Photo: Abe Arredondo-Imagn Images.
Alex Morgan’s legacy can be hard to define with one sentence, as her longtime professional career included fighting for equal pay, helping to grow the National Women’s Soccer League, the sport itself, and the wider world of women’s sports.
But one part of her legacy that doesn’t get as much mention is Morgan’s fight to return to playing after giving birth to her firstborn daughter, Charlie, back in 2020. While she benefited from earlier generations of U.S. women’s national team players who paved the way in continuing to play after motherhood, Morgan herself helped secure stronger protections and standards for mothers in the sport.
“One really special moment is when we had five moms on the team at once between myself, Casey [Krueger], Julie [Ertz], Crystal [Dunn] and AD [Franch],” Morgan recalled during her retirement press conference last fall. “That was a really special moment to be able to enjoy with some of my teammates knowing how far we’ve come and the support that we now get as moms and still as professional athletes.”
While there’s a growing acceptance for mothers returning to elite levels of sport, it wasn’t always that way. And Morgan was very much part of the generation that proved that it was possible to do both, particularly within the NWSL, and changed the way those things look for players as they return.
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