With the end of July looming, three months of the NWSL regular season are already in the books and only two remain.

As the league dives further into the second half of the year, Just Women’s Sports is handing out midseason awards for the players and coach who have stood out so far. The San Diego Wave earn two nods, and five teams are represented in total across the six awards. Three NWSL newcomers also get a shoutout.

This list excludes our selection for midseason MVP, which we’ll name Friday from a list of frontrunners. Here we go.

Offensive Player of the Year

Mallory Pugh, Chicago Red Stars

After being named an NWSL MVP nominee last season, Mal Pugh’s impact on the Red Stars has only increased. She’s currently third in the Golden Boot race with six goals and has also contributed two assists. Of her 22 shots so far this season, 19 — or 86 percent — have been on target.

But it’s not just her scoring abilities that make her one of the best players in the league. Pugh has a dribble success rate of 76 percent, and defensively, she wins 67 percent of her tackles and has registered eight interceptions.

Defensive Player of the Year

Naomi Girma, San Diego Wave FC

Naomi Girma, 22, makes everything look easy. The rookie’s transition from college to the pros has been seamless. She looked to veteran and fellow center back Abby Dahlkemper for guidance when first joining the Wave in February, but when Dahlkemper was ruled out for a number of games due to COVID-19 and broken ribs, Girma had no trouble leading the backline line on her own. Playing every minute of the season so far, the 2022 No. 1 pick has displayed a level of composure on the ball well beyond her years and is completing her passes with 84 percent accuracy.

Goalkeeper of the Year

Phallon Tullis-Joyce, OL Reign

When she’s not debating with teammate Nikki Stanton about whether mermaids are real, Phallon Tullis-Joyce is between the posts making people’s jaws drop. Her name was hardly known coming into the 2022 season; she played just one minute as the backup goalkeeper her rookie year. Since she took over the starting spot, Tullis-Joyce’s calm demeanor and on-field leadership have quickly made an impact on the sixth-place Reign. In 12 games so far this season, the goalkeeper has recorded an impressive 83.3 save percentage, six clean sheets and 45 saves.

Phallon Tullis-Joyce Earns Third NWSL Save of the Week

Let’s GO, @phallon91 👏 🤩 😮‍💨

Read more ➡️ https://t.co/LZQMexwzaj#boldtogether pic.twitter.com/kTx44gL386

— OL Reign (@OLReign) April 22, 2022

Rookie of the Year

Savannah DeMelo, Racing Louisville FC

The 2022 rookie class is particularly strong. Savannah DeMelo has been one of the many first years turning heads since the very beginning of the season. The midfielder is confident on the dribble and quick to capitalize on opponents’ mistakes. The fourth overall pick has also proven to be the most lethal player in the NWSL when it comes to scoring off free kicks, having buried a league-high two already this year. To add to that, she’s registered another goal and an assist for Racing Louisville.

Most Improved

Taylor Smith, NJ/NY Gotham FC

From the Courage bench to the waiver wire to a valued member of Gotham FC, Taylor Smith has had a rollercoaster of a season. After playing no more than 45 minutes in four of five games with North Carolina, she parted ways with the club in June and signed with Gotham two days later. There, the 28-year-old has made an instant impact.

In three games in New Jersey, Smith has registered four shots on goal in 219 total minutes, compared to the zero she had with North Carolina. She scored the game-winner in a 2-1 win over Racing Louisville in just her second match with the club while also playing as the lone starting forward. Gotham coach Scott Parkinson has repeatedly expressed how happy he is to have her with the team.

TAYLOR SMITH. WHAT A FINISH. 💥

Her first in a Gotham shirt 👏 pic.twitter.com/BETgF3hyjL

— Attacking Third (@AttackingThird) July 9, 2022

Coach of the Year

Casey Stoney, San Diego Wave FC

To get a team to the top of the table is one thing. To keep them there is another. To do all of that with an expansion team is superhuman, and yet that’s exactly what Casey Stoney has achieved through the first 13 games of the season since coming to the NWSL from the FA Women’s Super League.

The coach’s on-field strategy has been executed to plan, her impeccable timing with substitutes has led to goals on multiple occasions, and she treats her players with the care they haven’t always received from coaching staffs elsewhere. Stoney is intentional about never blaming poor results on the effort of her players, creating a nurturing environment that allows for mistakes and generates success.

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

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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