Hilary Knight and I are experiencing bad cell service due to winter weather that just won’t quit. We both laugh and roll with it because if this year has taught us anything, it’s to just keep going.

The same is true for Knight and the team she formed to create the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, a player-led organization whose goal is to create a single, viable professional women’s hockey league in North America. No matter what obstacles get thrown their way (and there have been plenty), they’ve remained bound and determined to keep going until they change the status quo for their sport.

Knight and I speak days before the start of the PWHPA’s second Dream Gap Tour, which gets underway on Sunday, February 28 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. When Team New Hampshire faces off against Team Minnesota, it will be the first time that women’s professional hockey will be played in the “World’s Most Famous Arena.”

SKATING on, DESPITE the SETBACKS

Hilary Knight had big plans for the PWHPA’s second season. Another round of the Dream Gap Tour had been planned for 2020, with other opportunities cropping up on the horizon. Like other sports, all of that came to a screeching halt as COVID-19 spread across the globe. Despite the setback and the ongoing uncertainty, Knight and her teammates have kept themselves focused on maintaining their fitness as best they can in order to stay prepared.

Balancing her time between her home in Idaho and her training pod in Minnesota, Knight has made the most of her surroundings, running up mountains in her backyard and using her garage as a gym.

“I’ve definitely had to do some home workouts without any equipment,” she says. “Filling my backpacks with firewood to create weight, using my porch as a step up… You kind of just get creative.”

She may be one of the best hockey players in the world, but Knight is just like the rest of us when it comes to Zoom blunders, having accidentally crushed her computer with logs during a virtual team workout. Such is life for an elite athlete in a strange time.

All in all, Knight’s approach to staying in shape for the PWHPA’s upcoming games and the 2022 Beijing Olympics has been to keep calm and get the work done, knowing that she’s far from the only one facing challenges.

“It’s not ideal,” she admits, “and I think you just come to the realization that as hard as it is as a person, everyone else who’s training for the same opportunity is going through the exact same thing.”

A self-described Type A person, Knight has also put her long term goals for the PWHPA at the forefront of her mind in order to contend with a lack of control over what this year will look like.

“Understanding that we have this vision, we have to continue to adjust and adapt on the fly. It’s not always going to go according to plan, especially with the global health crisis. So I think that’s been the biggest thing, trying to be flexible and being okay with being flexible.”

As a leader, Knight is honest about the challenges she faces trying to keep players engaged and connected during this time when they can’t physically be together. At this nascent phase of the PWHPA’s development, enacting a strong culture and fomenting relationships is key.

But as with the other obstacles she’s juggling at the moment, Knight is not inclined to let anything get in the way of what she and more than 100 other players have set out to achieve, previously telling Just Women’s Sports founder and CEO Haley Rosen, “This is for the future of the game. We’re trying to build something that’s bigger and better than what is currently out there. Not only for ourselves but also for the younger girls who dream of playing professional hockey.”

BUILDING A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN

For anyone of a certain generation, it’s nearly impossible to hear an inspiring hockey story without whispering a subtle “quack, quack, quack, quack.” It’s even harder to watch Hilary Knight on the ice without feeling like you’re witnessing Connie Moreau, all grown up.

But instead of being one of the only girls on the team, the real life hockey phenom is working to build the future she envisioned as a kid, a world where girls can aspire to play in an established, sustainable professional league.

Though she started out on skis at age two, Knight quickly fell in love with ice hockey when her family moved from California to Illinois, and a lack of mountains forced her parents to switch Hilary and her siblings to the local sport.

Knight excelled on skates, and at the age of five — years before the USA women’s team took home gold in the sport’s Olympic debut in Nagano — she announced that she would be an Olympic ice hockey player one day. The only issue was that no professional league existed yet for women.

“I think seeing the guys on TV and watching the NHL, that was how I viewed hockey,” Knight told Kelley O’Hara on the Just Women’s Sports podcast. “And it felt like the Olympics were sort of that pinnacle,”

More than two decades later, with a resume that boasts multiple Olympic medals (including gold from Pyeongchang in 2018), an Isobel Cup Championship, two NCAA titles, All-American credentials, eight World Championships, two World silver medals, and handfuls of additional accolades, the University of Wisconsin graduate isn’t driven by what she’s accomplished in the past.

One of the most recognizable faces in her sport, Knight is motivated by the fire stoked within her from experiencing the harsh reality of trying to make it as a professional hockey player post-college as leagues folded around her and scarce resources made it difficult to make ends meet.

“The reality was far different than what I thought it would be,” Knight told O’Hara. Recounting the start of her professional career, Knight remembers teaching skating lessons to make extra money and living on peanut butter sandwiches and free Dunkin’ Donuts coffee rolls that she would pick up at the end of the day before they were tossed.

Enough eventually became enough, and in 2019, Knight took matters into her own hands.

It’s rare to see camaraderie between US and Canadian hockey players. The two national teams hate each other, Knight admitted to O’Hara, as she recounted on-ice fist-fights between the two programs.

But in an attempt to reshape the professional possibilities for the sport, Knight worked to bring the best athletes from both America and Canada together to start the PWHPA, an alternative organization to the National Women’s Hockey League, which was not meeting every player’s standards for sustainable success.

One of the first recurring opportunities for PWHPA players to showcase their prowess has been the Dream Gap Tour, which aims to galvanize the hockey community around the future of women.

“When we started out, we wanted to provide players resources and opportunities to play,” Knight says. “We don’t get enough with our own national team, and we saw a big need to bridge the gap.”

In addition, Knight notes the need for visibility, saying the tour has ensured that the players remain present and accessible to fans. Visibility is key not only in creating role models for the next generation, but in order to garner the support these athletes need to build the infrastructure necessary to support a competitive playing and developmental environment.

As Knight explains, “it’s all those shared services that we as viewers of professional leagues don’t think about. When you break it down, when you’re watching a player perform, even if it’s a team sport—take one player, there are so many people that go into the success of that player performing on the ice, and then equally there are so many people that go into the success of that team.”

In addition to performance resources, Knight’s goal is for players to have the same opportunity as their male counterparts to make a livable wage and play hockey for a living.

The question now is how.

The fact of the matter is that there is no standard playbook for starting a league from scratch. The PWHPA has enjoyed support from multiple NHL partners, including the New York Rangers, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Toronto Maple Leaves, who are all lending resources (and arenas) to market the association, the Dream Gap Tour, and future games.

These multi-year partnerships with various clubs now beggars the question of whether the road for women’s hockey starts with more assistance from the NHL.

For Knight, the answer is yes.

“I know there’s a school of thought of ‘oh no, go out and do it on your own.’ But there’s so much to learn and almost not enough time. So if we can have a plugin with these different clubs and continue to have this cross-pollination of shared resources, it’s only going to benefit the game long-term.”

That said, she knows that professional sports leagues are money making ventures, acknowledging that the NHL is its own entity, and they’ve got to make “a good business decision.”

“Personally, I think it would be phenomenal having a woman’s pro league [in partnership with] the NHL,” Knight says. “So I hope it’s in the future, but only time will tell.”

The time is now to bring business and sport together to rally for a sustainable and viable league that showcases the best professional women’s hockey in the world.

Join us, and put your #StickInTheGround for women’s hockey! pic.twitter.com/axJGLk5KfX

— PWHPA (@PWHPA) February 26, 2021

A big part of that future will also hinge on how Knight and other players can grow the game not just for women, but for players of color as well.

Knight is well aware that hockey is a majority-white sport, and she understands the importance of changing that precedent.

“Our entire mission is ‘if she can see it, she can be it,’ and coming from the gender side of things, we saw how important it was for a young girl to be able to see this awesome female skating,” she says. “It’s the same thing with BIPOC players. If we continue to deliver a white player on the ice… then hockey is not going to be for everyone.”

While she knows that solving racial inequities in her sport will not happen overnight, as a leader striving for change, Knight acknowledged that “we play a big role in being able to facilitate bringing hockey to everyone and making it more accessible and making it more diverse.”

“It’s definitely something that’s on the forefront of people’s minds and a conversation that we’ve been having for many, many months.”

ANOTHER SHOT AT GOLD

When the Dream Gap Tour concludes later this year, it’s all eyes on Beijing for Team USA.

Knight is excited at the prospect of bringing home another gold in 2022, but understandably has questions about what the next year of training looks like for her and other Olympic hopefuls due to the new reality created by COVID-19. Though she teeters between feeling underprepared and acknowledging that everyone is being dealt the same cards right now, she’s trying not to over analyze the situation.

“I think it’s a balance of the two extremes and understanding that when the time comes, whoever’s on the team is going to be ready for that opportunity.”

Typically, the team gathers for a residency program with players congregating in a designated location to train as a unit for six months. Having staged an October training camp with zero positive cases, Knight speculates that they’ll still be able to conduct residency training, but with different protocols than before, noting that their success this past fall “shows that the players are really serious about the opportunities when we do come together.”

So if all goes according to plan, Team USA will be able to get together when the time comes. But with the recent retirements of twins Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson and Monique Lamoureux-Morando, as well as captain Meghan Duggan, this will be a different team than the one that made history in 2018, upending Canada for the first time in 20 years and winning Olympic gold.

Thinking about the inevitable changing of the guard, Knight shares that while it’s bittersweet to think about heading to the Olympics without players that so many on Team USA grew up watching or playing alongside, the team’s drive transcends generations.

“It’s part of the culture that we’ve developed, and whether it’s your first Olympic games or your fourth, you just have to be ready to go and do whatever’s necessary to put the team in a winning position.”

CHANGING THE GAME FOR GOOD

I could talk to Knight ad nauseam about the intricacies of building a league, her steadfast dedication to setting high expectations, and not settling for less than what she feels female professional hockey players deserve. As our conversation winds down, I ask her what the golden ticket is.

Like a true business maven, Knight doesn’t skip a beat, telling me that the biggest need is for continued corporate investment, which she says will drive visibility.

“When you have these big brands that are hopping on board, people are paying more attention, and they’re taking what you’re doing seriously.”

The upcoming second run of the Dream Gap Tour, sponsored by Secret, is a proof point that Knight’s vision is beginning to take root.

“We need more players in our space and that will come. I think it just takes one, and then all of a sudden more companies want to be involved with what we have going on. And I think the sport in general is in a really good spot to continue to land these partnerships and sponsorships.”

And if there’s one thing Knight wants players, fans, and those in positions of power to know? It’s that “our group is so powerful because we’ve got the best players in North America, and we’re trying to navigate the future for the next generation.”

—

The Dream Gap Tour sponsored by Secret kicks off live from Madison Square Garden on Sunday, February 28 at 7 p.m. ET airing on NHL Network and Sportsnet 360. The tour continues from Chicago on Saturday, March 6 at 2 p.m. CT on NBC Sports and Sunday, March 7 at 10:30 a.m. CT on CBC Sports. 

Australia and Manchester City forward Mary Fowler exited last Sunday’s FA Cup semifinal with a confirmed ACL injury, cutting short what had been a promising season for the young international star.

“Mary will remain under the care of the club’s medical team and start her rehabilitation,” City said after the team’s 2-0 loss to crosstown rivals Manchester United.

“It’s never easy when something like this happens, especially when you’ve been working so hard and feeling good,” Fowler added.

Fowler scored six goals in 17 WSL appearances for Manchester City this season, coupled with a league-leading seven assists. She joined City in 2022 from French side Montpellier, signing a four-year contract with the English team.

The news adds to City’s mounting injury tally, as the fourth-place team enters the UK league’s home stretch with Vivianne Miedema, Bunny Shaw, and Alex Greenwood on the sidelines. Additional unavailable players include Jill Roord, Laura Blindkilde-Brown, Aoba Fujino, Rebecca Knaak, and Lauren Hemp.

Fowler injury leaves 2026 Asian Cup fitness in question

Fowler's recent ACL tear has broader implications than club play.

Australia is set to host 2026 Asian Cup, with the 22-year-old striker expected to lead the Matildas' frontline at the tournament. However, with a lengthy rehabilitation process ahead, Fowler might not be available to represent her country when the Asian Cup kicks off next March.

“This is tough news for Mary and for all of us who know the dedication and passion she brings to her craft,” Matildas interim head coach Tom Sermanni said in a national team statement. “She’s an exceptional talent and a much-loved member of our team, and we know she’ll meet this challenge with the same courage she brings to the pitch.”

“Everyone in the Matildas and Football Australia family – players, coaches, and support staff – will be right behind Mary as she takes the first steps toward her comeback,” he continued.

Fowler debuted for Australia's national team in 2018. She went on to score 16 goals over 64 appearances.

NCAA conference realignment drastically altered this year's college sports landscape, affecting volleyball, basketball, and, now, softball, as former titans lose ground while others rise to the occasion.

After years dominating the Big 12, four-time reigning NCAA softball champions Oklahoma are now riding the ups and downs of the stacked SEC.

The Sooners recorded a loss to unranked Missouri and fell twice to then-No. 10 Tennessee last month, before dropping two of three games to then-No. 22 Alabama this week.

With the now-No. 17 Crimson Tide's victories, Oklahoma fell two spots to No. 4 in Tuesday's ESPN/USA Softball rankings update.

Similarly, after adding a pair of weekend losses to then-No. 5 Tennessee alongside earlier stumbles against ranked SEC foes Florida and Mississippi State, former Big 12 standout No. 1 Texas took a tumble, with the 2024 runners-up Longhorns sliding to No. 3 this week.

While those wins earned the Vols a boost to No. 2, a dark horse SEC squad took over the sport's No. 1 spot on Tuesday, when a 12-game winning streak lifted the Texas A&M Aggies atop both the SEC table and the national rankings for the first time in program history.

SEC solidifies itself as top NCAA softball conference

The fall of NCAA softball's recent giants from the sport's elite spots isn't due to a decline in Oklahoma's or Texas's play, but simply a result of the intense level of competition and talent in the SEC.

The conference now lays claim to all of NCAA softball’s top four teams — plus seven of the Top 10.

With the college softball postseason looming next month — not to mention the eight-team Women's College World Series beginning on May 29th — the SEC is proving itself the conference to beat in the 2025 title hunt.

How to watch SEC softball this weekend

While No. 1 Texas A&M will take the weekend off after closing out a three-game series against Missouri early Friday afternoon, both No. 3 Texas and No. 4 Oklahoma will be battling in SEC series.

The Longhorns hope to sweep No. 9 LSU after claiming a 7-3 series-opening win on Thursday. Friday's first pitch between the pair is at 5:30 PM ET on SECN+, with Saturday's final game beginning at 12 PM ET on ESPN2.

The Sooners will kick off their own three-game slate against No. 15 Mississippi State at 5 PM ET on Friday, streaming live on SoonerSports. The pair will close out the series with a Sunday doubleheader beginning at 3 PM ET, with both games airing on SECN+.

With a trio of old and new rivalries on deck, the 2025 NWSL season's fifth matchday promises budding top-table rivals, a bicoastal clash, and one of the league’s longest regional feuds.

Plus, with only two points separating the No. 5 and No. 12 teams in the standings, clubs will be focused on securing all three points as they strive to keep up with the season’s three remaining undefeated teams.

While the NWSL’s official Rivalry Week is still months away, this weekend’s key matchups provide some sneak-peek showdowns:

• Seattle Reign FC vs. Portland Thorns, Friday at 10 PM ET (Prime): In the first Cascadia Clash of the season, the Thorns — fresh off their first 2025 win — face a Seattle team trying to turn around a two-game losing streak.

• Angel City FC vs. Gotham FC, Friday at 10:30 PM ET (NWSL+): A classic East Coast vs. West Coast battle sees Gotham chasing Angel City up the table, as LA tries to keep their unbeaten streak alive against one of the league's more dangerous rosters.

• Orlando Pride vs. Washington Spirit, Saturday at 5:05 PM ET (ION): The Pride downed the Spirit at the 2024 NWSL Championship before Washington enacted revenge in the 2025 Challenge Cup, with both powerhouses now aiming for regular-season bragging rights.

As NWSL teams push for early-season positioning, this weekend’s action promises to up the stakes by tapping into rising tensions and rivalries — both old and new.

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Angel City hires new coach in Bundesliga's Alexander Straus

On Thursday, Angel City announced that the club officially filled its head coaching vacancy, hiring Frauen Bundesliga manager Alexander Straus to take over the LA team after his current season leading Bayern Munich ends on June 1st.

After more than a decade coaching in the club and youth national system of his home country Norway, Straus took charge of Bayern Munich in 2022, leading the German team to back-to-back league titles.

His 2024/25 squad is on track to claim a third straight Bundesliga trophy, and recently exited the competitive UEFA Champions League tournament in the quarterfinal round.

Following manager Becki Tweed's firing in December, ACFC tapped Sam Laity to serve as interim head coach as the club conducted an extensive global search for the permanent position.

"When we set out to hire our head coach, we looked for specific characteristics such as a dominant style of play, a proven winner at the highest level, a focus on player development, a collaborative mindset, and a leader in high performance," said ACFC sporting director Mark Parsons in a club statement. "Alex fits this profile at every measure."

Still undefeated entering the fifth matchday of the 2025 NWSL season, Angel City will continue under Laity until Straus's arrival.

The interim manager will then shift into an assistant coach capacity as Straus leads the 2022 expansion franchise as it hunts a second-ever postseason berth.

The 2024/25 UEFA Women's Champions League semifinals begin this weekend, as four powerhouse clubs familiar with the UWCL spotlight kick off their first matches of the two-leg round.

France's Olympique Lyonnais, Spain's Barcelona FC, and England's Arsenal and Chelsea will battle it out, with just two tickets to the winner-take-all May 24th final in Portugal on the line.

"The coolest thing about big tournaments and high-stake games is you might be expecting something, and you get something completely different," Olympique Lyonnais midfielder Lindsey Heaps told reporters this week. "That's when you see the best teams come out, and they're able to adjust."

Champions League semis pit WSL against European elite

Arguably topping the four-contender list are defending champs Barcelona, with the Spanish side hunting a fourth UWCL title in five years. First, however, they'll have to contend with a stacked Chelsea team hungry to lift a first-ever Champions League trophy — one that could clinch a historic quadruple.

Meanwhile, with both the men's and women's sides reaching this season's Champions League semifinals, Arsenal will square off against eight-time champions Lyon in a quest to claim their first UWCL title in over 18 years.

Both WSL titans are chasing history against their European opponents, with Arsenal still the only UK team to ever win Champions League.

The Gunners will kick off the round by hosting Lyon in their 60,000-capacity Emirates Stadium.

"Playing at the Emirates, and the hunger and the belief that we have as a team at the moment, we're going to go and play our game to the best we can," said Arsenal manager Renée Slegers.

With an estimated 40,000 tickets sold for the pivotal clash, Emirates provides an environment even Arsenal's opponents look forward to competing in.

"You always want these kind of crowds and this kind of atmosphere," Heaps said of the Saturday matchup. "Even if it's against you, it's the best thing in the world."

How to watch the 2024/25 UEFA Champions League semifinals

The first-leg matchups of the 2024/25 UEFA Champions League semifinals kicks off on Saturday, when Arsenal hosts Lyon at 7:30 AM ET.

Then on Sunday, Chelsea will travel to Barcelona to take on the reigning champs at 12 PM ET.

Both matches will air live on DAZN.