Two weeks into Athletes Unlimited’s Volleyball season, the action is delivering on its promise. Week 3 begins Wednesday night amid continued shifts atop the leaderboard.

Bethania De La Cruz moved into first place with 1,779 total points, while last week’s leader, Dani Drews, fell to third wth 1,413 points. In between them is Karsta Lowe, who finished fifth last season, with 1,455 points. Sheilla Castro has moved into fourth with 1,319 points.

The competition remains tight atop the leaderboard, albeit a little less so than in Week 2. A few new faces have moved into the top 10, and others have simply shifted or remained in place. While De La Cruz holds a firm lead of 324 points, a mere 212 points separates fifth and 10th place.

Just Women’s Sports has a few storylines to follow as the competition resumes Wednesday.

Bethania De La Cruz secures the top spot

Bethania De La Cruz took command of the leaderboard in Week 2, though her lead is by no means safe.

De La Cruz showcased her draft savvy in Week 2, as her team helped her set the single-match kills record during their loss Friday to Team Stivrins. With 27 kills in that game, De La Cruz is now third in the league with 87 through the first two weeks of the season. Karsta Lowe is first with 94. The outside hitter also has 66 digs on the season.

Can anyone catch De La Cruz in Week 3? While it seems unlikely that she would surrender her lead given how dominant she’s looked through two weeks of play, a bad game or two could put any one of the league’s top players right back in the mix.

De La Cruz also has extra motivation on her side, looking to take care of unfinished business after finishing as runner-up to AU champion Jordan Larson last season.

The Sheilla Castro show

For the first time in her Athletes Unlimited career, Sheilla Castro is a captain.

Through just two weeks, Castro has made major improvements over last season. On Saturday, the opposite hitter posted a career-high 17 kills against Team Drews for a season-high 329 points in a single game. She added to her 654 total points in Week 1 with 653 more in Week 2.

The #NootSheilla connection is back for Week 3 🥳

...this time in purple 💜@sheillacastro | #AUVB pic.twitter.com/T2eWGjb7eD

— Athletes Unlimited (@AUProSports) March 27, 2022

Castro’s surge should not come as a surprise. A member of the Brazilian national team, she is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and has won eight championships while playing overseas in Brazil, Turkey and Italy.

Castro is on pace to improve upon last season’s performance by nearly 1,000 points, and if she keeps it up, she could accomplish even more than that.

Into the top 10

Two of the biggest stars in Week 2, Leah Edmond and Nomaris Vélez Agosto also entered the top 10.

Edmond recorded 200-plus points in the final two games of the week. Her best performance came Saturday, when she posted a career-high 19 kills against Team Valentin-Anderson. As she steadily climbs, Edmond already has amassed nearly half of her point total from last year. The outside hitter currently sits in eighth place, 25 points behind seventh place and fewer than 200 points behind fourth-place captain Sheilla Castro.

Vélez Agosto, the 2021 Defensive Player of the Year, has also shown improvements from last season. On Wednesday against Team Valentin-Anderson, she recorded a career-high 18 digs for Team De La Cruz.

Vélez Agosto began last season on a tear and tapered off toward the end. Her consistency will be an X-factor in the last three weeks of this AU season.

Emma Hruby is an associate editor at Just Women’s Sports.

Unrivaled Basketball and trading card manufacturer Panini America are teaming up, bringing the 3×3 league's first officially licensed trading cards to market on Friday.

As part of a multi-year agreement between the two parties, Panini will debut the Instant Cards just hours before the first full weekend of play in the 2026 Unrivaled season tips off on Friday.

Panini also plans to launch a Rewind set of trading cards celebrating the 2025 inaugural Unrivaled season, among other future drops.

"Our partnership with Unrivaled is a great way to reinforce and showcase our support of the women's game and female athletes," said Panini America SVP of marketing Jason Howarth in the pair's Thursday announcement. "Unrivaled's 3-on-3 format makes for exciting and compelling game play and continuing to work with the best players in the world in this format made this partnership make perfect sense."

Following Monday's Season 2 tip-off, Unrivaled is continuing to form strategic partnerships as the offseason pro league grows in popularity.

"We want to meet fans where they are, and Panini's history in this space makes them an ideal partner to highlight the biggest moments for women's basketball's biggest stars," said Unrivaled president Alex Bazzell.

How to purchase Unrivaled Instant Cards

The full Unrivaled Instant Card set will release online at 3:08 PM ET on Friday at PaniniAmerica.net.

US women are lighting up the ice, performing record-breaking short programs at the US Figure Skating Championships on Wednesday as the nation's top skaters compete to represent Team USA at the 2026 Winter Olympics in February.

Currently atop the field is 26-year-old Amber Glenn, with the reigning back-to-back national champion posting the highest short program score in event history on Wednesday.

Glenn's 83.05-point performance surpassed the 81.11-point previous record set just minutes before by her 20-year-old teammate, reigning world champion Alysa Liu.

"I think that was one of my most enjoyable experiences competing ever," Glenn said afterwards.

With Liu and Glenn leading the charge, the US is aiming to end a 20-year Olympic medal drought in women's singles figure skating in Milan, Italy, this winter — and Team USA has even more depth on their side.

A full six of the world's Top-17 skaters hail from the US, with 18-year-old Isabeau Levito — who claimed third in Wednesday's short program competition — joining Glenn and Liu in the Top 5.

Team USA can send only three singles skaters to next month's Winter Games, with the national selection committee assessing each athlete's full season — not just their performances at this week's championships — before announcing the Olympic-bound trio on Sunday.

How to watch the 2026 US Figure Skating Championships

The women's singles competition will conclude with Friday's free skate, which kicks off at 3 PM ET before the top skaters in the standings take the ice at 8 PM ET on NBC and Peacock.

The 2026 US Olympic Figure Skating Team will then be announced at 2 PM ET on Sunday, live on NBC.

This month's USWNT roster featured one notable gap, as the absence of Portland Thorns midfielder Sam Coffey stirred up rumors that the 27-year-old is finalizing a move to the WSL to join the top-tier UK league's frontrunners, Manchester City.

First reported by The Guardian, ESPN added on Thursday that Manchester City will ante up a base transfer fee around $800,000 to add Coffey to the Citizens' roster — though the number could rise as negotiations continue and parties finalize a deal.

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The national team stalwart will reportedly travel to Manchester in the near future to ink a potential contract, but Coffey currently remains under contract with Portland until 2027, having signed an extension with the Thorns in 2024.

Coffey has been a mainstay for her NWSL club since Portland drafted the Penn State alum in 2021, but the UK league's pull could persuade her to join her USWNT teammates Alyssa Thompson (Chelsea), Emily Fox (Arsenal), Phallon Tullis-Joyce (Manchester United), and Naomi Girma (Chelsea) in making the leap to the WSL.

Currently sitting six points clear of six-time reigning champion Chelsea atop the 2025/26 WSL table, Manchester City has reportedly been searching for "the right defensive midfield option" as they pursue their first league title since 2016.

This weekend's SEC slate brings the heat, as the stacked NCAA basketball conference gears up for more than one high-profile ranked matchup on Sunday.

Undefeated No. 2 Texas will visit Baton Rouge to take on No. 12 LSU, with the Tigers looking to add to their 80-59 Thursday win over unranked Georgia as they continue battling back from a dismal 0-2 start in 2025/26 conference play.

"We think we're just going to go in there and out-jump, out-leap somebody," said LSU boss Kim Mulkey following last Sunday's loss to No. 7 Vanderbilt. "You're not going to do that in this league."

"This year, the [SEC] is every bit as good as last year — when you really think about it, it's probably way better," Longhorns head coach Vic Schaefer told the Austin American-Statesman on Thursday. "The big thing right now is we've got to get better."

Texas's clash with LSU opens a tough stretch for the Longhorns, as they face AP Poll headliners No. 3 South Carolina, No. 5 Oklahoma, No. 6 Kentucky, and No. 7 Vanderbilt in the coming weeks.

Sunday's other SEC blockbuster between the Sooners and the Wildcats is all about redemption, as Oklahoma aims to bounce back from their 74-69 upset loss to No. 18 Ole Miss on Thursday while Kentucky looks to put their 64-51 Thursday loss to unranked Alabama in the rearview mirror.

How to watch ranked SEC basketball on Sunday

No. 2 Texas will tip off Sunday's ranked SEC slate against No. 12 LSU at 3 PM ET, airing live on ESPN.

Then at 4 PM ET, No. 5 Oklahoma will visit No. 6 Kentucky, with live coverage on the SEC Network.