When trades occur abruptly in the NWSL, sometimes the hardest part for players involved is what comes immediately after the phone call. The trade that sent longtime North Carolina Courage captain Abby Erceg to Racing Louisville alongside teammate Carson Pickett took both players by surprise, leaving them with little time to process their emotions.

“I think when [Pickett] and I both got off the call, my first reaction was to cry,” Erceg told the media after their first training in Louisville on Wednesday. “Because you don’t really know how to take that kind of news.”

Describing the following days as an emotional rollercoaster, Erceg and Pickett — who have a house together in North Carolina — quickly had to pack up and move to a new city. The only problem was that Racing Louisville’s preseason had already started.

“I was still in New Zealand when I found out,” Erceg said. “And then we learned that the team here is starting the Monday before I get back. So it’s just, you want to get with the team and you don’t want to be that player that turns up late and you’re just trying to get everything done.”

“I think as professional athletes, you have to understand that you can be traded at any point,” Pickett also told the media. “And so it was a shock, but I think that it was the timing, mainly because we wanted to be here, we wanted to be in Louisville with our new team, but because we kind of found out a little later, they had already started training for a couple days.”

For Pickett, getting traded wasn’t unfamiliar territory. Louisville will be the outside back’s fourth NWSL club after she spent two years in North Carolina. But Erceg had been with the Western New York Flash and then the rebranded Courage since the 2016 season, winning three Championships, three NWSL Shields and the 2022 Challenge Cup as captain of the squad. She and Pickett had anticipated being in North Carolina for a long time.

Erceg expressed her shock and disappointment on social media soon after the trade, which sent U.S. women’s national team defender Emily Fox to North Carolina in exchange for the players. A week earlier, the 33-year-old Erceg had criticized the club for its decision to trade 2021 Rookie of the Year candidate Diana Ordoónez to Houston on NWSL draft night.

“I think when you spend that long at a club, and you don’t get a chance to have the conversation about what your future looks like, it’s tough when you find out that kind of news,” Erceg said. “So there were definitely a lot of emotions initially.”

“I think I immediately felt the hurt that Abby felt, just for her because she had been there for so much longer. She was a captain and things like that,” Pickett echoed.

Without much time to waste, Erceg and Pickett turned their attention to Louisville. Erceg said they relied on resources from the NWSL Players’ Association and new protections written into the league’s first collective bargaining agreement to help with the move.

Louisville also stepped right in to make the pair comfortable. Soon after the trade, the club put together a presentation for Erceg and Pickett to help them get acclimated to the area.

“It had everything you can possibly need,” Pickett said. “It had coffee shops, it had restaurants … housing, it had everything we needed to move. They made us feel so comfortable right away. And I think that honestly, when I got off that call, I was like, I’m ready to go. I don’t even need my couch, my bed. I’m just ready to be there.”

As they get settled into their new surroundings, both players are ready for a new chapter.

“I think soccer is kind of the place where you can just let go of those emotions,” Erceg said, emphasizing that the time to work through emotional upheaval is during the preseason process so that she can be ready to go when the season starts.

While Erceg still has many friends on the Courage, she already has her eye on Louisville’s first match against North Carolina, a club they have never beaten.

“I’ll be nervous, there’s no doubt about it,” she said. “It’ll be a tough game, but at the same time, do I want to beat them? 100 percent.”

Claire Watkins is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @ScoutRipley.

Caitlin Clark made a surprise appearance on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend, which quickly went viral.

The Iowa star showed up on the show’s Weekend Update segment to playfully call out Michael Che’s history of making jabs at women’s sports.

It started when Che joked that Iowa should replace Clark’s retired No. 22 “with an apron.” 

When Clark entered, Che said that he was a fan. But Clark wasn’t convinced – especially not when co-host Colin Jost brought the receipts of Che’s jabs.

“Really, Michael? Because I heard that little apron joke you did,” she said, before making him read some jokes of her own in retaliation. Clark finished her segment by shouting out the WNBA greats that came before her. She then got in one final dig – bringing Che a signed apron as a souvenir. 

She’s got jokes 😎@CaitlinClark22 on @nbcsnl #Hawkeyes

pic.twitter.com/54khqQw2MR

— Iowa Women's Basketball (@IowaWBB) April 14, 2024

When Che promised to give it to his girlfriend, Clark delivered her last playful dig of the night.

“You don’t have a girlfriend, Michael,” she said.

Afterward, SNL castmember Bowen Yang told People that the 22-year-old and teammates Gabbie Marshall, Kate Martin and Jada Gyamfi – who joined her at Studio 8H – “were so cool.”

“She's so charming and witty,” Yang said. “They were just the most stunning, noble people.

“Athletes just have this air about them. They know they're amazing. I mean, these are people who have numeric attachments and values to their performance. That's something that comedians never have.”

The Portland Thorns continue to struggle to start the NWSL season, falling 2-0 to the North Carolina Courage over the weekend to remain winless through their first four games. 

It’s uncharted territory for Portland, who has never started the NWSL regular season without a win in four games before.

Following the loss, defender Becky Sauerbrunn voiced her frustrations with the start. 

“It’s hard to find a lot of encouraging things, but what I find encouraging is that people are frustrated,” she said. “People are pissed off that we’re not doing well. We care, and I think that’s really important.” 

She also added that while the team will reflect individually, “there’s going to be no finger pointing.”

“We’re going to look at ourselves and figure out what we should have done, or I should have done better,” she said. “There is a list of things that I could have done better, and I’m going to make sure I know every single thing and watch this game back.”

The Thorns currently sit at the bottom of the league table with just one point, having allowed 10 goals – tied for the worst in the league. They’ve yet to lead in a match. And as questions grow, attention turns to head coach Mike Norris. 

Norris is in his second year as head coach of the club after leading the team to a second-place finish in the regular season last year. When asked about the possibility of pressure growing after the unprecedented start, Norris said that the pressure has been there “from day one.”

“I cannot be driven by my day-to-day and the longer vision of the pressure of the job,” he said. “We’ve got a belief in how we want to play, how we operate. We’ve got to stick with the process of that. While we do it, we have to review and see what is working, what’s not working.

“I’ll be showing up for the team and being there for what they need from me as we approach getting back together as a group next week.”

Maria Sanchez, who signed one of the biggest deals in NWSL history just four months ago, has reportedly requested a trade from the Houston Dash. 

ESPN was the first to report the news, which was confirmed by multiple sources.

In a statement to ESPN, the team said: “​​Maria Sanchez is under contract, a choice she made in free agency at the end of 2023." 

In December, Sanchez signed a new three-year contract with the Dash worth $1.5 million including bonuses and an option year. At the time, it was the largest contract in NWSL history – something that was eclipsed by multiple contracts in the following months. 

The winger was a restricted free agent in the offseason, meaning that Houston could match any offer from another team and retain her rights. Should the team trade Sanchez, her contract would remain as it has been signed with the league. That limits the number of teams that could take on her contract. 

In three starts with the Dash this season, Sanchez has zero goals and an assist. The Dash are 1-2-1 through four games and have allowed a league-worst 10 goals.

The team hired a new coach, Fran Alonso, in December. Earlier this year, former goalkeeper coach Matt Lampson was fired for violating the league’s Coach Code of Conduct and Anti-Fraternization policy. 

Both the NWSL trade window and transfer window close at midnight ET on Friday.

Canada got its revenge on Sunday, winning the 2024 IIHF Women’s World Championship and taking down the U.S. in a 6-5 overtime classic.

Marie-Philip Poulin, a longtime star for Canada, got her first two goals of the tournament, while Danielle Serdachny had the game-winner. 

GOLD FOR CANADA! DANIELLE SERDACHNY WINS IT IN OVERTIME! #WomensWorlds pic.twitter.com/fHmqUmHoGw

— TSN (@TSN_Sports) April 15, 2024

"I hate to say you're not trying to rely on it, expect it, but I know I've grown to expect it," Canada coach Troy Ryan said of Philip-Poulin. "Tonight was just a whole other level. I could see in her eyes every time we called her name that she was ready to go. It's just special."

The win came after Canada lost 1-0 to the U.S. in the group stage of the tournament. On Sunday, the two teams met for the 22nd time in 23 tournaments in the gold medal game – and the action between the two teams delivered. 

Among those scoring for the U.S. were Megan Keller, Alex Carpenter, Hilary Knight, Laila Edwards and Caroline Harvey. Julia Gosling, Emily Clark and Erin Ambrose had the other three goals for Canada, giving them their 13th World title after falling to the U.S. in last year’s title game in Toronto. 

This year’s game was held in New York, and it was the second-highest scoring final between the two teams. The U.S. won a world championship 7-5 in 2015. 

"Oh man, that feels good to win it on U.S. soil," Canada goalie Ann-Renee Desbiens said after the game. "We owed it to them and owed it to ourselves to win that one."

Canada also denied Knight a record 10th World Championship win, although she did become the most decorated player in women’s world championship history with 14 medals. After the game, Poulin gave Knight a hug on the ice. 

"We just said 'that was unbelievable,'" Poulin said.

U.S. coach John Wroblewski echoed the sentiment that it was an outstanding game after being asked about ending the game on a power-play after leaving too many players on the ice. 

"Instead of talking about the isolated events of tonight's game, I think that normally that's an interesting storyline,” he said. “But I think the entity of an amazing 6-5 game is an amazing hockey game that took place."