Sam Mewis will not return to the Kansas City Current, with the club announcing her departure on social media.
The team account posted an image of Mewis, along with the caption: “Thank you for being part of this club @sammymewy, we wish you all the best.” The 31-year-old midfielder enters the NWSL offseason as a free agent.
Thank you for being part of this club @sammymewy, we wish you all the best ❤️ pic.twitter.com/2nk4CRFQpu
— KC Current (@thekccurrent) November 29, 2023
Mewis was traded to Kansas City in late 2021, but she made just two appearances for the club as part of the NWSL Challenge Cup in March 2022. The 31-year-old midfielder has been sidelined since then with a chronic knee injury, and she detailed her ongoing recovery on a recent episode of the “Snacks” podcast.
The initial injury occurred during a November 2017 match for the U.S. women’s national team, after which she missed roughly six months. Even while dealing with the “really serious injury” to her knee cartilage, she returned to the USWNT and the NWSL, starring at the 2019 World Cup and winning two NWSL titles with the North Carolina Courage.
Mewis played through the injury until 2021, when her knee stopped responding positively to rehabilitation. She won a bronze medal at the 2021 Olympics and played those two matches for the Current, but has not played since then.
She underwent knee surgery in January 2023, which followed an arthroscopic surgery in August 2021. Mewis described the most recent procedure as “a big deal,” which is why she remained mum about it up until earlier this month. The surgery placed cartilage donor grafts in her knee, which she called a “really difficult decision.”
“I felt like I had taken all of these steps to try to get back to playing and I just kind of kept hitting a wall,” she told her “Snacks” co-host Lynn Williams. “I kept failing in my rehab and having to start over and try all these new things and get more injections.
“And we just had reached the end of the line, where I didn’t like any of the options that were offered to me, which were basically stop or try and get this big surgery. And so it took me like months to make this decision
“There were no guarantees when it came to the surgery either. It was a big surgery. I was on crutches for eight weeks and no impact for, like, eight months.”
She added on “Snacks” that her goal for the future is to “get as healthy as possible.” She’s still in the gym and attending physical therapy, and she is working toward getting her knee back “as good as it can get.”