After Decorated Soccer Career, Kelley O’Hara is Back in the Pool
Kelley O’Hara went nearly 30 years between meaningful swimming experiences.
The first shaped her trajectory toward the soccer field. The second, she hopes, will help define what comes next.
After a storied career on the soccer pitch, where she won an Olympic gold medal and two World Cup titles with the U.S. women’s national team, O’Hara is back in the water. Her career ended in 2024 with what was termed “chronic knee degeneration,” the wear and tear of her long and distinguished career. Swimming became first a way to invigorate the rehab for her final pro season, and now an outlet for her athletic fire with soccer in the past.
As O’Hara embarks on a career as a podcaster, broadcaster and all-around promoter of women’s sports, she’s also sharing the gospel of swimming with fellow former soccer players. That includes the Trans Tahoe Relay this month with fellow former U.S. national teamer Sam Mewis, a goal that O’Hara has been training toward and a chance to test herself in a new athletic domain.
“That was kind of my sanctuary, honestly, as I was trying to get back on the field but then also leaning into retirement,” O’Hara told Swimming World last month. “I can’t run anymore, so swimming’s become my outlet.”
A Swimming Choice
O’Hara followed a well-worn path to summer swimming in her native Peachtree City, Georgia. For a couple of summers, she and her siblings swam for Pacers, a way to keep busy in the summers and learn water safety. When O’Hara reached a certain point, she had a choice to make between her myriad sporting interests and committing to the time demands of club swimming. That, coupled with chilly Georgia winters swimming outdoors, led her away from the pool.
Kelley O’Hara as an 8-and-under; Photo Courtesy: Kelley O’Hara/O’House Productions
“I really enjoyed it,” she said. “I did a ton of sports growing up – did triathlons, name a sport I’ve probably tried it. But swimming, I did it for one or two summers, and then by the end of one of those summers, they were like, do you want to stay on and do the club portion of swim team? And I said yes, because I really did enjoy it. And by midseason … I wasn’t at a place where I was like, I want to give all of myself to this sport. I love soccer, too. So it was a combination of the cold and not wanting to quit any all the other sports, and I stopped swimming.”
The decision was the right one. O’Hara became the Georgia high school player of the year, led Stanford to a pair of Final Fours and won the Hermann Trophy, college soccer’s equivalent of the Heisman, her senior season in 2009. Her pro career wended through six franchises in two women’s soccer leagues with three league titles.
The outside back earned 160 caps for the U.S. women’s national team from 2010-23, scoring three goals. She’s in the top 25 all-time for most caps for the world’s top women’s national program. O’Hara was a key contributor on four World Cup squads, winning titles in 2015 and 2019 (O’Hara came on as a sub in the final of the 2015 tournament and started the 2019 final at right back) and reaching the final in 2011. She won Olympic gold in 2012 and bronze in 2021, her third Olympics.
But the price for all that excellence was exacted on her body. After leading the Washington Spirit to the 2021 NWSL title, O’Hara played 15 games in 2022 (just seven in the league) and was limited to 16 games the next season in helping Gotham lift the title in 2023.
That’s when she found her way back to the water. She and her partner were on vacation in the Cayman Islands in January 2024, as O’Hara prepped for what she knew would be her final season at age 35. While enjoying life at a resort, she saw the activities offered and jumped at a chance to do a group swim in the ocean. It instantly transported her back to what had hooked her as an eight-and-under.
“I was like, dang, I miss this,” she said. “This is so nice. Swimming in the ocean is epic and being able to swim in Grand Cayman where it’s gorgeous and clear was so fun. But also, this is a great complement to what I’m going to be trying to do this year on the field and in my last year, and then retiring. I just got back into it and really enjoyed it.”
Overloading her knee was not something O’Hara could do in rehab. (Even now, some 16 months after her last substantive game action in NWSL, she can’t go for a run without pain and swelling.) So she used pool workouts as a way to replace on-field intensity in a low-impact way. She tried to tailor sets that would match aerobic sprints on the field or the interval training of a fitness workout.
She also found the goal-setting and improvement of swimming as scratching an itch that her body didn’t allow on the soccer field anymore.
“As an athlete, you want to get better. And I’m somebody who, even in my last days of playing football, there’s things I can improve on and little things that I can tweak to get better,” she said. “You’re always chasing not perfection, but excellence. And so for me swimming, I’m starting in the very bottom here but it’s exciting to have things that I can work on and improve on. It’s fun to be able to see yourself improve.”
A Post-Retirement Goal
O’Hara has been part of a generation of exemplary togetherness on the field, and that advocacy for each other is extending into retirement. She was a leading voice in the U.S. women’s fight for equal pay and NWSL players’ battle against 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 injuries and limitations.
Kelley O’Hara on CBS Sports; Photo Courtesy: Kelley O’Hara/O’House Productions
Beyond the scourge of ACL tears, O’Hara is one of several soccer players who ended their careers earlier than they would’ve wanted. Mewis, a 6-foot midfielder of prodigious talent who was part of the 2019 World Cup squad and was capped 83 times, played just seven games over her last three pro seasons due to knee injuries before retiring at age 31. O’Hara’s former Stanford teammate and New Zealand captain Ali Riley has dealt with “chronic and persistent” leg injuries that have kept her off the field for the last year and cost her a chance to play at a fifth Olympics in Paris. O’Hara offered her a FaceTime coaching session for pool workouts.
O’Hara has also helped Rose Lavelle, a midfielder of generational technical ability who has been beset by injuries, and Tierna Davidson, a U.S. defender recovering from a second ACL tear in three years, on how to incorporate pool work into their rehabs. Mewis will join O’Hara and four friends in the Tahoe swim this month.
“A lot of the soccer players who are coming back from injury are wanting to utilize it in a way of rehab, return-to-play type program,” she said. “I’ve tried to get as many players in the pool with me as possible.”
O’Hara has incorporated swimming into her many post-playing endeavors, albeit behind the scenes. She’s a podcaster with the Just Women’s Sports network, and she’s done TV work with the NWSL and CBS Sports’ Golazo Network. She’s a promoter of women’s sports during the NWSL season and with the U.S. national team, as well as major events like the Olympics (where she had a podcast with basketball gold medalist Lisa Leslie) and NCAA women’s basketball season. She’s also an avid surfer, and she sneaks in her swim workouts in her travels, whether on vacation or a recent visit back to Stanford to swim at the Avery Aquatic Center.
She’s an outdoorsy person by nature, and having an element of fitness and activity in her daily routine was always going to be a must for her post-retirement life. Not being able to run threatened to take that away, and it wasn’t until late in O’Hara’s career that some of the things veterans had said to her when she was younger about being able to function after your playing career have really hit home.
Swimming has given her back a piece of that. With adventures like the Trans Tahoe Relay on July 19, it also provides goals to chase along the way.
“I think it’s the challenge of it,” she said. “Open water swimming in Grand Cayman is really the only place I’ve done it, and that’s beautiful, clear, gorgeous water, sunny, salty, all the things that you could want. But for me, it’s almost a little bit of the fear factor of, can I handle my nerves knowing I’m in open water? Obviously Lake Tahoe, there aren’t sharks there, so don’t have to worry about that. But it’s still this great big expanse of water that you have to conquer.
“I think it’s also that I love being outdoors. I love being one with nature. I love to surf. And one of the reasons I love to surf is because you’re just being in the water, spending time by yourself or with friends, and you’re away from your phone, all that stuff. So I think it’s that connection in nature I really love.”
