After Adorned Soccer Profession, Kelley O’Hara is Again within the Pool
Kelley O’Hara went practically 30 years between significant swimming experiences.
The primary formed her trajectory towards the soccer subject. The second, she hopes, will assist outline what comes subsequent.
After a storied profession on the soccer pitch, the place she received an Olympic gold medal and two World Cup titles with the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff, O’Hara is again within the water. Her profession resulted in 2024 with what was termed “persistent knee degeneration,” the wear and tear and tear of her lengthy and distinguished profession. Swimming turned first a approach to invigorate the rehab for her remaining professional season, and now an outlet for her athletic hearth with soccer up to now.
As O’Hara embarks on a profession as a podcaster, broadcaster and all-around promoter of girls’s sports activities, she’s additionally sharing the gospel of swimming with fellow former soccer gamers. That features the Trans Tahoe Relay this month with fellow former U.S. nationwide teamer Sam Mewis, a purpose that O’Hara has been coaching towards and an opportunity to check herself in a brand new athletic area.
“That was form of my sanctuary, actually, as I used to be making an attempt to get again on the sector however then additionally leaning into retirement,” O’Hara informed Swimming World final month. “I can’t run anymore, so swimming’s grow to be my outlet.”
A Swimming Selection
O’Hara adopted a well-worn path to summer time swimming in her native Peachtree Metropolis, Georgia. For a few summers, she and her siblings swam for Pacers, a approach to hold busy within the summers and study water security. When O’Hara reached a sure level, she had a option to make between her myriad sporting pursuits and committing to the time calls for of membership swimming. That, coupled with chilly Georgia winters swimming open air, led her away from the pool.
Kelley O’Hara as an 8-and-under; Photograph Courtesy: Kelley O’Hara/O’Home Productions
“I actually loved it,” she stated. “I did a ton of sports activities rising up – did triathlons, identify a sport I’ve in all probability tried it. However swimming, I did it for one or two summers, after which by the tip of a type of summers, they had been like, do you wish to keep on and do the membership portion of swim staff? And I stated sure, as a result of I actually did take pleasure in it. And by midseason … I wasn’t at a spot the place I used to be like, I wish to give all of myself to this sport. I like soccer, too. So it was a mix of the chilly and never eager to give up any all the opposite sports activities, and I finished swimming.”
The choice was the correct one. O’Hara turned the Georgia highschool participant of the yr, led Stanford to a pair of Ultimate Fours and received the Hermann Trophy, school soccer’s equal of the Heisman, her senior season in 2009. Her professional profession wended by six franchises in two girls’s soccer leagues with three league titles.
The surface again earned 160 caps for the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff from 2010-23, scoring three objectives. She’s within the high 25 all-time for many caps for the world’s high girls’s nationwide program. O’Hara was a key contributor on 4 World Cup squads, successful titles in 2015 and 2019 (O’Hara got here on as a sub within the remaining of the 2015 event and began the 2019 remaining at proper again) and reaching the ultimate in 2011. She received Olympic gold in 2012 and bronze in 2021, her third Olympics.
However the worth for all that excellence was exacted on her physique. After main the Washington Spirit to the 2021 NWSL title, O’Hara performed 15 video games in 2022 (simply seven within the league) and was restricted to 16 video games the subsequent season in serving to Gotham carry the title in 2023.
That’s when she discovered her approach again to the water. She and her accomplice had been on trip within the Cayman Islands in January 2024, as O’Hara prepped for what she knew can be her remaining season at age 35. Whereas having fun with life at a resort, she noticed the actions supplied and jumped at an opportunity to do a gaggle swim within the ocean. It immediately transported her again to what had hooked her as an eight-and-under.
“I used to be like, dang, I miss this,” she stated. “That is so good. Swimming within the ocean is epic and with the ability to swim in Grand Cayman the place it’s beautiful and clear was so enjoyable. But additionally, this can be a nice complement to what I’m going to be making an attempt to do that yr on the sector and in my final yr, after which retiring. I simply received again into it and actually loved it.”
Overloading her knee was not one thing O’Hara might do in rehab. (Even now, some 16 months after her final substantive sport motion in NWSL, she will’t go for a run with out ache and swelling.) So she used pool exercises as a approach to change on-field depth in a low-impact approach. She tried to tailor units that will match cardio sprints on the sector or the interval coaching of a health exercise.
She additionally discovered the goal-setting and enchancment of swimming as scratching an itch that her physique didn’t enable on the soccer subject anymore.
“As an athlete, you wish to get higher. And I’m anyone who, even in my final days of enjoying soccer, there’s issues I can enhance on and little issues that I can tweak to get higher,” she stated. “You’re all the time chasing not perfection, however excellence. And so for me swimming, I’m beginning within the very backside right here nevertheless it’s thrilling to have issues that I can work on and enhance on. It’s enjoyable to have the ability to see your self enhance.”
A Put up-Retirement Aim
O’Hara has been a part of a era of exemplary togetherness on the sector, and that advocacy for one another is extending into retirement. She was a number one voice within the U.S. girls’s battle for equal pay and NWSL gamers’ battle towards discrimination and abuse from coaches and executives. Many in that group are reaching the ends of their careers, and their connection is enduring as they grapple with long-term accidents and limitations.
Kelley O’Hara on CBS Sports activities; Photograph Courtesy: Kelley O’Hara/O’Home Productions
Past the scourge of ACL tears, O’Hara is considered one of a number of soccer gamers who ended their careers sooner than they might’ve needed. Mewis, a 6-foot midfielder of prodigious expertise who was a part of the 2019 World Cup squad and was capped 83 instances, performed simply seven video games over her final three professional seasons as a consequence of knee accidents earlier than retiring at age 31. O’Hara’s former Stanford teammate and New Zealand captain Ali Riley has handled “persistent and chronic” leg accidents which have stored her off the sector for the final yr and price her an opportunity to play at a fifth Olympics in Paris. O’Hara supplied her a FaceTime teaching session for pool exercises.
O’Hara has additionally helped Rose Lavelle, a midfielder of generational technical capacity who has been beset by accidents, and Tierna Davidson, a U.S. defender recovering from a second ACL tear in three years, on find out how to incorporate pool work into their rehabs. Mewis will be a part of O’Hara and 4 mates within the Tahoe swim this month.
“A variety of the soccer gamers who’re getting back from harm are eager to put it to use in a approach of rehab, return-to-play kind program,” she stated. “I’ve tried to get as many gamers within the pool with me as potential.”
O’Hara has included swimming into her many post-playing endeavors, albeit behind the scenes. She’s a podcaster with the Simply Girls’s Sports activities community, and she or he’s performed TV work with the NWSL and CBS Sports activities’ Golazo Community. She’s a promoter of girls’s sports activities throughout the NWSL season and with the U.S. nationwide staff, in addition to main occasions just like the Olympics (the place she had a podcast with basketball gold medalist Lisa Leslie) and NCAA girls’s basketball season. She’s additionally an avid surfer, and she or he sneaks in her swim exercises in her travels, whether or not on trip or a latest go to again to Stanford to swim on the Avery Aquatic Middle.
She’s an outdoorsy individual by nature, and having a component of health and exercise in her every day routine was all the time going to be a should for her post-retirement life. Not with the ability to run threatened to take that away, and it wasn’t till late in O’Hara’s profession that among the issues veterans had stated to her when she was youthful about with the ability to operate after your enjoying profession have actually hit residence.
Swimming has given her again a bit of that. With adventures just like the Trans Tahoe Relay on July 19, it additionally gives objectives to chase alongside the best way.
“I believe it’s the problem of it,” she stated. “Open water swimming in Grand Cayman is basically the one place I’ve performed it, and that’s stunning, clear, beautiful water, sunny, salty, all of the issues that you might need. However for me, it’s virtually a bit little bit of the worry issue of, can I deal with my nerves understanding I’m in open water? Clearly Lake Tahoe, there aren’t sharks there, so don’t have to fret about that. However it’s nonetheless this nice large expanse of water that it’s a must to conquer.
“I believe it’s additionally that I like being open air. I like being one with nature. I like to surf. And one of many causes I like to surf is since you’re simply being within the water, spending time by your self or with mates, and also you’re away out of your cellphone, all that stuff. So I believe it’s that connection in nature I actually love.”
