The NWSL Challenge Cup resumes on Thursday after an international break that lasted a week and a half.

Kicking off with OL Reign versus San Diego Wave FC on Thursday night, the tournament will continue to serve as an opportunity for coaches to evaluate their rosters in game action before the regular season begins April 29. About two thirds of the way through their Challenge Cup schedules, teams are still signing and rotating in new players.

In that spirit, we look at five of the NWSL’s most notable additions who recently made, or will soon make, their league debuts.

Kerolin Nicoli, F, North Carolina Courage

Nicoli officially joined the Courage at the beginning of the month, arriving from Brazil for an away game against NY/NJ Gotham FC on April 3. Subbing into the game in the second half for her NWSL debut, she showcased her creativity, comfort on the ball and ability to draw opponents in and create spaces. Her most dangerous play came in the 80th minute, when she received a through ball from Brazilian teammate Debinha and took on three Gotham defenders before hitting the top left post with her shot.

“Really, really happy with her, and she’s obviously only going to get better,” Courage head coach Sean Nahas said.

Despite a 1-1 draw with Gotham, North Carolina remains undefeated and at the top of the East Division standings with a 2-0-2 record.

Before signing with North Carolina on Jan. 10, Kerolin played two seasons with Madrid Club de Fútbol Femenin of the Spanish Primera División, scoring five goals in 24 appearances and logging 1,588 minutes of playing time.

🚨SIGNING NEWS🚨

The North Carolina Courage have signed Brazilian forward Kerolin!

Welcome to the squad, @kerolinnicolii!

📰: https://t.co/b7zvU0Pcc5 pic.twitter.com/DKhfjYeB75

— NC Courage (@TheNCCourage) January 10, 2022

Amirah Ali, F, San Diego Wave FC

Ali scored her first professional goal in her NWSL debut on April 2 after subbing on in the 68th minute. In an impressive individual effort, she dribbled through Angel City FC’s half, beating center back Vanessa Gilles into the box and placing the ball in the bottom right corner.

The 4-2 win was the Wave’s first in franchise history, lifting them to third place in the West Division standings, ahead of Angel City. 

San Diego head coach Casey Stoney wasn’t surprised at all by Ali’s standout debut.

“If we can get her fit, she can light this league up,” said Stoney, who’s been impressed with Ali’s intelligence.

Ali is coming off of her senior year at Rutgers University, where she was a MAC Hermann Trophy candidate as well as a member of the All-Big Ten First Team and the All-Region First Team.

.@amirahali07 with the cool finish for her first pro goal! @sandiegowavefc | #WaveFC pic.twitter.com/AGnRqHsVbH

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) April 2, 2022

Amanda Kowalski, D, Chicago Red Stars

The Red Stars signed Kowalski after center back Tierna Davidson went down with a season-ending torn ACL last month. The defender made her first start in a 2-0 shutout of the Houston Dash on April 2, and two days later, the club announced it had signed her to a three-year contract with a fourth-year option. Playing all 90 minutes for her hometown club, she recorded two key blocked shots and completed 80 percent of her passes, making her one of the Red Stars’ top facilitators of the game with 44 completed passes.

With the clean-sheet victory, Chicago rose to the top of the Central Division standings, tied with the Kansas City Current at 2-1-1.

Before joining the Red Stars this preseason as a non-roster invitee, Kowalski played in 72 matches at Butler University, scoring four goals and recording 11 assists.

Playing 90 minutes + making a couple of big defensive stops, @akowalski_05 was the latest rookie to make her Red Stars debut. pic.twitter.com/J0cnhHyJeJ

— Chicago Red Stars (@chicagoredstars) April 3, 2022

Alex Chidiac, M, Racing Louisville FC

Though just 23 years old, Chidiac has been a star for a while. The midfielder received her first senior national team call-up with Australia at the age of 16, and at 15 she made her debut with Adelaide United FC in the A-League.

Most recently, she was named Melbourne Victory’s best player in 2021 after helping the club win last month’s Aussie Grand Final. On loan from WE League’s JEF United Chiba, she scored one goal and added two assists in 14 starts for Melbourne.

The Sydney native, who signed with Racing Louisville earlier this month, is known to be strong on the ball and to play with a lot of energy.

“I think Alex and Racing will be a perfect match,” Louisville head coach Kim Björkegren said.

Welcome to the group, @alexchidiac10. 👋

We'll see you soon. pic.twitter.com/zKe4Lw0UOo

— Racing Louisville FC (@RacingLouFC) April 4, 2022

Jimena López, D, OL Reign

López had a standout first start with the OL Reign in a 1-0 win over the Portland Thorns on April 2, making some key tackles on the wing. A member of the Mexican national team, the fullback joins U.S. women’s national team defenders Sofia Huerta and Alana Cook — as well as Lu Barnes and Sam Hiatt — to form one of the strongest backlines in the league.

López was selected 28th overall in the 2021 NWSL Draft by the Reign before signing with Eibar in the Spanish Primera División the same month. In Spain, the 23-year-old started and played in 16 matches, scoring one goal across 1,361 minutes of play.

Before going pro, López starred at Texas A&M. With 17 goals and 23 assists in her NCAA career, she was named 2019 SEC Midfielder of the Year and 2020 Co-Defender of the Year, and she was a two-time All-SEC First Team selection.

JIMENA LÓPEZ!!! 😱 What a goal for Mexico! 🇲🇽#AIAvMEX | 0-8 | #ConcacafW pic.twitter.com/ThI3H8Y1qS

— The Equalizer (@EqualizerSoccer) April 9, 2022

Jessa Braun is a contributing writer at Just Women’s Sports covering the NWSL and USWNT. Follow her on Twitter @jessabraun.

The 2025 WNBA season ended on a high note for Connecticut Sun star Tina Charles on Wednesday night, as the veteran center took home this year's Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award, an annual honor recognizing the WNBA player "who best exemplifies the characteristics of a leader in the community where they work or live."

Known for her career-long consistency on the court — where Charles leads the WNBA in all-time rebounds and sits second only to retired legend Diana Taurasi in career points — the 36-year-old standout is also deeply active with her nonprofit organization, the Hopey's Heart Foundation.

Founded in memory of Charles's late aunt Maureen "Hopey" Vaz in 2013, the family-run organization works to provide life-saving Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) to schools and rec centers. Hopey's Heart celebrated their 500th AED distribution this year.

Due to these efforts — as well as her other team- and community-based initiative work — the WNBA chose to recognize Charles for "her extraordinary commitment to service, social justice, and creating lasting impact in the communities she serves."

Notably, this isn't Charles's first time earning the Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award, with the WNBA star first receiving the honor for personally funding the building of a school for hundreds of children in Mali in 2012.

"Through my mother at a young age, I learned the importance of being a servant unto others, and receiving the Dawn Staley Community Leadership Award is truly special for me — especially for Hopey's Heart Foundation to receive this honor through its work in raising awareness for sudden cardiac arrest," Charles said in her acceptance speech on Wednesday night.

Along with her award, the WNBA is donating $10,000 to Charles's foundation alongside $20,000 from Connecticut's Yale New Haven Health.

Congress members are speaking up for the WNBPA amid the union's ongoing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiations, with 85 lawmakers from the Democratic Women's Caucus and the House Democratic Caucus sending an open letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert on Tuesday demanding that the league "bargain in good faith to reach a fair CBA in a timely manner before the October 31 deadline."

Citing concerns "about the WNBA's delayed response, the differing accounts on the status of negotiations, and.. the needs of players," the letter vehemently voices support for the Players Association as temperatures rise in the tense CBA negotiations.

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The league and the WNBPA have struggled to find common ground, with both parties forced to consider filing an extension in the coming weeks.

"WNBA players receive no shared revenue under the current CBA," the Congress members explained in their letter. "This is drastic in comparison with other major professional sports leagues: National Basketball Association players receive 49 to 51%, National Football League players receive at least 48.8%, and National Hockey League players receive 50% of their respective shared revenues."

Players are also speaking out, with Seattle Storm star Gabby Williams recently telling CBS Sports, "The WNBA isn't enticing enough as far as money goes in order to keep us out of the other leagues."

Unrivaled Basketball is on the up and up, with the 3×3 league announcing expansion plans for its second season on Wednesday, growing from six to eight teams in 2026 following the venture's successful round of funding earlier this week.

Joining the offseason upstart in Miami next year will be Breeze Basketball Club and Hive Basketball Club.

The two new teams create 12 more roster spots, while another six will comprise the league's development pool — raising the total athletes on Unrivaled's payroll from 36 in its inaugural season to 54 in 2026.

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Unrivaled is also adding a fourth night of games each week to accommodate the incoming clubs, a move that will eliminate back-to-back matchups though each team will still play two games per week.

After nearly breaking even in their debut season, co-founders Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier are growing Unrivaled ahead of schedule, moving expansion to 2026 from the league's original 2027 target.

"We outperformed every goal we set for the league in year one, and with the incredible talent we have returning paired with the influx of new stars, it was a no brainer to add two more clubs this season," Unrivaled president of basketball Luke Cooper said in the league's Wednesday announcement.

Unrivaled currently has more than 90% of its 2026 roster confirmed — including Dallas Wings rookie superstar Paige Bueckers — with plans to release the full second-season lineup by the end of September.

The NWSL salary cap has become a hot topic in recent weeks, with big-name — and big-money — transfers like Angel City forward Alyssa Thompson's overseas move to Chelsea and North Carolina Courage striker Jaedyn Shaw's reportedly imminent trade to Gotham raising concerns about the league's financial edge.

While Shaw's reported league-record $1.25 million trade proves that US teams are willing to pay a premium for top talent, the disparity between flashy transfer fees and salary limitations could be holding the NWSL back.

"I know that in the NWSL there are ambitious clubs that want to be able to compete with the likes of a Chelsea, with the likes of a Barcelona," retired USWNT star Tobin Heath said on last week's episode of The RE—CAP Show. "These teams are capped out, they can't compete. They're going to lose their best players."

The league's most recent collective bargaining agreement sets each NWSL club's current salary cap at $3.3 million, which will titrate up to $5.1 million by 2030 while also adding potential revenue sharing options.

In 2024, the average league salary was $117,000. However, with 22- to 26-player rosters, teams often low-ball some athletes in order to afford to pay out for superstars.

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Soft salary cap overseas lures soccer's top players

In comparison, the UK's WSL and second-tier WSL2 operate with soft caps, recently shifting to a framework that allows teams to spend up to 80% of their revenue plus a capped contribution from club owners on player salaries.

"We have no intent to kind of 'cap' any players' earnings," WSL Football COO Holly Murdoch told The Guardian earlier this month. "We're at the investment stage of women's football, so we don't want to deter investment. We don't want to put in rules that don't make us an attractive investment."

With NWSL top earners Sophia Wilson and Trinity Rodman becoming free agents in 2026, the US league might need to rethink its model to stay competitive in an increasingly aggressive global market.