An NWSL Rookie of the Year campaign has led to the first U.S. women’s national team call-up for Jenna Nighswonger.

On Monday, the Gotham FC rookie was named to the December training camp roster ahead of a pair of December friendlies against China. The 22-year-old is no stranger to the U.S. system, having previously played for her country at the U-19, U-20 and U-23 levels.

In an interesting twist, Nighswonger has been called into camp as a midfielder, which is what she played in college at Florida State. For Gotham, though, she transitioned from her typical role as an attacking midfielder or forward to fullback.

Still, Nighswonger played the role in a way that highlighted her attacking abilities. She accounted for seven goal contributions in 2023, tied for the most among rookies, and she scored three goals. She also led Gotham in tackles with 35, which accounted for a 71.7% success rate, and had a 70.8% completion rate on her passes.

“I think I just like to play my position more attacking,” she said in November. “I think I do see myself more as an attacking mid player but I am now a left back. I think just taking what I used to do in the attack and use my vision just to play a new position.

“We talk a lot about how it’s just a role on the field and we try to do a lot of different rotations and things so I don’t really feel like I’m just a left back, which I like. Sometimes I can play the 10, the 11. I think that’s definitely been helpful.”

She’s been open about the position switch, as well as how USWNT veterans like Ali Krieger helped her make the transition. While she was admittedly “quite nervous” to join a team with big names such as Krieger, Lynn Williams and Kelley O’Hara, she took the opportunity to learn from her teammates.

“I think the hardest part in that area is just understanding, defensively, the tactics and everything, so I think to the point I made about Ali Krieger and Michelle Betos, they’ve been so helpful in giving me confidence in that area,” she told CBS in early November. “But I think that’s something that can definitely continue to grow.”

The decision to include Nighswonger on the roster, interim head coach Twila Kilgore said Monday, was in part due to her versatility.

“She has a strong history as a midfielder, both as a 10, eight, and six really,” Kilgore said. “She played the six for me when she was with me with the U-23s. And she’s done a good job as a left back this year.

“I think part of her strength is that versatility. And when we look forward to an Olympic roster, knowing that there’s fewer spots, versatility is actually going to be something that will be taken into account and heavily weighed. So we will address those things with her directly in camp and get her on a plan where she understands what to expect for these next couple of games.”

NJ/NY Gotham FC has found itself in hot water with fans after winning the NWSL Championship match on Nov. 11.

The first-time champions defeated OL Reign and gave Ali Krieger the fitting end to her career that she deserved. But Gotham fans didn’t receive a celebration for their squad. 

Gotham players and fans expressed their frustrations about the lack of a celebration for fans, and the club has finally answered. 

The club will hold a trophy homecoming celebration at its home stadium, Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey, on Monday night. The event will feature Gotham players, general manager Yael Averbach West and head coach and 2023 coach of the year award winner Juan Carlos Amorós. 

Gotham’s event will be free to season ticket holders and Cloud 9 members to attend. 

The club also issued an apology to fans after the team received criticism due to the lack of a celebration targeted at fans. 

“We extend our sincere apology and recognize you deserved the chance to celebrate our champion athletes who brought the trophy home,” the club said in a social media post on Nov. 16. “We pledge to use the off-season to organize celebrations that befit a championship club and match the enthusiasm of the best fans in the world.”

NWSL teams have hosted events to celebrate championships in the past. The Portland Thorns had a rally for their fans at Providence Park and Washington Spirit held a delayed parade for their 2021 NWSL Championship win. Before Gotham announced its trophy homecoming event, some members of the team went on a trophy tour that included stops at the Empire State Building and ringing the morning bell at NASDAQ. Gotham has confirmed that the team will continue to bring the trophy around the New York and New Jersey area for more stops on the tour.

NJ/NY Gotham FC became first-time NWSL champions on Nov. 11. Unlike some of her teammates, Lynn Williams has experience celebrating championships.

With Gotham’s win over OL Reign in the NWSL final, Williams earned her fourth NWSL Championship title — while scoring a goal in the process.

On the latest episode of the “Snacks” podcast, Williams and fellow U.S. teammate Sam Mewis discussed Gotham’s championship celebrations or, as Williams called it, “the second game.”

“There were beer showers, obviously. There was a slip and slide. I don’t know who started the slip and slide, but I was like, I’m getting involved,” Williams said. “It was so cold after getting up. I was like, I have a regret. I cut my foot on a bottle cap. So I have made a crucial error in taking off my cleats because I need these. We made some TikToks. I wanted to apparently just catwalk the whole time.”

Mewis laughed through Williams’ descriptions of the locker room celebrations and asked if Williams smoked a cigar. 

“I saw Juan [Carlos Amorós] with a cigar, and I was like, ‘Where’d you get that? I’m gonna get one.’ And then there was just a box of cigars on the ground. And I was like, lit well, I’m gonna steal one of these. And then we were like, ‘Who has the lighter?’ And they were like, ‘You guys can’t smoke in here’. And I was like, ‘Yes, we can,’” Williams said. 

“So then somehow we got lighters. And then I was like, ‘Wait a second. Where’s the cutter? Like, you need to cut it.’ We couldn’t find that. So then I was ripping them apart with my teeth. I was just like, here, rip. Next one, spit it on the ground. Go to the next one. Rip it here. Next one. Like I did five different people. And they were like, ‘You’re disgusting. Like, are you tasting tobacco?’ And I was like, ‘Yes.’ I was like, ‘Who cares? We need the cigars.’”

Williams was not willing to share all of the details about Gotham’s celebration, though. A seasoned NWSL Championship winner knows that some parts of the celebration are best kept secret.

“So we had our big party. That’s all the information I’m gonna tell you guys because the other things, nobody needs to know,” Williams said.

Gotham FC apologized to fans on Thursday after not holding a celebration for their NWSL Championship win.

Traditionally, championship-winning teams will hold a rally or a parade in their local market in the days following the title game. Gotham FC, instead, is hosting a “trophy tour,” which included a team visit to the Empire State Building and a ceremonial ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell on Thursday.

Media, however, was not informed until around 1 a.m. the day of Thursday’s festivities.

“It’s sad,” Lynn Williams told The Messenger. “I wish we could have celebrated with our fans who have been there all year.”

“We would have loved to celebrate the fans. Fans are a huge part of why we’re here,” Yazmeen Ryan added. “It’s not ideal that it won’t be until next season. But hopefully they stick with us and know that we’re gonna have many more of these to come.”

Gotham’s supporters group, Cloud 9, expressed their disappointment in the delayed celebration, writing on X that they “deserve to celebrate NOW, as a collective fanbase, with the players that brought home that trophy.”

Gotham veteran McCall Zerboni responded to fans on X with an assurance that their complaints are being heard by the players.

In response to the public pressure, Gotham issued an apologetic statement on Thursday night.

“We extend our sincere apology and recognize you deserved the chance to celebrate our champion athletes who brought the trophy home,” the club wrote. “We pledge to use the off-season to organize celebrations that befit a championship club and match the enthusiasm of the best fans in the world.”

It isn’t the first time a team has delayed its championship celebration. The Washington Spirit didn’t hold a rally to celebrate their 2021 championship win until April 2022, despite having the support of the Washington, D.C. mayor to schedule a parade sooner.

“We don’t even know if it’s gonna be the same team,” Williams told The Messenger, with the NWSL’s free-agency signing period set to begin Monday. “So that’s a bit upsetting. But I do think if we’re not going to do it right, then we have time to plan and go forward.”

Sam Mewis provided an update on her knee injury, which has kept her off the pitch for the U.S. women’s national team since 2021.

The USWNT and Kansas City Current midfielder underwent a second surgery on her right knee in January 2023, and she detailed her progress before and since the procedure on the latest episode of the “Snacks” podcast for Just Women’s Sports.

Her goal right now is to “get as healthy as possible,” she told co-host Lynn Williams. But Mewis, 31, described the months leading up to her decision to have the second surgery as “one of the lowest points of my life.”

The initial injury occurred during a November 2017 match for the USWNT, after which she was sidelined for about six months. While she knew she was dealing with “a really serious injury” to her knee cartilage, she returned and became an integral part of the 2019 World Cup-winning squad.

Mewis managed to play through the injury until 2021, when her knee stopped responding positively to rehabilitation, she said. She played in the Olympics, winning the bronze medal in August, but has not played for the national team since then. She played in two preseason Challenge Cup matches for the Current in March 2022, and those mark her latest appearances in a professional match.

As time went on, she kept getting presented with “worse and worse choices and options” for treatment, she said.

“I think that was the lowest point, I just felt so frozen and numb by the prospect of not getting to have the career I thought I was going to have and I thought I had worked for,” she said.

After considering all her options, she chose to undergo another knee surgery in January, which followed an arthroscopic surgery in August 2021.

Mewis described the procedure as “a big deal,” which is why she hasn’t talked about it much to this point. The surgery placed cartilage donor grafts in her knee, which she said was 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 said. “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.”

Williams remained by her friend’s side as she made the decision.

“You didn’t know what the outcome of the surgery is going to be so you had to be in the right mental space to make sure you were OK with going through this really big, maybe life-changing thing,” Williams said, noting that it was hard to know how to support Mewis as she grappled with her injury.

But Mewis was glad to have Williams’ support, she said.

“I could not decide what to do. And I was so lucky to have you there with me as a friend. I just felt so conflicted,” she said, noting that she sought input from a number of surgeons. “I just wanted more opinions. I wanted somebody to tell me that there was another option and that they knew what I needed to do to fix it. I asked everybody’s opinion, I almost feel like I got too much information.

“And that made me even more conflicted. And I was really just sad. All I wanted was to play.”

Ultimately, Mewis opted for the surgery. She did her rehab at home, where she was surrounded by loved ones. And in hindsight, she believes that she made “the best decision I could with the options that I had.”

She also has gained a lot of perspective over the last couple of years, she said. Her goal now is to “get as healthy as possible.” She is still going to the gym and physical therapy, and she is working toward her goal of getting her knee back “as good as it can get.”

“It still isn’t ever like what I would have chosen,” Mewis said. “It’s so hard to talk about, because I’m in a better place now. So I’m almost laughing about it. But I really wasn’t well.”

Alex Loera was blindsided by her trade from the Kansas City Current to expansion team Bay FC, she wrote Wednesday in an Instagram caption.

The Current had told the 24-year-old defensive midfielder that she would be protected from the NWSL expansion draft on Dec. 15, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Instead, she was dealt to Bay FC, becoming the first player on the roster ahead of the team’s inaugural season in 2024.

In her Instagram post, Loera thanked the Current for “giving me the opportunity to live out my dream.” She was drafted by Kansas City in 2022 and made 30 appearances across her first two seasons. But the trade took her by surprise.

“I was not expecting this trade,” she wrote. “It is incredibly disheartening to know that this took place after I had expressed my feelings about the kind of loyal person I am and my desire to finish out the contract I had agreed to with KC. Nonetheless, thank you KC for everything.”

Loera’s contract runs through the 2025 NWSL season.

This isn’t the first time that Kansas City has shocked a player with a trade. The Current dealt Lynn Williams to Gotham FC ahead of the 2023 season for the No. 2 overall pick in the college draft.

Megan Rapinoe underwent surgery to repair the torn Achilles tendon in her right leg, she and OL Reign announced Wednesday.

The longtime U.S. women’s national team and OL Reign forward sustained the injury early in the 2023 NWSL Championship, which also was the final match of her storied career.

“I wasn’t overly emotional about it,” Rapinoe said after OL Reign’s 2-1 loss to Gotham FC. “I mean, f—ing yeeted my Achilles in the sixth minute in my last game ever in the literal championship game.”

Her former USWNT teammate Christen Press, though, couldn’t hold back her own emotions while watching the game at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego, as Tobin Heath shared on the latest episode of their podcast, “The RE-CAP Show.”

“I was looking around trying to see if the stadium was processing what was happening,” Heath said. “And I looked over you and you were crying. And it was such a complicated moment of feelings.”

“We just were not ready for the end to come right at the beginning,” Press said. “And when I texted Pinoe after the game, I told her: Three tears hit the floor. That’s what happened, three giant, real tears hit the floor underneath my shoes.

“And you know what I thought? I thought, those aren’t tears of pity. She’s too important. She’s had too big of a career. She’s had too much success and joy playing this sport for us to have pity. That would be a disservice to the legacy that she’s leaving.

“And the tears fell from my face with love and pride to be able to have shared the field and the locker room with someone who has had such a long-lasting impact and will continue to have that long-lasting impact.”

Rapinoe handled the injury with grace during the championship match, even as her teammates and opponents spoke of their devastation on her behalf. And that continued as she began her recovery.

“Surgery a success. Home, resting, being taken care of,” she wrote on Instagram, tagging her fiancée Sue Bird. “Thank you for all the love, well wishes and good vibes sent my way.”

Christen Press was as excited as the rest of the soccer community to watch Ali Krieger take home the 2023 NWSL Championship with Gotham FC.

On the latest episode of “The RE-CAP Show,” Press described herself as “on the edge of our seats” for the entirety of Saturday’s final. And one of the best parts of the match was getting to see how loved Krieger is. Press and Krieger played together on the 2015 and 2019 World Cup squads for the U.S. women’s national team.

“I think that it is warm and fuzzies to the max. This player, our friend, is so loved,” Press told co-host Tobin Heath. “She is adored by her teammates, by the teams that she plays on, by the entire community. … The Ali Krieger supporter group was massive and it was loud. We had Ali Krieger chants reverberating through the stadium the entire time, and that must be so cool to feel that in your final match.”

Part of what made it so satisfying to watch Krieger win the championship, Press said, is how Krieger has valued the NWSL from the very start of the league. While some treated it as a “stepping stone” for the national team, Krieger always has valued the NWSL on its own merit.

“I have never experienced someone who is able to put so much effort and energy and love into every single day of what she does,” Press continued. “She plays every single game like it’s the World Cup. She plays five-on-five in training like it’s a World Cup final.

“I’m like, aren’t you exhausted carrying this much for this long? I do not know how you do it. I do not understand how you could care that much all the freaking time.”

She also attributed part of Gotham’s energy and culture to what Krieger has established since joining the club last year.

“You’ve got a player that has done what she needs to do in her career,” she said. “And instead of being like, this is my victory tour, she says at the beginning of the season, ‘I want to win this trophy, I have not won this trophy.’ She frickin’ manifested that.”

Kelley O’Hara and Lynn Williams took their 2023 NWSL Championship medals to Bravo network Tuesday night as bartenders on “Watch What Happens Live.”

The late-night talk show, hosted by Andy Cohen, also featured guests Jordan Emanuel and Danielle Olivera, who have starred in other Bravo shows. While O’Hara and Williams stayed behind the on-set bar for the episode, they did get the chance to show off their championship hardware.

Their appearance continues what has been a run of title celebrations for Gotham FC, as Ali Krieger appeared on CBS Sports’ “We Need To Talk.” And immediately after the 2-1 win over OL Reign in the NWSL final, Kristie Mewis led the team in a championship celebration for the ages in the locker room at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego.

Ali Krieger might not be walking away from soccer completely.

The two-time World Cup champion ended her professional soccer career by winning the the 2023 NWSL Championship with Gotham FC. Now she’s plotting her next chapter.

Speaking on CBS Sports’ “We Need To Talk,” Krieger, 39, said that she might find herself back on the field someday, but on the sidelines. She has her U.S. Soccer B License, with the coaching course paid by the NWSL.

“We want to get more female coaches into the professional game and the college game,” Krieger said. “I’m open to [coaching]. I feel like I’m a little too nice. I wouldn’t be able to look at players and tell them why they’re not starting, all the difficult conversations I think I would struggle with at the beginning and maybe I would get better at it.

“But I can be very demanding and supportive, and I think that’s what a lot of players and teams need. Because you know how players can be so good and that’s why you can demand more from them. But also be super supportive, because they need to feel confident. They need to feel like they can just go and express themselves and really get the best out of them. And so I try to do both of those. But I could see myself being maybe an assistant or a specific defensive coach, because I love defending so much.”

Still, Krieger is “ready for anything” in retirement and is excited to move on to the next chapter of her life, especially considering that she’s going out as a champion. And Gotham players have been partying so hard, she said, that they already chipped the brand-new championship trophy.

“The world is my oyster now,” she said. “This has been such an incredible ride this year and then to end this weekend – I’m still processing it in real time. … This is something I’ve been trying to work towards for so long, 11 years that we’ve had this league I had yet to win and then it happened this weekend.”

While she could have played for a little while longer, Krieger is starting to feel it in her back a little bit, she said. And she wants to spend more time with her kids.

“Back-to-back champions might be kinda nice too but I think, honestly, this is such an amazing way for me to go out,” she said. “An incredible game, an incredible year that we had and I think I wanna end up on top.”