"It just feels like a miss." That's Kelley O'Hara on the one thing she never got to do — play professional football in Atlanta, the city where she grew up watching the 1996 Olympics and decided she wanted to compete for her country.
O'Hara retired in 2024 with NJ/NY Gotham FC after a career that produced two World Cup winners' medals (2015, 2019), Olympic gold in 2012, Olympic bronze in 2021, NWSL championships in 2021 and 2023, and a Women's Professional Soccer title in 2010. The NWSL announced Atlanta's expansion to a 17th team — owned by Arthur Blank, who also runs Atlanta United and the Falcons — in 2025, set to kick off in 2028. Four years too late.
"That would have been the dream," she said on the Full Time podcast. The Atlanta Beat actually signed her ahead of the 2012 WPS season, only for the league to fold days later. She later had conversations with Atlanta United's front office about a future women's team. It never came together in time.
2019 is the one she'd keep
Asked to rank her medals, O'Hara doesn't hesitate: the 2019 World Cup in France tops the list. She started six of seven matches, set up Christen Press' opener in the semifinal win over England, and then made sure the celebrations matched the moment. "Nobody's sleeping for the next 96 hours. Let's go!" Her 2021 NWSL title with Washington Spirit sits second — "I wanted that just as bad as a World Cup" — which tells you something about how seriously she took domestic football at a time when a lot of players treated the NWSL as an afterthought between international windows.
Now she's building a second career in front of the camera. CBS brought her in for studio work on NWSL and UEFA Women's Champions League coverage alongside Darian Jenkins, Janelly Farías, and Jen Beattie. Her first live broadcast was a fan-zone preshow at the 2022 NWSL championship alongside Ali Riley — low stakes, entirely unscripted. "They're just letting us rip. That's a choice," she laughed.
Straight takes, no filter
What she's found in broadcasting mirrors what made her popular as a player: she doesn't perform a version of herself. "I'm just going to say it like it is, and I'm not trying to be anything that I'm not." For a sport still fighting for credibility in mainstream US media, that directness matters — analysts who sound like they're reading from a script don't move the needle.
She says she'd "love to be involved" with the Atlanta expansion, though she hasn't had contact with the club yet. Given her profile in the city and her broadcasting platform, that conversation seems inevitable. Whether it happens in front of the camera or behind the scenes is the only open question.
As for the hardest part of media life after elite sport? "Getting hair and makeup every day."
