeCup pic.twitter.com/aMtUn4R8PR

— Just Women’s Sports (@justwsports) July 2, 2020

Andi Sullivan was also on that Olympic qualifying roster and seems poised to be a feature on the national team squad for many years to come. She is tied for fourth in the league with six tackles won, and her six interceptions is tied for second.

Teammate Ashley Sanchez has excelled on the dribble. Andonovski has certainly made note of her five successful dribbles, second most in the league behind Debinha, out of 12 attempts. The rookie has not shied away from the opportunity and that confidence will serve her well. Finally, her creativity and reflexes on Sam Staab’s tying goal against Portland will not soon be forgotten.

Back heel flick from @ashleynsanchezz ✅
Equalizer from @SamStaab_ ✅pic.twitter.com/jPXSsTeQIu

— Washington Spirit (@WashSpirit) July 6, 2020

Although Chicago fans would have liked her to learn how to go down in the box, Kealia Watt has otherwise had a solid tournament. Her seven shots are tied for fourth and her 10 crosses are tied for the team lead. The advanced statistics say she is tied for eighth in the league with 0.39 goals added. Like Sanchez, she has also been effective on the dribble with 4-of-7 successful dribble attempts.

Since coming to the Houston Dash, Shea Groom has as many goals (2) as shots and games played. No one has more than her 1.13 goals per 90 minutes. The two brilliant goals showcased her full range of ability, one a soaring header and the other a screaming shot. She also has an assist and has been a focus of the revitalized Dash, with the team up four goals when she is on the pitch. She is also on the leaderboards with four drawn fouls. Back in 2016, she was called in for two friendlies with the national team, but was not capped. Even if the Olympics is not the venue, she should get a chance soon enough.

???????????? Shea Groom has been cleared for take-off. #NWSLChallengeCup pic.twitter.com/5Ol0bsqHu7

— Meg Linehan (@itsmeglinehan) July 5, 2020

Groom has partnered well with Kristie Mewis, who has a goal and an assist of her own. Since receiving 15 caps in 2013-14, Mewis has been left off the national team roster, until Andonovski showed renewed interest and invited her to the December camp. In this cup, her 10 crosses are tied for sixth and her five fouls drawn is second. Her younger sister Sam is a sure bet for the national team, but Kristie Mewis has shown she still has a lot left.

Another player who was shown that she is still capable is Amy Rodriguez. While the Utah forward is probably not going to get a chance to return to the international stage, she is making the most of the stage. Through two games, she has a goal, an assist, and six shots. The pace that set her apart when she was a World Cup champion remains an asset.

Savannah McCaskill has six caps at the senior level and her upside is on full display. Coming on in the 64th minute against North Carolina, McCaskill’s entrance put Chicago on the front foot. She has nine crosses, tied for tenth in the Cup, despite coming off the bench in two games. It is this playmaking ability that is appreciated by her coach and makes her appealing for the national team.

“If I’m being honest, I thought outside of Sav [McCaskill], when the other players came off the bench, the game fell off completely,” Chicago coach Rory Dames said after the last game.

Andonovksi’s notebook of attackers, to the disappointment of some, does not contain Sky Blue’s Midge Purce. So far, she has been used exclusively at right back. While she does make up a significant portion of the team’s touches, 11.7% or the tenth highest rate in the league, she is completing just 66.4% of passes and seems buried. It seems that Purce, who has one cap, thinks that her best chance at the senior level comes in defense.

“I think every player who plays in the United States, we all know Vlatko is here,”  she said in a postgame interview. “He’s hard to miss; he’s kinda tall. Yeah, absolutely, I want to be that outside back. I want to be on the national team.”

Still, the competition at outside back is steep. In addition to the current stalwarts, Casey Short has been brought in for past camps and is tied for fourth in the tournament with six tackles won.

Washington Spirit’s left back Tegan McGrady has also impressed. She passes with 79% accuracy and her 1.65 passes completed over expected is eighth in the league, one spot behind Abby Dahlkemper. She debuted with the national team in 2018, and in the constant search for elite wing backs, has a potential path to the roster.

In the center, Alana Cook is at 87.5% pass accuracy with an average of 25 yards per pass. Playing in front of an American audience for the first time as a professional on loan from PSG, Cook has shown the same poise that allowed her to step in as a freshman at Stanford and start every game over her four year college career. The former captain of the United States U23s in 2019 looked much more comfortable next to Lauren Barnes than Amber Brooks, who also played her first game as the Reign center back in match two.

It is not hard to imagine that Andonovski has made some notes on Bethany Balcer’s sophomore campaign. While she has yet to have the same impact as she managed during her rookie year, much of that may be attributed to the lack of a game plan for OL Reign. On Wednesday, she broke the team’s scoring drought.

.@bethanybalcer the hero! ????‍♀️@OLReign get their first goal at the #NWSLChallengeCup and their first win.

0-1 | #UTAvRGN

Tune in now on @CBSAllAccess and @Twitch. pic.twitter.com/5AFh69fQwn

— National Women's Soccer League (@NWSL) July 8, 2020

Ashley Hatch has 0.28 fewer goals than expected goals, which is the most of any player who has scored this tournament. Her pace is elite, but her finishing leaves something to be desired.

Second overall pick Morgan Weaver has generated chances with the Portland Thorns, but the team is still reliant on Lindsey Horan’s creativity.

Of course, Andonovski is there so he can evaluate everyone. There will be players that were not on his radar as Reign head coach but now pique his interest as coach of the World Cup champions. There will be surprises and disappointments.

This tournament has been of such high quality that any attempt to recreate Andonovski’s notebook is bound to come up short. We’ll simply have to wait until Tokyo to see what the one fan in the stands has been scribbling all this time.

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.