United States girls’s nationwide workforce and Gotham FC defender Kelley O’Hara introduced Thursday that she is retiring from soccer on the finish of the Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League season.
O’Hara, 35, is a two-time Girls’s World Cup winner, an Olympic gold medalist and a two-time Nationwide Girls’s Soccer League title winner.
She made her announcement on the Simply Girls’s Sports activities platform, the place she has hosted a preferred gamers’ podcast.
“I have been taking part in soccer since I used to be 4 years outdated, and it has been an absolute pleasure,” she stated. “However as they are saying, ‘Do not cry as a result of it is over. Smile as a result of it occurred.’ And I do know there can be quite a lot of tears by me and doubtless a few of y’all, however I hope there are extra smiles.”
O’Hara, who was a free-agent signing by Gotham in 2023, has performed within the NWSL for 11 seasons. Gotham received the NWSL title final season. Earlier than that, she performed for the Washington Spirit, which received the league championship in 2021.
In 160 appearances with the nationwide workforce, O’Hara has performed in 4 whole World Cups and three Olympics. She is one in every of simply 4 U.S. gamers to be chosen for 4 World Cup squads.
On the 2015 World Cup, she got here off the bench to attain within the 84th minute, sealing a 2-0 semifinal victory over Germany. The US went on to win the match with a 5-2 win over Japan.
She received a gold medal within the London Olympics and a bronze within the Tokyo Video games.
“It has been one of many biggest joys to symbolize my nation and to put on the U.S. Soccer crest,” O’Hara stated in a U.S. Soccer assertion. “As I shut this chapter of my life, I’m full of gratitude. Wanting again on my profession I’m so grateful for all of the issues I used to be in a position to accomplish however most significantly the folks I used to be in a position to accomplish them with.”
Lately dogged by accidents, O’Hara’s final match with the nationwide workforce got here on the World Cup final summer season.
A Georgia native, O’Hara performed at Stanford and received the 2009 MAC Hermann Trophy as the highest faculty participant her senior season.
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Reporting by The Related Press.
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