Picking an 18-player Olympic roster is brutal, and it’s especially hard for the deepest women’s soccer team on the planet. Despite this, Vlatko Andonovski will be choosing his United States women’s national team roster for Tokyo at the end of this week’s Summer Series, and with the player pool tightening up, I’m here to take a stab at slimming the roster down to its final form.

Some of these choices result as much from the available talent as from the team’s preferred tactics.

The USWNT has played consistently in a 4-3-3 formation under Andonovski, with a commitment to full-team defense and an attack that feeds off of catching teams in transition. The team is also the deepest in the world, and many of these roster decisions are made by a matter of degrees. Every last player out in every position is still Olympic quality, which means there are very few bad choices, even if some are quite difficult.

Goalkeepers (2)

This one’s actually easy. You take Alyssa Naeher as your No. 1 goalkeeper because she has experience on the largest stage and a built-in chemistry with the backline, and you take Adrianna Franch as your No. 2 because she’s the next best available keeper with international experience.

Franch has had an exceptional 2021 so far, her fundamentals are some of the best and she’s healthy. Jane Campbell seems to be in the future plans of the federation and Ashlyn Harris has been in the USWNT system for a long time, but Naeher and Franch are the two I trust in this particular tournament.

Defenders (6)

Abby Dahlkemper, Becky Sauerbrunn, Crystal Dunn, and Kelley O’Hara are the defensive locks. Sauerbrunn is the team’s captain, Dahlkemper is one of the best defenders in the world, Dunn excels pretty much anywhere on the field and O’Hara has been locked in with the Washington Spirit.

With the understanding that the team will likely need to rotate center backs on occasion, I would also take Tierna Davidson, who has moved into a leadership role with the Chicago Red Stars in the absence of Julie Ertz. Davidson has also played well at outside back in the past and could take over one of those roles if Dunn or O’Hara sustained an injury. 

In the final spot, one has to think the decision comes down to Emily Sonnett and Midge Purce as fullback depth, and in that circumstance, I’m taking Purce. Sonnett is a talented ball-winner with an eye toward springing the attack and placing the ball at the feet of the forward line, but she is simply not comfortable in defensive transition on the flank. If she were being looked at in a three-back option or as a No. 6, her place on the team would make sense. But in the context of Sonnett’s intended role, she’s the first player out for me. Purce is also not a natural fullback, but she’s improved defensively at the club level over the last year and, like Dunn, she has the ability to slot in as a forward at any time.

Midfielders (5)

The USWNT midfield was all but decided when Julie Ertz sprained her MCL in Chicago’s first regular season NWSL match. And in the face of her possible absence, it looks like the team has decided to … not change very much about the way they play.

With the understanding that Ertz should be healthy enough to go to Tokyo, she still makes my roster. Andi Sullivan is a great player, but she hasn’t gotten a foothold with the team in recent years and Andonovski doesn’t seem willing to take another pure No. 6. The other three players with their ticket to Japan already printed are the trio of Rose Lavelle, Lindsey Horan, and Sam Mewis. Horan and Mewis are now even more important as they’ll be covering for Ertz as she gets back up to speed, and Lavelle will be tasked with play-making from an attacking midfield position.

If the team decides to pack the midfield and leave the frontline on the light side, then there’s room on the squad for both Kristie Mewis and Catarina Macario, who bring different skills to the team. Macario is a future star, one who can play in both the No. 9 and in the No. 10 and for whom this experience would be invaluable as the team eyes the 2023 World Cup. If Macario is the future, Kristie Mewis is the now. Mewis brings a level of game-readiness from her years in the NWSL and has the ability to change games with her passing vision and her willingness to run at a backline.

Macario is going to be a force for years to come, but she hasn’t quite shown the ability to impose her talent on international games this year. If I simply must choose, I’m taking readiness over potential, and that means Mewis.

Forwards (5)

This is the most nuanced and difficult position to evaluate, especially with Tobin Heath on her way back from a long-term injury. Christen Press and Alex Morgan are essential to the roster — both have a wealth of experience and are in very good form. And as controversial as this might seem, with Press excelling on the wing, no one else has snatched the backup No. 9 role. That means the team also needs Carli Lloyd.

From here, the decisions get more complicated. Sophia Smith is a growing talent who’s strong on the ball, but she hasn’t been given much of an opportunity to establish herself at the international level. Lynn Williams is a player with an engine that never quits, and Andonovski has favored her in recent months because she can destabilize other teams with her commitment to pressing from a forward position. That said, she can also be wasteful in front of goal and hasn’t wowed in club play this year. Megan Rapinoe is a fantastic leader and still lethal in dead-ball situations, but she leaves some defensive gaps and whether she’s the right player for a grinding tournament in the Japanese summer is up for debate. Tobin Heath is, well, Tobin Heath, but there are risks to bringing a player who is still working back from injury and there are no guarantees as to where her form will be by the time the tournament starts.

In something of a reversal of fortunes from the beginning of the year, I am not sure that Williams has been balanced enough in her international opportunities to unseat either Rapinoe or Heath. Rapinoe makes my roster, simply because I think she’s been impressive in 2021, both in club play and for the U.S.

However, with a lack of game tape on Heath, I have to go with my gut and stick with Lynn Williams. She has such a clear intention within Andonovski’s system, and when she executes on the defensive side of the ball, she makes the USWNT very difficult to play. I’m also residually nervous about bringing too many knocks to an Olympic tournament — blame 2016.

In short, the USWNT has few bad choices but quite a few hearts to break this week. No matter whom in this group they choose, rest assured, they’ll be the favorites for the Olympic gold.

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, at a White House ceremony on Friday 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. 

"I'm surrounded by so many extraordinary people in so many different fields," Ledecky told Just Women's Sports on Friday. "I feel like I've made a lot of friends today among that group, and their families and their friends."

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.

Ledecky said she was surprised to learn how recent it has been that athletes in women's sports have been considered for the honor. Billie Jean King was the first to receive the award in 2009. "That kind of blew my mind that it was that recent," she said.

"There are so many great female athletes that I've looked up to for so many years," she continued. "And I know we're just going to keep pushing ahead, and doing our best to continue to get a seat at every table."

Like Biles, Ledecky receives the Medal of Freedom while she's still actively competing in her sport, a fact not lost on the 27-year-old. "My goals in the pool are to continue to push forward and swim good times, hopefully win some more medals. And then secondly to continue to do good things out of the pool, whether that's inspiring young kids to learn how to swim, get into the sport, set big goals in whatever pursuits they're interested in."

"I've recognized I've had a long career now, and it's important to reflect every now and then. But at the same time, I'm still competing and still working hard into the future."

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.