U.S. women’s national team fans got an unexpected piece of welcome news on Saturday, as multiple reports linked longtime Chelsea manager Emma Hayes to the open head coaching position for the former No. 1 team in the world. Hayes has been confirmed to leave Chelsea at the end of this WSL season, at which point she is expected to lead the USWNT to the 2024 Olympics.

Hayes was not on the shortlist reported by The Athletic last month, which named Australia’s Tony Gustavsson, OL Reign’s Laura Harvey and Juventus’ Joe Montemurro as the three preferred candidates for the job. But to many, she’s seen as the best hire U.S. Soccer could have persuaded to make the jump.

Hayes has won six WSL titles with Chelsea, including the past four years running. She’s also won five FA Cups, two League Cups and one Community Shield. She became the face of the sport’s evolution in England, both as a trailblazer in convincing one of the country’s top clubs to invest in the women’s game and as a manager who maintained an advantage as others followed suit.

Hayes brings a critical eye to a U.S. team at a crossroads. The USWNT’s development and tactical style have struggled to keep the world at arms length, as the global game catches up in women’s national team investment. Here’s what the USWNT can expect from their anticipated hire.

Right coach at the right time

Hayes has a familiarity with the American development pipeline and league systems, without being too close to the program to make bold decisions. One concern about an NWSL hire like Harvey was that coaches with preconceived notions of the USWNT hierarchy might be reluctant to make the necessary changes to push the team into a new era of women’s soccer.

In her time at Chelsea, Hayes seemed to have an eye for emerging superstars, famously recruiting Sam Kerr from the NWSL in 2019, and has always looked for American talent like Crystal Dunn in 2017 and most recently bringing in Americans Catarina Macario and Mia Fishel. She demonstrated an understanding of North American soccer, signing top Canadians Ashley Lawrence and Jessie Fleming as well.

Hayes also has experience coaching in the U.S., managing the Chicago Red Stars in WPS from 2008-10 and serving as technical director for the Western New York Flash and a consultant for the Washington Freedom. She returned to England without an incredible resume — she registered a 23% win percentage in her time in Chicago — but her growth as a manager since then sets her up to return with valuable experience.

If USWNT fans grew impatient with Vlatko Andonovski’s rigidity in his four-year stint with the team, they have reason to be excited for what Hayes brings. Her Chelsea teams are a testament to her willingness to try new things, both in personnel and the team’s style of play. She’s tried the Chelsea defense in both a four- and a three-back based on available players, and she can push the team into a high-flying attack against a bunker but isn’t unwilling to prioritize full-team defense against top competition.

That openness in philosophy should serve Hayes well at the international level and offset some of the perennial concerns of a club manager making the leap to a national team. The nature of the two jobs is very different. Hayes will have to get used to implementing her ideas in just a few weeks out of the year, compared to many months at the club level. She will also have to adjust to the scouting realities of a national team manager, no longer able to compile talent from other countries the way she’s done so well with Chelsea.

History has a way of repeating itself

Hayes’ club record also provides a certain amount of intrigue, especially in the context of her predecessor. Coaching the USWNT requires many jobs within one — managing superstars and bubble players alike, having an eye on the development pipeline to maintain the health of the program and winning. U.S. Soccer and USWNT fans have both felt the conflict between the team trying to reinvent itself while also refusing to drop friendlies against top opponents. Hayes will be a perfect fit for the latter assignment; her Chelsea teams dropped very few games in which they were favored.

But Andonovski came into the role with similar club accolades, and in the end he was not the right manager to see the USWNT through knockout matches against the world’s best. And while Hayes has dominated all facets of English football for many years, there is one trophy that continues to elude her. Her Chelsea teams have never won the Champions League, losing handily to Barcelona in the one final they reached under Hayes. She’s not immune to being out-coached in the heat of a must-win game, and her Chelsea teams don’t always start hot out of the gate.

There is also the issue of U.S. Soccer’s reported plan for the build-up to the Olympics, which would require either interim manager Twila Kilgore or a member of Hayes’ new staff to guide the team until Hayes has finished her final Chelsea campaign in May 2024. It appears the U.S. would rather get their preferred candidate for the long-term future than make a hasty hire with the Olympics in mind, but pressure will be on Hayes to communicate her scouting and tactical ideas through the grapevine. Everyone will expect the USWNT to contend for the Olympic gold after a disappointing World Cup campaign.

Unclear communication and a sacrificed major tournament could complicate Hayes’ place in the locker room before she even gets a chance to run the team full-time, especially with a player pool as competitive as the USWNT’s. But her track record of managing those moments is as strong as they come, and if anyone can handle a tricky transition, it would be a coach of her caliber. The U.S. has found their coach, and now it’s time for her to build a team that can contend for glory once again.

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

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.