Just a couple of weeks ago, many were prepared to hit the panic button on the Chicago Sky. A popular preseason favorite, the Sky quickly found themselves toward the bottom of the league standings after a seven-game losing streak dropped them to 2-7.

On the outside, the record and injury list provided reason for alarm. But within the team, there was no panicking. For James Wade and his players, it was always about the next game.

The Sky found solace in the 2020 Connecticut Sun, who started the season 1-6 only to storm back and knock Chicago out of the playoffs. The Sun were an example that a slow start doesn’t define a team, and especially one that’s missing key players on the floor in Candace Parker, Allie Quigley and Stefanie Dolson.

“That was an example for us, like hey, we still got a lot of season left,” said Wade, Chicago’s head coach and general manager. “Let’s recommit ourselves to what we want to do, let’s get healthy, let’s not press the panic button, try not to rush people back. Let’s take our time and try to learn, just try to win the next one. We just started focusing on the next game.”

It helped that the Sky weren’t getting blown out during their losing streak. Every loss but one was by single digits and two went to overtime. Those close games undoubtedly prepared the Sky for what came next.

Chicago’s offense has been off the charts during its current seven-game win streak. With their 91-68 win over the Liberty on Thursday night, the Sky set a new franchise record for consecutive wins. In two weeks, the Sky have gone from the bottom of the WNBA standings to fourth place at 9-7.

During this most recent stretch, the Sky are averaging 90.7 points per game compared to just 76 points through the first nine games of the season. They’re also shooting 47.3 percent from the field and 37.7 percent from the 3-point line as opposed to 38.3 percent from the field and 31.5 percent from beyond the arc to start the season.

The Sky are also taking far better care of the ball with Parker and Quigley back in the mix. Chicago is averaging 23.7 assists and just 13 turnovers in its last seven games, a dramatic shift from the 17.3 turnovers they were committing per game in the early portion of the season.

“You have all these pieces that complement each other, and if you take a few of those pieces away, you’re left more empty,” Wade said. “The shooting percentages, the turnover numbers that went down are attributed to having 90 percent of our roster here.”

The Candace Parker effect

The Sky are 8-0 this season when Parker is on the floor. Parker’s elite ability to make plays and demand a defense’s attention creates opportunities on the court that otherwise wouldn’t be there. She is a true generational talent who’s capable of playing any position and she has one of the greatest minds in the game. Simply put, it’s no wonder the entire game plan changes when she is on the court.

Chicago plays through Parker and she touches the ball on nearly every possession. Parker has the size and skill set to get the ball off the glass, push it herself and initiate offense, forcing opponents to pay attention to her at all times.

.@Candace_Parker was on 🔥 last night!

Vote for your favorite #skytown players for @ATT @WNBA All-Star 2021 ⭐️

➡️ https://t.co/infK4rwjzh pic.twitter.com/nXAxks09dO

— Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) June 23, 2021

A basketball great like Parker can make her teammates better and increase their confidence.

“She’s won at every level, she’s carried a team on her shoulders,” Wade said. “It makes all of our other players think that they have the potential to be great or that they are great, and it puts them on a level of comfort knowing that a player like her has their back.

“You look at players that have influenced the game and changed the game like she has, they make you have to guard them differently and change your whole game plan. She is a playmaking 5, for the most part, that handles the ball. There’s just no way you can prepare for that.”

Ruthy Hebard’s emergence

One of those players operating with a ton of confidence right now is Ruthy Herbard. The second-year forward was thrust into a bigger role earlier in the season because of the Sky’s depleted roster and delivered while playing nearly 28 minutes per game.

Hebard’s offense was crucial in Chicago’s fifth-straight win over the Sun on June 19 when she made a couple of buckets in the fourth quarter to seal the Sky’s 91-81 win. The forward finished with 13 points on 6-of-7 shooting from the floor.

A positive outcome of the early season struggles is that players like Hebard got valuable in-game experience, giving Chicago more quality depth options when the results matter even more later in the season.

“Ruthy stepped up big. I don’t know if she could do that if she didn’t play as much as she did during the earlier part of the season,” Wade said. “It helps their confidence, it helps the team’s confidence in them. Now that we have a few of our leaders back, it’s only going to make for a deeper team and makes us more versatile.”

Allie Quigley, bench star?

Allie Quigley has been a steady and consistent force for the majority of her career in Chicago. It is no surprise the Sky were hurting without her veteran leadership, calming presence and scoring ability.

During the seven-game win streak, Quigley has been the Sky’s leading scorer, averaging 14.3 points per game on 49 percent shooting from the field and 49 percent from the 3-point line.

Q shooting through ALL of the traffic. 🔥@alliequigley | #skytown

⭐️: https://t.co/infK4rNUqP pic.twitter.com/GDVQE3PPqe

— Chicago Sky (@chicagosky) June 24, 2021

And Quigley has been doing it all while coming off the bench. Wade’s strategy to have her be a part of the rotation is not something all three-time All-Stars would embrace.

“Allie is special. It doesn’t change when we play her or where we play her from, we’re going to play for her. Our offense is going to be predicated on her,” Wade said. “It is easier for us to put her in there and run plays for her after the game has changed a little bit.”

The X-factor: Free throws

Here is a stat we don’t talk about enough: Free-throw numbers. The Sky are the best free-throw shooting team in the WNBA, finishing 87.2 percent of those shots this season. Quigley leads the way, shooting 95 percent from the line during the Sky’s seven-game win streak.

During their win streak, the Sky are getting to the line nearly twice more per game. That might not seem like a huge deal, but over the course of the season, that efficiency and consistency can help push a team over the edge. The Sky’s ability to knock down free throws will help them secure close games down the stretch.

After an illustrious career for both club and country, Gotham FC and U.S. Women’s National Team defender Kelley O’Hara announced today via Kelley on the Street that she will be retiring from professional soccer at the end of this year, making the 2024 NWSL season her last.

"I have always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing soccer, and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted to," O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports in the lead-up to her retirement announcement. "I realized a while back that I was always going to love it, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor."

The 35-year-old will retire as a two-time World Cup champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and at least a two-time NWSL champion, depending on where Gotham finishes this season. Her legacy as a player is hard to fully encapsulate, and will forever run through some of the biggest snapshots in USWNT and NWSL history. 

In 2012, O’Hara played every minute of the USWNT’s Olympic gold medal run, after having recently converted into a defender. Her soaring goal off the bench in the 2015 World Cup semifinal is the stuff of legend. And her return from lingering injury to play in every knockout match of the national team’s 2019 World Cup win cemented a storybook international career. 

It was O’Hara who scored the overtime goal in 2021 to earn the Washington Spirit their first-ever NWSL championship, and O’Hara who returned to help see Gotham earn a title in 2023 after years spent in the trenches with the club’s previous iteration, Sky Blue. Her 15-year career spanned two professional women’s soccer leagues in the U.S. (she earned her first professional title in 2010 with WPS’s FC Gold Pride), as well as sweeping changes to the sport both on and off the pitch.

On the field, O’Hara has always been known for a motor that never quits, making the right flank her domain in attacking possession and defensive transition. In recent years, she’s also been celebrated for a competitive fire that raises the level of her teammates, whether she’s in the starting XI or supporting from the bench.

But injuries take a toll, a reality not always seen by the fans watching from home. "I've never taken anything for granted, and I feel like I've never coasted either," O’Hara said of her late-career success in the NWSL despite battling injuries. "I've always been like, 'I gotta put my best foot forward every single day I step on this field' — which is honestly probably half the reason why I'm having to retire now as opposed to getting a couple more years out of it. I've just grinded hard."

Recently, O’Hara has been sidelined at Gotham with ankle and knee injuries, and the situation motivated her to really prioritize listening to her body. "To get injured and come back, and get injured and come back, and just keep doing it, it really takes a toll on you.

"People don't see the doubt that's associated with injury,” she continued. "As athletes we feel a certain way, we perform a certain way, our body feels a certain way, we're very in tune with our bodies. And there's always so much doubt surrounding injury. It’s like, 'Can I feel the way I felt before?' The reality is sometimes you don't."

O’Hara didn’t arrive at the decision to move on from her playing career lightly. But once she began seriously considering making 2024 her final year during the last NWSL offseason, it felt right. "Once I was like, 'Alright, you know what, this will be my last year,' I have had a lot of peace with it," she said. "Truly the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything that my career has been, all the things I've been able to do and the people I've been able to do it with."

She said she’ll miss daily interactions with her teammates and all the amazing memories they’ve created, though she feels lucky to have formed relationships that go beyond sharing a locker room. "You're basically getting to hang out and just shoot the shit with your best friends every day," she reflected. "Which is so unheard of, and I just feel very lucky to do it for so long."

The Stanford graduate also mentioned that the NWSL’s suspension of regular season play in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic made her realize how much playing allowed her the space to simply be creative every day. The tactical elements of soccer provided O’Hara an outlet for problem solving and made use of her naturally competitive edge.

She’s now gearing up to channel her on-field intensity into her post-playing career full time, which is a new chapter she’s excited to begin. "I don't know if the world's ready for it, like the fact that I'm not going to be putting all of my energy into football all the time," she said with a laugh. 

O’Hara said she would like to stay connected to the game in some fashion, whether it be as an owner, coach, or member of a front office. She’s also interested in the growing media space surrounding women’s sports, having provided on-camera analysis for broadcasters like CBS Sports in addition to starting a production company with her fiancée.

"I just feel like I have a lot of passions, and things that excite me," she says. "And I do want to stay as close as I can to the game, because I feel a responsibility — and I'm not sure in what capacity — to continue to grow it."

A sense of responsibility to grow the game has been a consistent refrain for the USWNT and NWSL players of O’Hara’s era, who ushered in a new age of equal pay for the national team and collectively bargained protections for those in the league. The landscape for new players looks different than it did 14 years ago, in large part due to this pivotal generation.

"I feel an immense sense of pride around that, because I don't know if any of us knew that was gonna happen," she said. "We kind of, as things unfolded, took the next step towards changing what women's football looks like in this country and around the world.

"I'm really grateful to have been part of this era with the players that I was [with], not backing down and pushing and knowing that was the right thing to do."

Whatever the future holds, O’Hara is going ahead full throttle. It’s a piece of advice she’d also give to the next generation of professionals looking to make their own impact.

"Whatever you do in life, do it because you love it, and the chips will fall in place," she said. "If you love something, you're willing to do what it takes. You're willing to make the sacrifices, you're willing to handle the roller coaster.

"To me, it's simple. Don't do it for any other reason but that, and I think you'll be alright."

The Phoenix Mercury center spoke with Robin Roberts about her 10-month incarceration, reflecting on her poor living conditions and shaky mental state ahead of her May 7th memoir.

"The mattress had a huge blood stain on it. I had no soap, no toilet paper," Griner told the ABC News anchor in last night’s 20/20 special. "That was the moment where I just felt less than a human." 

She also detailed some of her lowest moments during that time, saying with tears in her eyes that she went so far as to consider taking her own life on more than one occasion. However, the thought of Russian officials not releasing her body back to her family made her reconsider.

"I just didn't think I could get through what I needed to get through," said Griner.

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In February 2022, Griner was arrested and charged with drug possession and smuggling by a Russian court after Sheremetyevo International Airport police found vape cartridges containing hashish oil in her luggage. The cartridges were prescribed by Griner’s doctor for chronic pain back in Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal. In the interview, the two-time Olympic gold medalist said she had a "mental lapse" while packing, and never intended to bring the cannabis products with her when she returned to play for UMMC Ekaterinburg.

"It's just so easy to have a mental lapse," Griner said. "Granted, my mental lapse was on a more grand scale. But it doesn't take away from how that can happen." 

She was later sentenced to nine years behind bars after her Russian attorneys advised her to plead guilty the following July. Griner was then sent to a remote penal colony where she was forced to spend her days cutting cloth to make military uniforms. From there, it only got worse.

"Honestly, it just had to happen," she said when asked about her decision to cut off her signature long locks. "We had spiders above my bed making nests.

"My dreads started to freeze," she added. "They would just stay wet and cold and I was getting sick. You've gotta do what you've gotta do to survive."

Shortly after Griner’s initial arrest, the U.S. State Department classified her case as wrongfully detained, escalating its urgency within the government and calling even more attention to the situation. On December 8th, she was freed in a prisoner exchange negotiated by the Biden administration.

While she told Roberts she was "thrilled" when she got the news, she was also very upset about having to leave fellow wrongful detainee Paul Whelan behind. She also continues to carry guilt about her arrest, saying "At the end of the day, it's my fault. And I let everybody down."

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, hits shelves on May 7th.

"Coming Home begins in a land where my roots developed and is the diary of my heartaches and regrets," Griner told ABC News in an exclusive statement. "But, ultimately, the book is also a story of how my family, my faith, and the support of millions who rallied for my rescue helped me endure a nightmare."

Longtime USWNT fixture Carli Lloyd took to Instagram Wednesday morning to announce that she’s pregnant with her first child. 

"Baby Hollins coming in October 2024!" she wrote. The caption framed a collaged image of baby clothes, an ultrasound photo, and syringes indicating what she described as a "rollercoaster" fertility journey.

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In a Women’s Health story published in tandem with Lloyd’s post, the Fox Sports analyst and correspondent opened up about her struggles with infertility and the lengthy IVF treatments she kept hidden from the public eye.

"Soccer taught me how to work hard, persevere, be resilient, and never give up. I would do whatever it took to prepare, and usually when I prepared, I got results," Lloyd told Women’s Health’s Amanda Lucci. "But I found out that I didn’t know much about this world. I was very naive to think that we wouldn’t have any issues getting pregnant. And so it began."

Lloyd went on to discuss her road to pregnancy in great detail, sharing the highs and lows of the process and expressing gratitude for the care and support her family and medical team provided along the way. She rounded out the piece with a nod toward others navigating the same challenges, encouraging people to share their own pregnancy journeys, painful as they may be.

"My story is currently a happy one, but I know there are other women who are facing challenges in their pregnancy journey. I see you and I understand your pain," she said. "My hope is that more and more women will speak up about this topic, because their stories helped me. I also wish for more resources, funding, and education around fertility treatments. There is much to be done, and I hope I can play a role in helping."

The 41-year-old New Jersey native retired from professional soccer in 2021, closing out her decorated career with 316 international appearances, the second-most in USWNT history, in addition to 134 international goals. A legend on the field, Lloyd walked away from the game with two World Cups, two Olympic gold medals, and two FIFA Player of the Year awards.

On Tuesday, FIFPRO announced the launch of Project ACL, a three-year research initiative designed to address a steep uptick in ACL injuries across women's professional football.

Project ACL is a joint venture between FIFPRO, England’s Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), Nike, and Leeds Beckett University. While the central case study will focus on England’s top-flight Women's Super League, the findings will be distributed around the world.

ACL tears are between two- and six-times more likely to occur in women footballers than men, according to The Guardian. And with both domestic and international programming on the rise for the women’s game, we’ve seen some of the sport's biggest names moved to the season-ending injury list with ACL-related knocks.

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Soccer superstars like Vivianne Miedema, Beth Mead, Catarina Macario, Marta, and England captain Leah Williamson have all struggled with their ACLs in recent years, though all have since returned to the field. In January, Chelsea and Australia forward Sam Kerr was herself sidelined with the injury, kicking off a year of similar cases across women’s professional leagues. And just yesterday, the Spirit announced defender Anna Heilferty would miss the rest of the NWSL season with a torn ACL. The news comes less than two weeks after Bay FC captain Alex Loera went down with the same injury. 

Project ACL will closely study players in the WSL, monitoring travel, training, and recovery practices to look for trends that could be used to prevent the injury in the future. Availability of sports science and medical resources within individual clubs will be taken into account throughout the process.

ACL injuries in women's football have long outpaced the same injury in the men's game, but resources for specialized prevention and treatment still lag behind. Investment in achieving a deeper, more specialized understanding of the problem should hopefully alleviate the issue both on and off the field.