When the WNBA reached a new collective bargaining agreement last January, the measures that would pay the players higher salaries and offer more benefits stemmed in large part from an innovative Changemakers program. AT&T, Deloitte and Nike signed on to be the leading investors and drivers of marketing and branding strategy for the WNBA.

As the league prepared to tip off its 25th season last month, it announced a fourth Changemaker with even greater ambitions.

Google, as part of a multi-year agreement with the WNBA, was committing not only to provide business support but also to elevate the visibility of the league and its players. The company partnered with ESPN to broadcast 25 regular season games on the network and became an associate sponsor of its 30 for 30 and ESPN Films Series. It also agreed to drive more awareness for the WNBA through its search engines and platforms.

Kate Johnson, Google’s director of partnerships for content and sports media, was at the center of the negotiations. A decorated rower at Michigan from 1997-2001 and a 2004 Olympic medalist, Johnson was uniquely driven to support a women’s sports league that’s a leader in both on-court performance and off-court activism.

Just Women’s Sports spoke with Johnson about the origins of the partnership, the importance of collaborating with a media company and the decision to get involved in women’s sports now.

You joined Google in late 2019. What can you tell me about the initial conversations with the WNBA and how the partnership came to fruition?

I would back up and say that we’re not new to sports partnerships. When I think across all of our different product areas, we do have long-standing partnerships. But search and consumer apps, this is really our first foray into this, and a lot of that stems from our desire to be helpful in the world. That’s been a real focus of Google’s over the last couple of years.

Through that lens, women’s sports makes a ton of sense for us because it fits and aligns completely with our brand values, and specifically with the WNBA. We’ve partnered in kind of shorter-term moments with various women’s sports entities, but when we were looking at where we could have a longer-term impact, the WNBA really is at the forefront of progress for gender equity, which has been an important focus of ours. And the same thing with racial justice. So there’s a real synergy with our values.

You were an athlete yourself who went to the Olympics. On a personal level, was it important for you to get involved in women’s sports in this way?

I didn’t always get to choose what I got to work on, but when it comes to getting to choose, yes. I definitely positioned myself as a women’s sports advocate, and I think sometimes you’re waiting for the world to catch up a little bit. And the time is so obviously right. I mean, it’s always been the right time to invest in women’s sports, but I think the cultural zeitgeist right now is at a place where I don’t think we’re going to ever turn back after this moment. This year was a big tipping point for women’s sports, and I think the momentum will just continue.

I love that the deal is centered on reach, particularly getting the WNBA in front of more people with the 25 games on ESPN this year. Why was that a cornerstone of this deal in your eyes?

We do media investments really well. We have deep relationships with ESPN, with Disney, with Turner, meaning that we are advertisers. But I think if you’re not using those relationships to also do good in the world, you’re missing an opportunity.

The conversation with ESPN was really looking at the impact that we can make through those relationships that we have there, knocking heads with female leadership over there to say, “Where can we, our two brands together, uniquely make a difference?” And then those things certainly rolled into the WNBA being absolutely the right fit for us.

We have all of these examples of when more games are aired on national television, the ratings deliver. We saw it last year when TV viewership for the WNBA was up 68 percent. What are your goals on the TV side?

Our goals are definitely to drive more visibility of women’s sports and, with the launch of our partnership, to drive discoverability and distribution. We can do that just by being Google, in the sense of making sure we’re connecting more fans to getting the highlights on the WNBA, the scores, where the game is playing, what time it’s on — all in just a one-stop-shop when they Google “WNBA.”

And then that translates to the work that we’ve done with ESPN, which was making sure that it wasn’t just doing a media buy with ESPN, which so often these partnerships require. It was actually looking at that media investment and saying, “Can we do more?”

Another part of the deal was Google becoming a sponsor of ESPN’s 30 for 30 and ESPN Films Series. We just had a chance to see ESPN’s “144” doc on the WNBA bubble season. Would you like to see more WNBA and women’s sports docs through this activation?

Getting into the longform content, telling female athletes’ stories — that’s a really big part of the equation, which is why I’m really proud of that part of this partnership. My whole career has been about traditional sponsorship. This is not a traditional sponsorship approach. It’s not about just checking boxes, like doing the obligatory media by doing the obligatory activation. It’s, “OK, what uniquely can Google help the WNBA solve for? Where can we help in women’s sports?” And if we can help create more production of games on ESPN to drive more visibility, fantastic. If we can connect more fans through search to the games they want to watch, when they want to watch them, then we’re doing our job.

With the groundswell we’re seeing behind women’s sports and the WNBA, why was it important to invest in the league now?

I think there just comes a point where it’s like, what are we waiting for? I feel really good about the WNBA for so many reasons. But I think it’s really powerful that these women just played at the NCAA tournament and were kind of showing the inequalities in the game and in the tournaments, and then we get to roll it into taking a stand as an important brand for women’s sports with the W, and especially having watched the women last year use their platform for change. I think it’s giving them credit where it’s due.

Yeah, that’s important to note. You had all these outlets covering the inequities between the men’s and women’s tournaments, but then not covering the women’s games.

Yeah, I don’t think it’s enough for brands, especially in women’s sports, to just do the status quo. We have to look at the problem differently and solve for those problems differently.

How integral was Cathy Engelbert to this? She’s only in Year 2 of her role as WNBA commissioner, and now you are the fourth Changemaker she’s helped bring on as a partner of the league.

She’s incredible, what she’s doing in terms of fundraising. It’s always a smart time to invest in women’s sports, but it also depends on the medium that you’re talking about and she’s looking for real-time investors to actually invest in a franchise model. I saw the quote where six of the 12 teams have actually been profitable over the last two years. Like, that doesn’t happen in men’s sports very often either. So what she’s doing is transformative.

For us, having an innovative thought leader over there, driving the W forward into this next chapter is another reason why it makes so much sense for us to join.

What else can you say about this partnership?

Somebody asked me about this other day: One of the greatest forms of flattery is actually copying. I’m not saying that we’re going to see anybody copying us yet in this space, but if that were a byproduct of this, I would be so proud because I think this is a territory where it’s not elbows out, like defend to protect your turf. It’s going to take a full-court press, everybody playing their role to elevate the game. We’re doing our job and we invite more brands to come to the table.

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.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.