Claudia Longo is a redshirt sophomore at the University of Washington where she plays midfield for the women’s soccer team. Originally from Issaquah, Washington, Longo won two state championships with her high school team before being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis during her senior year. Below, she talks with JWS about her career in soccer thus far, her diagnosis, and how she continues to persevere through adversity. 

Since you are from the area, was University of Washington always where you knew you wanted to go to school?

Yeah, I mean, I grew up a U-Dub [UW] fan — it was everywhere in the neighborhood and U-Dub is literally in my backyard. So it was pretty cool to receive that offer. But in the beginning, I was looking to go explore other parts of the country. I was definitely looking to “get out,” but once I visited the campus, took the tour, and met the coaches and players, I was like, “Okay, this is it. This is where I want to be.”

Your high school was pretty competitive, too. I read that you guys won the state championship. How was that? 

It was, and still is, a great program and it has been pretty successful for years now. Tom Bunnell was our head coach — he is actually retired now but he was great. He won five state championships while he was there. And then actually, when I was there, we won two state championships. It could have been three, I still regret it, but that’s all right. But yeah, it was really fun to play for that squad, too. I actually ended up playing at U-Dub with some of my ex-squad teammates, which was super fun.

When did you start noticing your MS symptoms? 

I first started getting symptoms a couple of years prior to my senior year of high school, but I had no idea what was going on. During my junior year, I went completely numb and had tingling in my legs for a few weeks. I just thought, “Okay, maybe I’m over-training or whatever.” I remember it was mid-game. And I was like, “Okay, my cleats must be too small.” I literally went out, changed my cleats, wore somebody else’s bigger cleats, came back on and it wasn’t helping. My mom took me in to get some blood tests done. Nothing came back. So we were like, “Okay, let’s take a couple weeks off and see what happens.”

I ended up getting a bit better over the course of several months and I was even able to play my senior year. I felt good, but I was getting super tired after my games. I was used to playing the full 90 minutes, but it felt so different. I was throwing up after games, it was just weird. After we won the state championship, I took a couple of weeks off, but then I started training before and after school. I did that for a couple of months and then I started experiencing way more fatigue, a lot of numbness and tingling. I had this thing where when I looked down, I would get electric shocks running from my back to my legs. That was the sign to my parents that, “Okay. Something’s not right here.” We went and saw a neurologist and he ordered several MRIs. That’s when we found out that I had MS. I was diagnosed in March of my senior year. That was a month and a half before I was to graduate and move to U-Dub.

Were you able to finish out your senior spring of soccer or were symptoms too bad at that point to continue? 

Yeah, I was able to finish it out. I remember in the quarterfinal game, I just laid down on the bench for all of halftime and thought, “What is happening?” But I was able to kind of regather myself when that would happen. It mostly happened in the postseason so, obviously, there was a lot of adrenaline and other things playing into it. I was able to grind it out then, but a few months later it was to a point where I just couldn’t keep pushing through.

Once you were diagnosed, did the doctors tell you that you wouldn’t be able to play sports at all?

It was obviously a shock to the system. I really had no idea what was coming, but I was under the care of a great doctor. She told me it as it was, she said, “Yeah, you have MS. You have these symptoms.” But she was confident that I would be able to get back on the field one day. Obviously, it wasn’t going to be easy, but she said that we could make it happen. So that was really reassuring to hear.

Did you have a lot of appointments thereafter? 

Yeah, and I take medication. There is no cure for MS though. You take these medications to stop the progression, basically to stop getting these new lesions in your brain and your spine. Ultimately the goal is that, yes, I’m going to have these symptoms, but let’s prevent any other symptoms in the future from flaring up. So far, I’ve been stable. I’m on great medications that allow me to continue playing soccer, which is awesome.

Congratulations to @ClaudiaLongo99 on earning the 2019 Wayne Gittinger Inspirational Award!

>>https://t.co/NaAy8pEDae#GoHuskies pic.twitter.com/eaE2anLcYk

— Washington Women's Soccer (@UW_WSoccer) January 21, 2020

You were diagnosed your senior year of high school and then you head off to college. What was going through your mind at that point?

I’ll be the first to say it was definitely tough. My initial response was to go on the most aggressive treatment and keep training and doing what I was used to. That was tough. I was doing infusions once a month that made me feel pretty sick. I was throwing up nearly every day and getting pretty bad migraines. But I was still training and pushing through because I wanted to move in for preseason and be on the field. Ultimately, I did move in for my freshman season and I tried to play a couple of weeks of the preseason, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t what my body needed. And so, after pushing through for about six months, I ended up taking a quarter off, moving back home and just taking care of my body.

Taking a quarter off to focus on your health must have been tough. How did you persevere during that time?

My coaches and my teammates were so incredible through all of it. When I first got diagnosed, I reached out to my coach, Lesle Gallimore. She got all of our staff together for a meeting and went over what it was going to look like for me and just made it clear that she was going to do whatever it took to keep me on the team. My teammates all rallied around me, too. So, it’s been really nice to have such a supportive team to help get me through it.

Did you take time off from classes too, or just training?

I actually ended up taking fall quarter completely off from school and soccer. I moved back home and took some time to really process what this new normal was going to look like. I changed my medication to something that was a little less aggressive and that ended up working out really well. I changed my diet. I found new forms of exercise that made me feel good and not like I had to throw up every second. It was tough to not be with the team and not be in college for my freshman year, but it was definitely a blessing in disguise.

When did you return back to school?

I went back for winter quarter, but I only went back for school. I wasn’t ready to play soccer yet. During spring quarter, I slowly started to add soccer back into the mix while I was practicing with the team. I practiced maybe two or three times a week and slowly worked my way back into what I was used to. Lesle coached us through that spring and then also last fall. This past winter is when our new coach, Nicole Van Dyke, came in and took over.

When you did return to soccer, how did it feel?

I still remember to this day, the first time that I trained by myself right before I went back spring quarter to start training with the team. I didn’t care about anything else. I was just so happy to be on the field and to be touching the ball and to have my cleats back on. That was a moment that I had been waiting for for over a year and it just felt so good. At my first practice with the team, I was just stoked to be there. I remember looking at my coach, Amy Griffin, and I just started tearing up. I had no idea what the next several months or years were going to look like, but I was so happy to finally be back with the team. Again, it wasn’t easy. I had a lot of adjusting to do and I was still not feeling great. I was off of the old medication, but I still had some MS symptoms that were getting in the way. It was tough, spring quarter was really tough. I had to learn to adapt to what the new normal was on the field, if that makes sense.

How do you think your experiences overcoming adversity at such a young age affected the athlete and person you are today?

It has really made me appreciate the sport. I’m standing here talking about my experience being a soccer player with MS. There are plenty of people out there with MS who aren’t as fortunate as me. I think each day is a blessing that I get to continue saying that I’m playing the sport. The adversity has really put, not even the sport, but life in perspective for me.

What are your personal goals both in soccer and outside of soccer?

Last year, I was able to play in a couple of games, which was super cool. I’ve had multiple conversations about this with my coaches. They know that I hold myself to almost too high of a standard, but I would definitely love to get back out on the field, see some more playing time and have a bigger impact on my team — both on and off the field, whatever form that looks like.

How would you describe yourself as a player?

I play midfield, so a big part of my game is vision. I like to see myself as a link player. And so one thing that was tough when I came back was I would get these balls in the midfield, but if I turned my shoulder too much or if my body got overheated, I started to have blurry vision and I would get dizzy. That was really tough because I felt like when the ball was at my feet, I had lost that innate vision that I felt like I had played with for so long. Now, I’m working on ways to play smarter. That doesn’t mean that I’m going out on the field and working on checking over my shoulder for an hour — that’s not going to help me. Maybe it’s watching more film instead, so that I’m relearning that vision without having to make my symptoms worse, if that makes sense. My new coach, Nicole, doesn’t treat me like I’m a kid with MS. She holds me to the same standards that she holds everyone else. And if I make a bad pass, she’s on me. She’s not going to ease off because I couldn’t check my shoulder. My coaches keep on pushing me and I think that’s huge.

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.