Kelley O’Hara plays for both Utah Royals FC and the US women’s national team. A two-time World Cup winner, O’Hara is a graduate of Stanford University, where she won the 2009 Hermann Trophy as the best player in the country. Just Women’s Sports caught up with O’Hara to talk about Olympics prep, coming back from injury, and her ill-fated attempt to see if she could walk away from soccer.

The Tokyo Olympics are only months away. How would you describe the team’s mindset?  

I don’t know if the casual fan realizes that the World Cup and the Olympics are always back-to-back summers for women. And no team has ever won a World Cup and then gone on to win an Olympic Gold Medal. In 2015, we won the World Cup, and in 2016 we lost in the quarterfinals of the Olympics in Rio, which is the worst we’ve ever done in a major tournament. So right now the question we’re asking ourselves is, can we do this thing that no one has done before? We want to prove to ourselves that we can.

Given how successful the USWNT has been, do you need that extra bit of motivation in terms of trying to make history? 

We always want to win, no matter the circumstances. This is just the next thing. It’s the next hurdle we want to get over, and it’s a pretty big hurdle. There’s a reason no one has done it before. You have to go from the high of winning a World Cup to starting all over again, knowing you have to make all the mental and physical and social sacrifices a second time. Before this, we wanted to prove that we could win back-to-back World Cups. And we did that, and it was incredible. But now we have to see if we can lock in and accomplish this next goal.

You especially looked sharped in the last World Cup. 

Thank you.

It must be such a confidence thing, right? 

It for sure is, and I knew that going in. In tournaments past, I haven’t been confident, but I knew that it was going to be such a mental battle. I knew that I couldn’t necessarily control all the physical factors, but I could control my mental game. Even when I was rehabbing and conservatively coming back from having a stress reaction, I could still focus on the mental piece. I was like, I can’t be on the field right now, but I’m going to visualize playing in a game. And I did that leading up to the World Cup more than I’ve ever done before. And I think that was a big reason why I was able to feel comfortable and confident, even though my lead-up to the World Cup was the complete opposite of what I had thought it would be.

Can you talk about your experiences coming back from injury? What have they taught you? 

The thing is that I didn’t really have to deal with any serious injuries during my amateur career. I tore my meniscus my senior year of high school, which was the first time I had to get surgery, but I was back on the field in four weeks. Even though it was minor, I completely lost it mentality when I was told I needed surgery. I immediately went to a party in order not to think about it. And then in my professional career I had to have surgery in 2013. This was coming off of graduating in 2010, going to the 2011 World Cup and losing in the final, and then going to the 2012 Olympics and playing every minute of every game and winning a gold model. And then a year to the day after we won, I walked out of the doctor’s office having been told that I needed full ankle reconstruction.

What had you done to your ankle? 

I just had rolled it so many times. And I rolled it really bad at the beginning of that season, and it just got to the point that I was rolling it every single game. It was so unstable, and on top of that, I had loose bodies in there. So every time I would go to kick, or pass, or plant, or cut — each time my ankle had pressure on it, there was something inside my ankle that was just rubbing it the wrong way. And it was through-the-roof painful. Actually getting through that injury ended up being one of the hardest things I ever had to do.

How long was that recovery?

Surgery was in August, and I probably didn’t feel 100% until the next August, but I was back on the field by January of the next year. It was a lot. I had never had to go through something like that. It’s something that’s stuck with me, because now every time I do get injured, I have this hindsight to fall back on. I know I can’t come back too soon, that I have to take my time and do things the right way. I’ve had to deal with a handful of injuries since then, and it’s never easy. It’s a total mental and emotional hurdle.

What made that recovery especially difficult? 

It’s the questions you ask yourself. It’s like, am I going to be back to where I was before? Am I going to be good enough? And it made me question if I even really wanted to continue to play soccer. It made me re-evaluate how I looked at my career, how I looked at myself as a person. I was like, you know, I could just be a normal person, work out on the weekends.

You were going to work out just on the weekends? 

Well, I mean, you know. Whenever I could. [Laughs.] After they told me I needed surgery, I went for a jog in Prospect Park in Brooklyn. I wanted to prove to myself that I could just work out leisurely, and that wasn’t the case. I had to do a little soul-searching and ask myself what I wanted to get out of this whole journey. And I realized I wasn’t done, and that I still had aspirations I wanted to chase.

Cameron Brink already has her rookie of the year pick for the upcoming WNBA season, and it’s Indiana-bound star Caitlin Clark. 

In the latest edition of Kelley on the Street, host Kelley O'Hara caught up with Brink in New York hours before the Stanford phenom went No. 2 overall to the Los Angeles Sparks at the 2024 WNBA Draft. When O’Hara asked who would win the WNBA's rookie of the year, she answered without pause.

"Caitlin Clark," she said, while a fan commented that she thought Brink would take home the award. Brink later added that the extra foul granted to WNBA players will be "good for me."

"I hope it’s me," Charisma Osborne, who was later drafted by the Phoenix Mercury, said when asked her ROY prediction. "But, I don’t know — we’ll see."

Watch more of Kelley on the Street:

Maria Sanchez issued a statement on Thursday, confirming recent reports that she has requested a trade from the Houston Dash. 

In it, she revealed that the club has been aware of the request "since late March."

"This has all taken a toll and isn’t an easy thing to talk about, but I want to confirm that I’ve requested an immediate trade," she wrote. "My expectations and reasons have been clear. I trust that my current club’s management will honor my decision in a timely manner and proceed with accepting a trade."

"I’m eager to refocus and dive back into what I love most: playing football," she concluded.

Thank you, everyone, for the outpouring of kindness and support. pic.twitter.com/gcnN7dhCJU

— Maria Sanchez (@Maria17_7) April 19, 2024

Reports of Sanchez's trade request first surfaced on ESPN last week, and were later confirmed by multiple sources. 

In December of last year, Sanchez signed a three-year contract with the Dash valued at $1.5 million including bonuses and an option year. It was the largest contract in NWSL history at the time — a figure that would be eclipsed by multiple contracts in the following months. 

Sanchez spent the offseason as a restricted free agent, meaning that Houston could match any other team's offer to retain her rights. Should the Dash trade Sanchez, her current contract terms would remain intact, limiting potential buyers to teams able to afford to take on an inking of that size.

The Dash has yet to address the trade, instead reiterating to ESPN that Sanchez is "under contract, a choice she made in free agency at the end of 2023." 

Both the NWSL trade window and transfer window close tonight, April 19th, at 12 a.m. ET. The window will stay closed through the next 11 regular season games, reopening on August 1st, 2024.

The four-time league champion Seattle Storm unveiled their new practice facility on Thursday, with Storm co-owner Lisa Brummel dubbing Interbay's Seattle Storm Center for Basketball Performance the team’s "new home."

"It's just such a special space," Brummel told Fox 13 Seattle. "I think when the players get here, it's gonna be overwhelming."

The sprawling 50,000-square-foot, $64 million property is just the second designated practice facility to be designed and built expressly for a WNBA team, with the Storm further noting that 85% of all design and engineering team members involved in the project's construction were women and people of color. The finished product holds two professional indoor courts, two 3x3 outdoor courts, a state-of-the-art locker room, and players' lounge, plus designated areas for strength and conditioning, kitchen, dining, and nutrition, and recovery. 

"This facility reflects our commitment to providing our athletes an exceptional environment that supports their growth, health, and performance," said Storm co-owner Ginny Gilder in an official team release. "It’s built for women, by women, embodying our dedication to leading the way in professional women’s sports."

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For their part, the team can't wait to make the faciilty their own.

"It's amazing," Storm guard Jewell Loyd told Fox 13. "Not having to drive everywhere around, knowing you have access anytime of the day to get into the gym, to workout." 

Head coach Noelle Quinn said she predicts the team is "never going to leave this building."

"Which is a good thing for me," she continued. "You talk about having an edge in performance. We want our athletes to not only perform on the court, but get whatever they need."

All of the Storm's staff and operations will now live under one roof, and the team also has plans to launch a youth basketball program operating out of the building.

The Caitlin Clark effect is quickly making its mark on the big leagues, as WNBA host teams around the country rush to upgrade their Fever games to larger arenas in order to accommodate surging ticket sales.

With Clark mere weeks away from her Indiana Fever debut, both the Las Vegas Aces and Washington Mystics have officially relocated their scheduled home games with head coach Christie Sides' squad. On Thursday, the Mystics became the latest to adjust their plans, moving their June 7th matchup from Entertainment & Sports Arena in Southwest DC to the more centrally located — and much larger — Capital One Arena "due to unprecedented demand."

The Mystics home court's capacity taps out at 4,200, while Capital One Arena — home to the Wizards, Capitals, and Georgetown Hoya's Men's Basketball — can fit nearly five times that crowd at some 20,000 spectators.

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"The move to Capital One Arena will allow for additional fans in the stands as well as premium hospitality options, including Suites and the all-new all-inclusive courtside Hennessy Lofts," the team announced via Thursday's press release.

The Aces were one of the first teams to switch venues, aiming to take on the Indiana Fever in front of as many as 20,000 fans inside T-Mobile Arena on July 2nd. That’s a sizable a boost from their home venue, which holds just 12,000.

For those still planning to face the Fever in their home arenas, ticket prices have skyrocketed. Previously scheduled construction has already forced the LA Sparks to relocate their first five games — including their May 24th clash with the Fever — to Long Beach State's Walter Pyramid. The temporary venue is quite the downsize, holding just 4,000 in comparison to Crypto.com Arena's near-19,000. As of Friday, the get-in price for that game started around $400.

Despite fans launching a Change.org petition urging relocation, the Chicago Sky say they're unable to move their June 23rd Fever meeting from Wintrust Arena's 10,000-seat facility to the 23,500-seat United Center due to a concert. Tickets for that game start around $325 as of Friday.