All Scores

The many layers of Stanford’s Cameron Brink

(Darren Yamashita/USA TODAY Sports)

Cameron Brink has a note taped to the inside of her locker. It’s there so she can see it every day — before every practice, after every game. Even if she opens her locker because she forgot something, it’s there, reminding her.

It’s from a former Stanford staff member, Jaylyn Savage. When she left to take another job, she wrote Brink the note.

Composed with thick black ink on white paper, it starts with a greeting. Then comes the part that has stuck with Brink since she first read it.

“It’s so refreshing to see someone as talented as you still be a kid at heart. Never lose that quality. So many athletes of your caliber don’t have that.”

She’s trying not to.

As a basketball player, Brink is thriving. She’s averaging a near double-double with 14.4 points and 9.6 rebounds per game for No. 6 Stanford, and she’s second in the country with 3.6 blocks per contest. Brink was on the cover of SLAM and is a Wooden Award candidate. She’s even tempered the foul problem that plagued her first two seasons. And on Jan. 29, she pulled off a rare feat, recording a triple-double with 10 blocks.

On the court, she’s the best she’s ever been.

Off the court, things aren’t as easy.

Sometimes, Brink lays in bed at the end of the day and thinks about how great everything should be.

“But I don’t feel OK,” she says. “And that’s scary.”

That’s why the note means so much to Brink. Because Savage saw through everything else. Savage saw her for her.

Beyond the intense player on the court. Beyond the pretty face partnering with companies on Instagram. Beyond the Stanford student. Beyond the mental health advocate.

Beyond her own negative thoughts.

Just Cameron.

So when days get heavy, when outside voices are talking too much, or when the chatter in her own head can’t be quieted, Brink can look at the note and know who she is.

***

Cameron Brink’s relationship with basketball started with resistance.

Her early memories were centered on things on the outskirts of the game itself. The outfits she wore, the music that played, the people she loved.

Cameron’s introduction to the sport came at Davidson. Her godbrother, Stephen Curry, was playing for the Wildcats, and the Brinks were in attendance. Cameron couldn’t tell you the score of that first game or how Curry played. But she can recall her excitement about the red-and-white cheerleader outfit she was wearing and the tall brown boots her mom paired with it. She remembers dancing in the crowd and the pure joy that came along with being allowed to wear a temporary tattoo on her face.

“I loved him and I loved the atmosphere. I loved putting on the outfit, but I was not good at paying attention,” she laughs. “It sounds terrible, but it all felt so normal to me. It was just what we did. I grew up around it.”

Basketball is written into the Brink family history.

Michelle Bain and Greg Brink attended Virginia Tech at the same time on basketball scholarships. Their practice facilities were connected by a common hallway, and every day the two passed each other with friendly greetings and flirty jokes. But Greg was shy and never made a move, so after a few years of their hallway meetings, Michelle knew it would fall to her to take their relationship out of the friend zone.

She invited Greg to a pick-up game, and the rest is history.

Their relationship — and eventual marriage — led to long careers at Nike as well as friendships with other athletes, including Dell and Sonya Curry.

By the time Cameron and her older brother Cy were born, the sport had been a catalyst for countless milestones in Michelle and Greg’s lives. Perhaps that’s why Cameron was so resistant to the sport at first. It was commonplace, and she had too much spirit to be the same.

“I always like to be contrarian,” she says.

img
Cameron in her Davidson cheerleader uniform
img
Cameron and brother Cy (Photos courtesy of Michelle Bain-Brink)

In Cameron’s young mind, there were better things to do. She dreamt of being an artist, so she went to art camp. She was fascinated with space and spent time researching and learning about wormholes. She sat for hours discussing Pokémon with Cy — Blaziken and Charizard are still her favorites.

Michelle and Greg encouraged her to explore those interests. They didn’t force basketball on her. They knew better.

“If you’re the one pushing your kid into the sport, it’s not going to end well for anyone,” Michelle says with a laugh. “They have to want to do it.”

And even when Cameron finally gave basketball a chance, it wasn’t the love of the game that inspired her to keep going. That came later. Instead, it was her innate desire to win.

One summer the Brinks came back to the United States from Amsterdam, where Cameron lived from ages 8-11 thanks to her parents’ jobs with Nike. She had planned to spend her summer drawing and lounging by the pool. Instead, she went to basketball camp.

Cameron needed a way to expend some of her bubbling energy, so Michelle made her a deal. “If you try this camp for one day, we will take you whitewater rafting,” she told her daughter.

It was an intriguing proposition, so Cameron accepted. Besides, if she hated it, Michelle assured her that she wouldn’t have to go back.

She did hate it. Cameron came home with her hair plastered to her forehead, sweaty from the camp that took place mostly outside in humid North Carolina. Most of the other campers were boys who had years of experience, and compared to them, Cameron was terrible.

She hated that more than she hated the idea of playing basketball.

So, with the desire to win propelling her, Cameron went back. And before she knew it, the little contrarian was just like everyone else. She finally loved basketball.

***

Cameron Brink was desperate to be tall.

So desperate that the idea of being under 6-feet made her cry.

Michelle remembers taking Cameron to a pediatrician when they moved from Amsterdam to Oregon. During the check-up, a nurse took her height and weight and then plotted it on a graph to predict how tall 11-year-old Cameron would be as an adult.

The nurse looked at Cameron and informed her that she would grow to be 5-foot-11. Cameron whipped her head around to look at Michelle. Her blue eyes welled with tears and her lower lip protruded into a pout.

The nurse tried her best to reassure the young patient. “You have tall parents,” she said, “so you’ll probably be tall, too.”

But the nurse didn’t understand. Michelle was 6-3, Greg was 6-7, and Cy was already rocketing up in height — he eventually grew to be 6-9. Five-foot-11 was not tall.

“No,” Cameron said. “I want to be taller than my mom!”

Just a few years after that appointment, she was. But by then she was in high school, and suddenly, being tall wasn’t as much fun.

Cameron also played volleyball, and during her freshman season the team had a dress code for game days: no pants; skirts or dresses only. As a kid, Cameron loved dressing up, but as she grew up and into sports, Cameron felt out of place in a dress. Now, she was being pushed out of her comfort zone.

Michelle remembers her daughter in turmoil trying to find something to wear. Skirts were too short on her tall frame. She didn’t have the right shoes. It wasn’t her clothes that were the problem, it was her body. The height Cameron once coveted was suddenly undesirable, and her frame was no longer slender, it was too skinny. At least, that’s what she was hearing.

“She suffered a fair amount of body-shaming, even from her teammates,” Michelle says. “And it made her very self-conscious.”

As she progressed through high school, things got worse. Cameron was thriving on the basketball court, leading Southridge High School to two state titles, but she was miserable.

“We noticed the joy of the game being sucked away,” Michelle says. “And if you can’t have fun playing in high school, then when can you?”

Cameron doesn’t say much about those days at Southridge.

It feels so long ago now, but at the time, what she calls “high school drama” consumed her. After three years there, Cameron realized it wasn’t a healthy atmosphere. So, with one year remaining, she transferred to Mountainside, a school that had just opened in 2017.

“I wouldn’t even say I was being bullied,” Cameron says. “Because bullying gives them too much power. They weren’t bullies. And I just decided to remove myself. I knew I deserved better, so I left. And I’m happy I did.”

It was the right decision, but at the time, Cameron agonized over it. And when she officially filed her transfer paperwork, things got worse before they got better.

“I was distraught,” she says. “Because kids can be so mean, and so hateful.”

Former classmates egged and toilet-papered her house so many times that the Brinks had to get a security system. They could have pressed charges, but they didn’t bother. Instead, she emerged from the experience with a new mindset.

“Stop questioning yourself. Be authentically you,” she says. “Don’t change for others, and don’t give others the power to make you feel small.”

Now, she embraces all six feet and four inches of herself.

Being tall, she says, is one of her favorite things. The fears she had about wearing skirts and dresses during her freshman year are gone, too. She channels little Cam in her Davidson cheerleader outfit and wears what she wants, when she wants.

Her signature game-day hairstyle — two long, blonde braids — is just one piece of the puzzle. Now, Cameron loves how she looks in her uniform, in a chic makeup look, in a dress, and even in a bikini. Her Instagram account showcases all of those looks in a perfectly curated grid of pictures.

At first, Michelle was worried about the swimsuit photos.

“I was like, ‘Cameron, are you sure that’s what you want to put out there?’ But then I thought about it, and we talked about what an empowering statement it is for her,” Michelle says. “So I’ve learned to love it, because she’s confident and comfortable in her own skin. It’s a positive outcome for everything she suffered in high school.”

***

Cameron Brink can be as good as she wants to be.

That’s what Curtis Borchardt remembers thinking when he met her at 14 years old. He and his wife Susan King Borchardt, both former Stanford basketball players, train professional athletes such as Breanna Stewart, Sue Bird and Kelsey Plum. Never teenagers.

But they both felt a pull to Cameron.

The Borchardts had just moved to Oregon and ended up five minutes away from the Brinks. Cameron was fresh off a Stanford basketball camp, and staff members knew Susan could help the teen, already 6-4 and all limbs. While Susan and Cameron worked on strengthening her body, Curtis became her post coach.

Susan can still remember the first conversation she had with Cameron.

Despite her height, Cameron managed to make herself small sitting at the table with her mom. She kept her head down and didn’t make eye contact with Susan. With every question, Cameron glanced up at Michelle, who had to do all the talking.

“To see this beautiful, confident woman now, so much growth has happened,” Susan says.

“She’s like this unicorn athlete who is so graceful and in control of her body, but when we first started, I’d be like, ‘OK Cam, let’s try a reverse lunge,’ and she legit fell on her ass.”

But even then, when Cameron was quiet and a bit awkward on her feet, Susan could sense an innate passion.

It’s easy to see now when the junior blocks shots and lets out screams of celebration. Or when she runs to hug a teammate after a big play. Susan watched firsthand as Cameron took that flickering spirit and set it completely ablaze.

“She’s got some fire to her in a way that not a lot of people do,” Susan says. “I love that you can see that when you watch her play now.”

When Curtis met Cameron, he felt a kinship to her. At 7-feet tall, Curtis also had all the physical gifts necessary to excel, but he didn’t get specialized post coaching until college. In Cameron, he saw himself, and he wanted to help her.

After their first session, Curtis sent a text to Cameron’s mom: “The sky’s the limit.”

She picked up on things quickly and had an attention to detail that surprised him. But more than anything, he loved how fearless she was.

Off the court, Cameron couldn’t look Susan in the eye. On it, she wasn’t afraid of anything. Including Curtis.

“She was going against a 7-foot, 245-pound man, and I was guarding her with some physicality,” he says. “She never backed away from that.”

After watching Cameron grow up on and off the court, the Borchardts think of her like their fifth child.

Every time she’s home, Cameron makes sure to spend time with her second family, and when she’s back at school, the Borchardt kids love watching her play on TV.

“We may have played there, but I think Cameron made Stanford cool in their eyes,” Curtis says with a laugh.

Curtis and Susan can’t take credit for Cameron’s decision to play for the Cardinal, either. That was all thanks to her older brother.

Cameron says most people think of her as a jock and don’t know how much she loves to learn. She credits Cy for instilling that quality in her. Cy was the kind of kid that read atlases for fun and memorized facts about the Egyptian pyramids. His photographic memory earned him the nickname “Google.”

For Cameron, her older brother made it cool to be smart. He also inspired her to reach for more academically.

“He has really helped me appreciate a love of learning,” Cameron says. “He really motivated me to get into Stanford.”

And once the school was on her radar, Cameron had no interest in going anywhere else. It was the first school to offer her a scholarship, though the Brinks didn’t realize it at the time.

Cameron attended a camp in eighth grade, and afterward, former associate head coach Amy Tucker approached her parents and told them, “We’d love for her to come here.”

The meaning got lost in translation. Tucker meant on a basketball scholarship, but the Brinks assumed she was encouraging Cameron to come back to camp the next year. It wasn’t until other offers started flooding in that they realized what Tucker had meant.

That camp opened their eyes to just how good Cameron was and could be. As former college basketball players themselves, her parents knew she had potential, but it was easier to see the things she needed to work on.

“I don’t think we dared dream that she was going to be as good as she turned out to be,” Greg says. “So it actually took other people telling us.”

Michelle and Greg knew Cameron had her heart set on Stanford, but they wanted her to keep her options open. She went on unofficial visits to UConn and South Carolina, and Nebraska wanted her to play volleyball and basketball. All great options, just not for Cameron.

“We tried to open her mind to other schools, but she wasn’t having it,” Michelle says.

At Stanford, the Brinks have watched their daughter blossom. She loves going back to Oregon when she gets the chance to play foosball with her brother and eat chocolate waffles with her family. But Stanford is just as much home to her as Oregon is.

She’s forged friendships that make her high school tribulations seem far away. Like with Brooke Demetre, a sophomore on the Cardinal basketball team. She’s the kind of friend who doesn’t mind styling Cameron’s hair into her signature braids before every game. Cameron knows she will eventually need to learn to braid her own hair, but she enjoys the pregame routine with Demetre, who Cameron always repays with a cup of coffee.

She has a special bond with coach Tara VanDerveer as well. She’s funny, Cameron says, and a straight-shooter. VanDerveer always tells it like it is, even when it’s hard to hear.

When Cameron first got on Stanford’s radar, VanDerveer was worried she might not be strong enough, tricked by her thin frame and narrow shoulders.

“Just wait,” Susan said. “Just wait.”

VanDerveer is glad she listened.

***

Cameron Brink doesn’t always know how to be happy.

When she was younger, she thought of herself as a worrier. But worries go away. This didn’t.

During her freshman year in college, COVID-19 hit, and the negativity consumed her. On the outside, Cameron was a phenom, helping Stanford to a national title, the program’s first since 1992. But on the inside, she felt isolated, confused, uneasy. It was then that her worries got a name: anxiety. And with the name came the guilt.

She had no reason to feel this way, she thought, and that made Cameron feel worse.

“I feel so guilty because I live this privileged life,” she says. “And I have so many blessings, so many people who love me, and I’m doing relatively well in basketball. So, why do I feel bad?”

Neither her looks, which were once a source of stress, nor her abilities on the basketball court are causes of anxiety for Cameron. It’s coming from some unknown place, one she has yet to discover.

“It’s just stuff that’s kind of out of my control,” she says. “Which kind of sends you into more of a spiral.”

It’s a never-ending cycle, and one she’s learning to live with.

“My therapist said that human suffering is pain and resistance, and resisting it makes it worse,” Cameron says. “So I think it’s just been accepting it, and that has made it so much better for me. I’m allowing myself to feel.”

Cameron approaches her therapy sessions like she approaches her classes at Stanford. She’s a sponge, ready to soak up as much knowledge as possible. But mental health doesn’t have a textbook. Cameron does her best to learn. And even though she doesn’t fully understand the anxiety that plagues her, there’s one thing about her mental health struggles she knows for sure: She has to talk about them.

That’s why she’s focused a lot of her NIL partnerships on mental health, like the one she has with Chegg, promoting self-care and mindfulness.

Cameron knows what it’s like to be surrounded by people and still feel alone. And if there is a way to lift that loneliness off the shoulders of someone else, she wants to do it.

“You’ll be in a room full of people you love so much, and you’ll be having these thoughts like, ‘Why can’t I just be present?’ And it’s this constant internal battle,” Cameron says. “That’s why I want to talk about it more, because it’s truly such a scary feeling.”

It would be a beautiful story if Cameron could say that she started therapy and the anxiety melted away. If her mental health struggles had been tied up with a bow and cast aside.

Instead, despite all the work she does everyday, things have gotten worse. And she has no idea why.

“I feel like I’m beating myself up because I feel like everything should be fine,” she says. “I go to therapy twice a week to try to figure it out, but it opens up more wounds, and speaking about it makes it more real sometimes. But it’s helping. Therapy helps.”

There’s beauty in that, too. The realness of it all. And as therapy helps Cameron, she’s able to help others.

Recently, Cameron held a basketball camp for young girls. One day during lunch, the campers were treated to pizza and a Q&A session with the Stanford star. Nothing was off limits. One by one, the girls raised their hands. They asked. Cameron answered. Basketball barely came up.

“They asked me so many insightful questions,” she says. “It was nice to have an honest conversation with them. I told them there are a lot of days that are really hard. But it was really cool to connect with these girls on a deeper level.”

That moment, shared over pizza with girls that want to be just like her, is one that Cameron comes back to often. She feels its impact in her daily life. And she’s not the only one feeling the positive effects.

“She’s going to impact more lives that she’s even aware of,” Curtis says.

***

Cameron Brink is a study in contrast.

She’s like a coin with infinite sides. The more you flip it, the more you learn.

The Cameron you see on the court is just one side. A fierce competitor who, as her mom says, will step on your neck if you get in her way.

A 6-4 shot-blocking machine with long, blonde braids, icy-blue eyes and a sugar-cube smile.

She’s also that little girl in a Davidson cheerleading uniform.

She’s tall. She’s strong. She’s brave. She’s beautiful.

She’s Cy’s sister, Michelle and Greg’s daughter. Steph’s godsister. Brooke’s coffee-drinking and hair-braiding buddy.

She has a wonderful, privileged life. And she has anxiety. Both of those things can exist at once.

And though many of her traits seem to be at odds with each other, they combine to make Cameron Brink perfectly herself.

That’s something she never wants to lose.

Eden Laase is a Staff Writer at Just Women’s Sports. Follow her on Twitter @eden_laase.

Oklahoma Wins 2025 NCAA Gymnastics Championship Title

Oklahoma gymnast Danae Fletcher lifts the 2025 NCAA championship trophy with her teammates.
Oklahoma has three of the last four NCAA gymnastics titles. (C. Morgan Engel/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)

No. 2-seed Oklahoma won their third NCAA gymnastics championship in four years on Saturday, topping fellow finalists No. 4 Utah, No. 5 UCLA, and No. 7 Missouri with an overall score of 198.0125.

With seven titles since 2014, Oklahoma regains its reputation as the sport's current dynasty, finishing atop the podium after falling short of a three-peat last year.

"Our theme wasn't redemption this year at all," Oklahoma head coach K.J. Kindler told reporters after Saturday's victory.

"Does it make it sweet? Yes, but this team was capable of this last year. We just failed. And people fail all the time. They fail every day. And we talk about [it] all the time that the glory is in getting back up again."

Freedom allowed Oklahoma to reclaim NCAA gymnastics crown

Last year, the then-defending champion Sooners stumbled in a shocking loss in the national semifinals, a fate the 2024 champion LSU squad similarly suffered last Thursday, when the top-seeded Tigers failed to advance to the final meet of 2025.

Between overcoming the semifinals hurdles themselves and seeing LSU ousted — arguably Oklahoma's biggest competition entering the weekend — the Sooners were able to breathe easier and enjoy their last competition of the season.

"After advancing, and we got to today, we were free," said senior Audrey Davis. "We had no weight on our shoulders. We were free to do our best gymnastics."

That freedom had the Sooners leading the charge, finishing their first rotation on beam tied with eventual runners-up UCLA before taking full control of the meet — Oklahoma grabbed a second-rotation lead on the floor and never relinquished it.

As for the rest of the field, Missouri earned a program-record third-place finish in their first-ever NCAA final, while nine-time champions Utah closed their season in fourth.

For Oklahoma senior Jordan Bowers, the final weekend of her collegiate career was one for the books.

In addition to the team title, Bowers won the individual all-around competition during Thursday's semifinals — a day that also crowned LSU’s Kailin Chio (vault), Missouri’s Helen Hu (beam), and UCLA's Jordan Chiles (uneven bars) and Brooklyn Moors (floor) as national apparatus champions.

"Just truly a fairytale ending," Bowers said on the ABC broadcast. "I'm so freaking proud of this team, and I'm so proud to be a Sooner."



Stanford Breaks NCAA Softball Attendance Record with ‘Big Swing’

An NCAA record crowd watches Stanford softball host Cal in the school's football stadium on Saturday.
Stanford welcomed over 13,000 fans to their record-setting Saturday game against Cal. (Eakin Howard/Getty Images)

Stanford shattered the NCAA softball attendance record this weekend, welcoming 13,207 fans inside the university’s football stadium for Saturday's "Big Swing"  game against Cal.

In the most-attended non-football contest in Stanford Athletics' history, the Cardinal softball crowd surpassed the sport's previous attendance record of 12,566, set on the first day of the 2024 Women's College World Series (WCWS) in Oklahoma City.

The history-making game also blew past the NCAA softball regular-season record of 9,259 fans, a feat reached less than two weeks ago when reigning champions Oklahoma defeated local rivals Oklahoma State on April 9th.

"It was kind of like a mini College World Series experience," Stanford junior outfielder Kyra Chan said after the game.

Despite dropping the record-breaking matchup 10-8 to their new ACC rivals, No. 16 Stanford ultimately secured the three-game series against the Golden Bears with wins on Thursday and Friday.

Friday's 9-3 victory was particularly impactful, clinching the Cardinal a spot in their first-ever ACC championship tournament next month — the first postseason stop as Stanford hunts a third-straight appearance in the WCWS semifinals.

Nebraska volleyball lines up on the court for the August 2023 Volleyball Day in the university's football stadium.
Nebraska volleyball broke the overall US women's sports attendance record in 2023. (Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)

Stanford softball fuels argument for larger women's sports venues

Softball isn't the only sport leading the recent surge in record-breaking NCAA women's sports crowds.

After shifting a volleyball match into its football stadium in August 2023, Nebraska welcomed not just the sport's biggest crowd, but the largest to ever attend any women's sporting event in the US.

Shortly thereafter, Iowa's "Crossover at Kinnick" blasted through the NCAA women's basketball attendance mark by moving an exhibition game featuring the Caitlin Clark-led Hawkeyes into the university's football venue.

Though the move to massive football stadiums was intentional to snag both Nebraska's and Iowa's respective records, Stanford's venue shift was not initially an attendance-hunting move.

The Cardinal's entire 2025 softball season is being played on the gridiron as the team's new $50 million stadium and state-of-the-art training facility is under construction.

Taking advantage of that added capacity was a no-brainer, with Stanford specifically branding and marketing their rivalry "Big Swing" game to capitalize on their temporary digs — and to continue making the overall case for expanding women's sports' venues.

"I think that you see a consistent theme that there aren't big enough venues for women's sports to be able to draw the fans that they can draw," Stanford softball head coach Jessica Allister pointed out.

"Hopefully, a lot of people who showed up to Stanford for the first time to watch a softball game will come back and see us in our beautiful stadium."

Missing Rodman, Injury-Struck Washington Downs 2024 NWSL Champ Orlando

Washington Spirit forward Makenna Morris celebrates striker Gift Monday's game-winning goal against Orlando on Saturday.
Gift Monday scored the lone goal in Washington's Saturday. win over Orlando. (Rich Storry/NWSL via Getty Images)

The Washington Spirit scored another unlikely victory on Saturday, snapping the Orlando Pride's 22-game home unbeaten streak with a narrow 1-0 win — fueled by newly signed Nigerian striker Gift Monday's debut NWSL goal.

"We knew it was going to be a fight," Spirit goalkeeper Aubrey Kingsbury said after the game. "We know they're physical, so we came [and] we matched that."

Washington continues to eke out wins despite a depleted roster, with a full 11 players unavailable for Saturday’s 2024 NWSL championship rematch due to injury.

At the top of that injury list is star forward Trinity Rodman, with the 22-year-old's agent telling The Washington Post that she's "taking time away from team activities" to meet with a club doctor in London about her lingering back issues.

Other noteworthy absences to the Spirit's current lineup include 2024 NWSL Rookie and Midfielder of the Year Croix Bethune (hip), defensive midfielder Hal Hershfelt (ankle), veteran defender Casey Krueger (knee), and French forward Ouleye Sarr (SEI – back).

Washington, however, continues finding ways to win, with the Spirit sitting third in the league standings, where they're tied with second-place Orlando on points.

That said, despite flipping the script against the reigning champs, the Spirit's roster woes — and, in particular, Rodman’s uncertain timeline — casts a shadow over the club's 2025 redemption tour.

Kansas City's Kayla Sharples celebrates a goal with her teammates on Saturday.
Kansas City is the only remaining unbeaten team in the 2025 NWSL season. (Jamie Squire/NWSL via Getty Images)

Kansas City rises atop the NWSL

Also benefitting from the Spirit's win was the Kansas City Current, who used both Washington's victory and their own comfortable 2-0 result against the 10th-place Houston Dash on Saturday to leapfrog the Pride and claim first place on the NWSL table.

With five wins in as many matchdays, the Current are now the league's only undefeated team remaining this season.

Angel City Falls to Gotham, Ends NWSL Unbeaten Streak

Alanna Kennedy and her Angel City teammates react to their first 2025 NWSL loss on Friday.
Angel City fell to Gotham in their first loss of the 2025 NWSL season on Friday. (Harry How/NWSL via Getty Images)

After a red-hot start to the 2025 NWSL season, Angel City saw their unbeaten streak squashed by a Gotham side that defeated the LA club 4-0 on Friday.

Failing to register a single shot on target against the NJ/NY club, ACFC's loss dropped their goal differential to -1, dropping the team to fifth on the NWSL table despite sitting tied with the now fourth-place Gotham on points.

Angel City's unexpected moonshot in the season's first four matchdays is still a strong sign for the 2022 expansion club, but Friday’s stumble underlines just how much more progress they’ll look to make under incoming manager Alexander Straus.

"We have a really young squad right now," said Angel City captain Sarah Gorden following the game. "And we just played a really experienced team. This is part of the process, and it's part of a long season."

Gotham's Esther and Jessica Silva high-five after defeating Angel City 4-0 on Friday.
Esther notched a brace in Gotham's 4-0 Friday victory. (Harry How/NWSL via Getty Images)

Gotham snags momentum with second major 2025 win

Bolstered by star forward Midge Purce's return — not to mention a brace from striker Esther — Saturday's win returned 2024 NWSL semifinalist Gotham to the league's upper echelon following an offseason roster overhaul and a mediocre 2025 season start.

Along with a victory over North Carolina last week, the NJ/NY club now holds significant season momentum with their two straight statement wins.

"We've been working very hard in training, and it's showing in the matches," said Esther. "Everyone is giving their all, and we're really united as a group."

Ultimately, while Angel City’s growing pains were perhaps inevitable, Gotham’s sudden surge after a slow start is shaking up the NWSL standings.

Start your morning off right with Just Women’s Sports’ free, 5x-a-week newsletter.