The 2023 NWSL regular season kicks off this weekend, and commissioner Jessica Berman is expecting it to be one of the most successful opening weekends in league history.

“We’ve already surpassed the number of sales for opening weekend [over 2022], and we still have five days to go,” she told reporters Monday. “We know that that will just continue over the next five to six days, so we’re excited to break some records.”

Season ticket sales already are up 20% across the league compared to the entirety of the 2022 season, even with days to go before the 2023 season begins.

“We’re comparing a full season of sales to what is a prospective sale for the upcoming season,” Berman said. “So if you are really comparing apples to apples, which we will do, you would see what the number and the percent increases at the conclusion of 2023 … we will be excited to share that number and certainly expect it to be significantly more than a 20% increase.”

Berman described ticket revenue as “rocket fuel” for the league in its 11th year, building on the strong increases the league had already seen from 2021 to 2022. More than 1 million fans attended games in 2022, the first time the league has reached that milestone.

The NWSL also experienced a jump in viewership from 2021 to 2022, including a 71% jump for the NWSL Championship, which brought 915,000 fans to CBS in prime time.

The rising numbers have fortuitous timing as the NWSL actively negotiates its new broadcast contract. The league is in talks with a number of prospective partners, as the exclusive negotiating period with CBS expired in 2022 (though CBS still has its hat in the ring).

The NWSL’s previous contract, extended an extra year after the suspension of the regular season in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was reportedly worth $3.5 million. Yet as expansion fees skyrocket, Berman is optimistic the NWSL can negotiate a rights deal that reflects where the league is going.

“The conversations we’ve had have been robust,” she said. “There are many interested parties in the media landscape.

“We’re looking at it both from a domestic as well as international perspective. And we think that there are some really interesting opportunities here and overseas to consider as we think about growing our brand globally and really claiming our spaces the best league in the world.”

Berman highlighted other investments the league has made in itself this offseason, including doubling the NWSL’s staff size and officially opening an office space on Madison Ave. in New York City. The league is preparing for its first season after investing in VAR, which includes a greater investment in production quality.

The changes are player-driven, Berman said.

“[Players] really felt that it needed to be a priority for the league to invest in broadcast production, and for the game itself to be able to showcase in a way, for fans to be able to appreciate their athleticism and how great the NWSL is,” she said. “That was a consistent theme, and almost every team of players that I spoke with, I think we also know that we expect to really have more visibility with our next media deal.”

For a league coming out the other side of years of controversy after bombshell reporting exposed years of league-wide toxicity and in some cases abuse, Berman wants the focus in 2023 to have room for storylines on the field as well as off it.

Two NWSL teams put up for sale in the aftermath of the abuse reports, the Portland Thorns and the Chicago Red Stars, are in “advanced stages” of the ownership transfer process, with the league eager to close a painful chapter and to get the final decisions right.

“The most important thing is that we have the right ownership in place who are not just resourced appropriately, but willing to invest what’s necessary to provide the professional environment that we all know is necessary,” Berman said. “And so long as we feel that the process is moving forward in good faith, we’ll continue to make sure that that is the utmost priority.”

WE PLAY ⚽️ THIS WEEK!
WE PLAY ⚽️ THIS WEEK!
WE PLAY ⚽️ THIS WEEK!
WE PLAY ⚽️ THIS WEEK!
WE PLAY ⚽️ THIS WEEK!

— National Women’s Soccer League (@NWSL) March 20, 2023

25-year-old American pro golfer Nelly Korda secured her spot in LPGA history on Sunday, notching her fifth-straight title at this weekend's Chevron Championship in The Woodlands, Texas.

Ranked No. 1 in the world by Rolex Women’s World Golf Rankings, Korda joins Nancy Lopez (1978) and Annika Sörenstam (2005) as just the third LPGA player to rack up five consecutive tour wins. She is also the third No. 1-ranked player to capture The Chevron Championship victory since the rankings debuted in 2006, accompanied by Lorena Ochoa and Lydia Ko.

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The Florida native shot three-under 69 in Sunday's final, besting Sweden's Maja Stark despite Stark's valiant come-from-behind attempt in the 18th. Korda finished with a four-day total of 13-under 275, celebrating her two-stroke win by cannonballing into Poppie's Pond, much to the crowd's delight. She left The Club at Carlton Woods with $1.2 million from an overall purse of $7.9 million.

It wasn't long ago that the two-time major champion's current winning streak seemed unimaginable. After maintaining her No. 1 position for 29 weeks, Korda underwent surgery to remove a blood clot from her left arm in 2022. She returned to the course not long after, but failed to win a single tournament in 2023 before seeing a surge in form during the first four months of 2024. As of today, she hasn't lost a tournament since January.

Korda will attempt a record sixth-straight win at next week's JM Eagle LA Championship at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles, where she'll vie for a cut of the $3.75 million purse.

USWNT regulars Sophia Smith and Mallory Swanson furthered their cases for Olympic inclusion with their respective club victories on Saturday and Sunday.

After a roller coaster of a week that saw former Thorns head coach Mike Norris reassigned and a flurry of last-minute roster reshufflings as Friday's trade window closure loomed, the NWSL sprung to life over the weekend with standout performances from ninth-place Portland and third-place Chicago, among others.

After her blocked attempt at goal set up a volleying sixth-minute opener from veteran Christine Sinclair — now the only player in history to record a goal in all 11 NWSL seasons — Smith swiftly netted her own in the 27th minute off a breakaway run that eluded Houston's backline. The goal represented Smith's third of the season as well as her 35th for the Thorns, ultimately leading to the home side's first win of the season in a 4-1 routing of the Dash.

But that wasn't Smith's only stat of the evening. The star forward also lapped former Chicago Red Star Sam Kerr to become the youngest player to reach 50 NWSL goal contributions across all games, chalking up 40 goals and 10 assists at the age of 23 years and 254 days.

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"Obviously it feels good to get a win," said Smith in a post-match press conference. "But this is the standard the Thorns have always had. So a win is great, but a win is the expectation — we're hungrier than ever after the way we started."

170 miles up the road, Lumen Field similarly showcased some promising Olympic prospect footwork on Sunday. In Chicago's 2-1 victory over the lagging 13th-place Seattle Reign, striker Mallory Swanson racked up an impressive counterattack assist on fellow forward Ally Schlegel's fourth-minute goal. Swanson went on to find the back of the net herself before halftime, lacing an explosive ball into the top corner in the 31st minute, her second of the season after returning from a lengthy sidelining injury.

Speaking of injuries, fellow USWNT favorites Alex Morgan and Tierna Davidson were not as fortunate as their national squad teammates this weekend. Each exited their club matches early, Morgan with an ankle knock in San Diego's loss to Orlando and Davidson with an apparent hamstring incident early on in Washington's win over Gotham.

LSU came out on top at the 2024 NCAA women's gymnastics championship in Fort Worth on Saturday, besting Cal, Utah, and Florida to capture their first-ever title.

The Tigers' win was far from a landslide. LSU took the first rotation handily thanks to 2024 All-Around winner Haleigh Bryant's team-leading 9.9375 backed by four additional 9.9+ scores from her teammates. But Utah then responded with three strong beam performances of their own, causing the Red Rocks to slide confidently into second place by the end of the second rotation.

By the halfway point, all four teams fell within .288 points of one another before Utah overtook the pack with a dominant floor showing after three rotations. LSU then went on to ace the beam event with Konnor McClain's meet-leading 9.9625 score, coming away with the highest collective score ever awarded to the event in NCAA championship history. The achievement propelled the Tigers to victory, ensuring them the title after the final rotation.

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"This team is full of individuals that have incredible character and integrity and love for each other and all the things you hear from coaches when they sit at a podium like this in a moment of victory, but I promise you it's a real thing," said LSU coach Jay Clark in a post-meet press conference. "I'm just so happy for them."

Contributing to Saturday's atmosphere of excitement was the absence of last year's champion and this year's heavily favored Oklahoma Sooners. Hot off earning the highest team score in NCAA history just last month, the top-ranked Norman squad suffered a shocking loss in the semifinals, where five major mistakes contributed to a third-place finish and a season-low team score of 196.6625.

With Oklahoma out, it was truly anyone's game.

"Every team was out there fighting for their lives — all four teams, it could have gone any of four ways out there," Clark told reporters. "As much as I feel for what happened to Oklahoma in the semifinals, I think it made for a championship that became so packed with emotion because every team out there believed they could do it. It was just tremendous."

LSU is now the eighth program in the sport's history to earn an NCAA women's gymnastic championship.
They share the honor with Georgia, Utah, UCLA, Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida, and Michigan.

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."

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