Abby Dahlkemper’s long history with spondylolysis, a stress fracture in the spine, took a turn last January, with the nerve pain getting to the point where she felt like her hamstring was ripping.
The U.S. women’s national team defender had been named to the SheBelieves Cup in February 2022 but had to withdraw due to the injury. While she tried to rehab the injury without getting surgery, receiving multiple epidural injections along the way, it didn’t get better.
“It turned out, just trusting my gut, I was like, I just need to get this fixed,” she said on the latest episode of Snacks. “My vertebrae had basically ruptured, and there was a cyst and bone fragments hitting my nerve roots. So it was just never going to get better unless I had gotten it operated on.”
She had a transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion surgery, in which doctors fused one of her vertebrae back together. In February, she revealed her surgery via TikTok and said that the bone had already begun to fuse, which put her ahead of schedule in her recovery timeline.
In late August, Dahlkemper finally made her return to the field, scoring for the San Diego Wave in her third game back in the NWSL. The drawn-out recovery process, she said, helped her find her identity away from soccer and appreciate the game more when she returned.
“It was relieving also because I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to be the same, like how I’m going to feel on the field, all this stuff,” she told Snacks co-hosts Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams. “But it was kind of like riding a bike. And I just feel like we’ve done it for so long that I don’t know, I just feel like one of my biggest takeaways was just literally having fun and enjoying it because we are not getting any younger.”
Dahlkemper, 30, said coping with the injury took a toll on her mentally, but it also gave her a newfound perspective on her life and career.
“I feel like I’ve cried the most I’ve cried ever in my life during the last year, just because your self-worth and your identity is all tied into soccer for so long,” she said. “I feel like when you’re forced to actually not be just a soccer player, then you’re just kind of like, OK, well, I need to find happiness elsewhere.
“And I feel like now I just have a better balance and understanding of who I am outside of soccer, the enjoyment that I can get through my relationships and being where I’m at.”
Abby Dahlkemper has made a triumphant return to the NWSL after missing almost a year with a back injury.
After undergoing spinal fusion surgery last November, the defender returned in late August of this year and scored in her third game back for the San Diego Wave. Dahlkemper opened up about the injury and her long road back to the field on the latest episode of Snacks, revealing that she knew she needed surgery in a game against the Orlando Pride last year in July.
“It was probably like 20 minutes into the game and my back just spazzed. I had a muscle spasm in my back, and I had to get subbed off at like 22 minutes,” she said. “And I just thought to myself, I have to do something about this because I can’t keep trying to push through this.”
Dahlkemper said she had been dealing with spondylolysis, a stress fracture in the spine, “for a long time,” and the pain started to get worse early last year. While she attempted to rehab it non-surgically over the course of the 2022 NWSL season, a few setbacks aggravated the injury, and the incident in the game against Orlando pushed her over the edge.
“I feel like as athletes, we know our bodies so well, and I just knew something wasn’t right. Like, it didn’t feel like my normal back,” Dahlkemper told Snacks co-hosts Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams.
“So I was obviously so scared to get surgery and I didn’t really know what they would find when they went in there, but I was like, I need to get this not only for my career and livelihood, but also for my life after soccer.”
Dahlkemper, who started every game for the U.S. women’s national team in the run to the 2019 World Cup title, said she was fortunate to be able to see a renowned back surgeon near her home in San Diego. Since the operation, the 30-year-old has returned to the field and played a full 90 minutes in the last two games she started for San Diego at center-back.
“It was scary once I got the surgery and got it done because I just didn’t know how I was going to heal, like if I was ever going to be able to get like a full rotation and this and that in my back,” Dahlkemper said. “But I feel like my body has adjusted well and coming back, I feel like I haven’t really missed a beat.”
Lynn Williams made her World Cup debut this summer with the U.S. women’s national team. Yet while she was playing in her first tournament, she still felt the weight of expectations placed upon the world’s premier women’s soccer team.
So while the 2023 World Cup provided a career highlight for Williams, she also understands that the USWNT did not measure up to its high standards, as she told co-host Sam Mewis on Just Women’s Sports‘ “Snacks” podcast. A historic exit in the Round of 16 followed by head coach Vlatko Andonovski’s resignation leaves the team preparing for a new era.
“What’s unique about this team is that the standard, and not just within us but everywhere around the world, is that if we don’t win, we fail,” Williams said. “And I think to hold that standard is on one hand, it’s an honor. And on the other hand, it’s really daunting.
“The U.S. women’s national team has to go through so much more and carry so much [more] than I think other national teams have to. That’s not an excuse for how we played, I just think it’s the reality of the situation.”
When it comes to the specifics of their performance on the field, Williams doesn’t “even know where to begin.”
“I just think we were too talented to have the outcome that we did,” she said.
Still, on an individual level, Williams recognizes the magnitude of what she has accomplished, having played in the World Cup as one of 23 members of the USWNT. And on a global level, she sees the tournament as a marker of the growth of the women’s game.
“The teams, the investment, what Australia just did and to promote women’s soccer,” Williams said. “All of those things I can recognize and say I was a part of that. And that’s so cool in the history of Lynn Williams and soccer.”
Alyssa Naeher still believes she saved Sweden’s game-winning penalty for the U.S. women’s national team at the 2023 World Cup. And she probably always will.
As the USWNT goalkeeper shared with Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams on the latest episode of “Snacks,” she spent the entire day with “this feeling in the pit of my stomach” that the Round of 16 match would end in a scoreless draw followed by a penalty shootout.
“I’m not really a visualization person,” she said. But leading up to the match, she even got the feeling that she would take a penalty kick herself, and that she would have to make a double save of one of Sweden’s shots.
“And it literally played out,” she said. “I’m like, I don’t know if I overly manifested this. But obviously in my head, in the visualization, we moved on and we won.”
That part of her vision did not come to fruition. While Naeher spent the shootout diving “as far as (she) possibly could,” and she even got a hand on Lina Hurtig’s shot in the seventh round, the ball tipped up into the air and crossed the goal line by millimeters before Naeher grabbed it.
“It felt like it was in slow motion,” she said. “I felt like I ended up diving past it, and I was just trying to get anything on it. Truthfully, I will go to my grave claiming that I saved it. You cannot convince me otherwise.”
Williams agreed with Naeher, saying she also thought the goalkeeper had made the save as she watched from the pitch with their USWNT teammates. And Naeher, for her part, still has a picture of the moment saved on her phone.
“I have looked at it an unhealthy amount of times since the game has ended,” she said. “I’ve watched it over and over.”
“There’s no space between the ball and the line,” Williams said.
“Like, I don’t think that you could convince me that [there was a goal],” Naeher continued. “I genuinely thought that I saved it.”
Even as the referee signaled that the shot had crossed the line, even as Sweden started to celebrate, Naeher could not believe it.
“When she blew the whistle and I watched them run, I don’t think I can describe the sinking feeling,” she said. “But it was the most bizarre way to end the game.”
When Williams watched the video of the penalty for the first time on the stadium screen, then saw Naeher “visible angry” with the result, the loss finally sunk in. Naeher rarely shows such anger, Williams said, so her emotion hammered home the reality of the defeat.
“It hits you all in one moment,” Naeher said. “But then it also then spreads out. And I think that anger, that emotion, that stuff… you know better than anybody how much time and energy gets put into the preparation for a tournament. What you sacrifice – time with family, time with friends – and it’s all worth it. You do it for those experiences. You do it for the honor to represent your country at a World Cup. That’s why you put in all that time.
“And obviously, no one game, no one tournament comes down to one play. But in that moment, it felt like we lost the World Cup by a millimeter.”
While the USWNT roster for the 2023 Women’s World Cup hasn’t been announced yet, veteran midfielder Lindsey Horan knows this year’s squad will look very different to the last time around.
“I think this has to be the youngest team that we’ve ever had,” she told Lynn Williams and Sam Mewis on the latest episode of Snacks.
Well, maybe not the youngest ever. When the U.S. won the first Women’s World Cup in 1991, the average age was 23.1 — unsurprising given the nonexistent professional infrastructure at the time. But the USWNT roster for this summer’s World Cup could be its youngest in a long time.
At the last three Women’s World Cups, the average age of the USWNT has hovered around 28 years old. At the most recent Olympics in 2021, it was even higher: 30.8 years old.
Horan, who made her World Cup in 2019, is now one of the veterans on the team at age 29.
“An oldie,” the 32-year-old Mewis taunted.
“Ancient,” quipped Williams, 30.
Horan, who joked that she now has “dusty bones,” is trying to translate her years of experience into her leadership role.
“It’s hard with this team because we have so many like incredible veteran leaders,” she said. “I’m not afraid to say it: it’s intimidating to step into that and try and insert yourself there and get the respect from the team. You have to earn it. Like, I think I’ve been on the team for 10 years now and I still feel nervous to like step into that role.”
Horan credited current USWNT captain Becky Sauerbrunn with guiding her through the process and helping her own the role of “captain” when she’s wearing the armband.
“So it’s been hard but I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope I’m doing a good job,” Horan laughed.
“I’m not really there but from the outside it seems like you’re doing a great job and I’m so excited for you,” Mewis assured her.
Megan Rapinoe isn’t the best advice-giver when it comes to penalty kicks.
On the latest episode of Snacks, Rapinoe, Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams recall a moment with the U.S. women’s national team in 2019 when Rapinoe offered words of wisdom to Mewis.
“I was panicking about taking one and panicking about not taking one,” Mewis recalled. “Both horrible options.”
And instead of offering up tactical strategies for how Mewis could approach the PK, Rapinoe took a different tack.
“I was like, ‘You know the worst thing that could happen is if you have to step up there, and you take it, and it’s like the final one and you lose the World Cup for our country,’” she said. “I was like, ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen?’
“But the best thing that could happen is you could win the World Cup for your country. So I think I always focus on that.”
Mewis did not recall Rapinoe offering up such advice, saying she may have “blacked out.” Williams called it “horrible advice.” But it works for Rapinoe.
“Just like saying it, and getting it out,” Rapinoe continued. “Like getting the anxiety out and getting the fears out there. Like, literally the worst thing that could happen is you step up and you miss it.”
Both Mewis and Williams appreciated that explanation, as well as Rapinoe’s routine approach.
“I never think that I’m going to miss,” the 37-year-old forward said. “But I know that I can miss. But I don’t think I am. I do the exact same thing…go through the routine. I wanna feel comfortable.
“And then, you know, you just trust yourself.”
Megan Rapinoe is embracing her role for the 2023 World Cup.
No longer a major starter for the U.S. women’s national team, Rapinoe can still come on the field and make a difference – no matter the capacity. And while this year’s World Cup will look a little different for the veteran forward, she’s embracing the challenge.
“In some ways completely differently and in some ways exactly the same,” she said on the latest episode of Snacks when asked about her approach for this World Cup. “I mean, my role on the team is completely different, which I actually really love and enjoy. I mean, I still love to play and I want to play all the time.
“I think it’s position specific. Like not every position can, you know, only be playing limited minutes or having the kind of role that I do.”
Rapinoe hopes that she’s still useful in her current role. And in a lot of ways, she already has proved that she is. For example, she scored the team’s only goal in the first of two friendlies against Germany last November. At any given moment when Rapinoe subs on, there’s a chance for her to score.
But the 37-year-old also brings her personality and leadership to a squad that is balancing veteran presence with youth talent.
“I’m still fun. I’m still a fun aunt, fun grandma,” she said. “But yeah, it’s like we want to run it back. We wanna win. We wanna win everything, all the time. Win every game. World Cups are just so cool. Like this one’s going to be so much better than the last one which was so much better than the last one.
“It’s in a really cool place, so I think that’s exciting for everyone. The team is looking great. These little kids are just good. Everyone’s just good.”
Snacks is back, with Lynn Williams opening up about her trade to NJ/NY Gotham FC in the first episode of the new season of the podcast from Just Women’s Sports.
Speaking with her fellow co-host Sam Mewis, Williams described how she learned of the potential trade. The 29-year-old forward was in New Zealand with the U.S. women’s nation national team, in her first camp and her first time playing soccer in almost a year.
“It was an emotional time,” she said. “It was the day of the draft, and I was so oblivious that it was that day. I feel like normally when it’s draft day you’re like, don’t look at your phone. If you get news, especially when you’re in camp, you’ll get it later on in the day so you can focus.”
But Williams was on the treatment table when her agent messaged her about “time-sensitive information.” She thought she was getting a new deal with the Kansas City Current. Instead, her agent informed her that the Current were pushing for a trade.
“My heart sunk, my face dropped. My initial reaction was, ‘No, I’m not going,’” Williams said, noting that she had “veto power” over the trade. Gotham, she said, didn’t want her if she didn’t want to be there.
Still, she was worried about what would happen in Kansas City if she said no: Would it be awkward? Would she play? She talked with USWNT coach Vlatko Andonovski, and she also spoke with Gotham FC head coach Juan Carlos Amorós, who made it clear just how much the team wanted her.
“Basically the decision I had come down to was: I don’t want to be at a place that doesn’t want me. And if Gotham really wants me, then I wanna go there,” Williams said.
With three minutes to spare before the deadline for the trade, she agreed to the deal. The trade was announced announced minutes later, giving her just enough time to call her mom and let her know before her new teammate Kelley O’Hara was blowing up her phone in excitement.
“She was like, ‘Let’s go!’ And I was just distraught,” Williams said. “It was pretty devastating at the time. Not necessarily because I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t wanna go to Gotham.’ It was more like, my life was, in a moment, flipped on its head.”
Throughout the entire trade process, Williams felt unsettled, she said on Snacks. She would have to move, again, during a World Cup year, as she was still trying to rehab the hamstring injury that kept her out through almost all of 2022. That, she said, was the most stressful part.
“I feel like every trade is unique in its own way. It’s hard,” she said. “You would like to think that teams would know a little bit more in advance that they’re going to trade you or not. And maybe they do.”
Of course, Williams hasn’t wasted time in getting acclimated on the field. She scored in Gotham’s season opener, which also marked her debut for the club, and is off to a good start to the year with the USWNT.
Both Williams’ and Mewis’ journeys will be documented through Snacks, as well as more in-depth insight into what’s going on around the league in this new season. Mewis remains under contract with the Current, but she is not expected to play in 2023 as she continues to work her way back from a knee injury.
Of course, there will be special guests – including O’Hara in this week’s premiere episode – and more discussion about not just the U.S. league but about women’s soccer as a whole.
“I can’t wait for this new season. This league is constantly moving and shifting, and giving fans an inside look at it all that they can’t get anywhere else is our secret sauce,” Mewis said. “Even with everything we’ve accomplished on the field, Snacks is one of our greatest joys because it provides us with such a unique opportunity for us to share our experiences around the game we love and provide a platform for others to talk about women’s soccer in a way that hasn’t been done before.”
And in a new partnership with iHeartPodcasts, Snacks has an opportunity to reach more people than ever for and drive larger conversations that transcend sports.
“We’re excited to bring ‘Snacks’ back for another season as it’s one of the most important platforms in women’s sports right now,” said Haley Rosen, the founder and CEO of Just Women’s Sports. “Women’s soccer has been on such an incredible growth trajectory over the past decade, and on this show, two of the game’s most decorated and accomplished players are not only providing their authentic perspective every week as professionals but also as burgeoning media personalities adding to the almost non existent conversations happening about women’s soccer games week to week.”
For USWNT star Tierna Davidson, coming out wasn’t that big of a deal.
Having an aunt who has a partner certainly helped, as having a girlfriend wasn’t something that needed explaining. It was just normal.
“That helped me in just not feeling like what I was was different,” Davidson explains on the most recent episode of Snacks. “It was just like, you’re with who you’re with and that’s it. I think that was a big help in me not making a big deal out of it.”
“That just makes it easier. That makes you feel less awkward and less unique, which you don’t want to feel unique in that way sometimes.”
“I love that,” co-host Lynn Williams says. “I think that is how it should be. Like, I didn’t have to come out as straight, so why does anybody else have to come out? We should just be who we are.”
At about 46 minutes in, Davidson, Williams and Sam Mewis get to talking about all of the coverage surrounding LGBTQ people coming out. When looking at all of the magazines and articles written about celebrities with their coming out stories, Davidson says she hopes that eventually those stories will go away, as hopefully someday people won’t have to have a special story about it.
“It’s really nice to have a coming out story that is not very fun, or not very exciting,” she said. “That’s the best kind of coming out story because it means that whoever you’re coming out to or wherever you live, your environment, it’s normal enough that you don’t need to make a big deal out of it.”
Earlier on in the podcast, the three discuss why there is still so much apprehension about coming out.
“Even though we are in this era where it is widely accepted, especially within our age group, there is still a lot of apprehension and nerves around doing that,” Davidson said. “So I think that, I know a lot of people that are now out but weren’t out when I first knew them and probably a lot of people who are still on that journey.”
“I think we as humans have this fear of anything that is different than us,” Mewis adds. “And so I think that when, as kids, we’re intimidated by something or something feels foreign we push it away.”
“Maybe it’s just that little bit of something that makes people different, alienates them to others and so we push it away and try to label it as something.”
“It’s the worst thing in the world to be different when you’re in middle school or high school,” Davidson says. “All you want to do is fit in and be normal.”
Listen to the rest of the conversation and the full podcast here.
The second episode of Snacks is here.
In the new podcast from Just Women’s Sports, USWNT stars and North Carolina Courage teammates Sam Mewis and Lynn Williams tackle everything from soccer to social justice to the power of friendship.
In this week’s episode, Lynn Williams takes us inside the Courage locker room as the Derek Chauvin verdict came down. (~19:00 min mark)
Williams recalls the verdict being broadcast just before the North Carolina game against Gotham FC. Holding her phone to her ear as the judge announced the jury’s decision, Williams relayed the news in real time to her Courage teammates.
“There are so many things that are bigger than soccer, and I think that was one of those moments that it was like, this is very important for all of us to listen to,” says Williams.
“Being in the locker room, it was empowering to know that it was a safe space, and that it was ok to cry before the soccer game and then get out there and say we’re going to fight for one another.”
On the guilty verdict itself, Williams says it was a critical move in realizing accountability.
“I don’t think it’s something to cheer about. George Floyd is still not with us, and his family is still grieving, but I think it’s the first step of accountability,” says Williams.
Sam Mewis adds that it’s imperative to continue those conversations which have been spurred by America’s recent collective reckoning around systemic racism.
“We need to keep going, we need to keep doing it, and keep talking about it, and keep demanding change in whatever areas we can,” she says.
Listen to the full conversation between the friends and teammates here, and don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode!