USWNT and Gotham FC defenseman Kelley O’Hara announced Thursday that she will retire at the end of the 2024 NWSL season, which ends in October.
O’Hara, 35, announced the news exclusively through Just Women’s Sports, both in an article and a special “Kelley on the Street” YouTube video in which she asks people she meets on the street about retirement.
“I always said I would play under two conditions: that I still love playing football and if my body would let me do it the way I wanted,” O’Hara told Just Women’s Sports. “I realized a while ago that I would always love this, so it was the physical piece that was going to be the deciding factor.”
Once the 2023 NWSL season ended, O’Hara said he seriously considered his future, but hasn’t thought twice since making the decision to move on.
“Once I thought, ‘Okay, you know what, this will be my last year,’ I had a lot of peace with that,” she said. “Really, the only thing I felt was gratitude for everything my career has been, for all the things I’ve been able to do and the people I’ve been able to do it with.”
O’Hara has played high-level football since he was a child. She began representing the United States in 2004 as part of the U16 national team and would continue to represent the United States until the 2023 Women’s World Cup. She was part of that golden era of the USWNT along with Megan Rapinoe, Alex Morgan, Carli Lloyd and others, an era that only recently came to an end.
But it was a golden age for a reason. As part of that team, O’Hara was a two-time World Cup champion, Olympic gold medalist, three-time CONCACAF women’s champion and five-time SheBelieves Cup champion. She also won two NWSL championships.
As for what the future holds for her, O’Hara isn’t sure yet. But she knows she wants to stay close to the game she loves so she can give back to the next generation.
“I feel like I have a lot of passions and things that excite me” she said. “And I want to stay as close to the game as possible, because I feel a responsibility – and I’m not sure in what capacity – to continue to develop it.”
