{"id":91547,"date":"2025-09-07T17:27:31","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T21:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/?p=91547"},"modified":"2025-09-07T17:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T21:33:14","slug":"alex-morgan-legacy-nwsl-uswnt-soccer-motherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/2025\/09\/07\/alex-morgan-legacy-nwsl-uswnt-soccer-motherhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Alex Morgan&#8217;s legacy extends beyond the field, into motherhood<div class=\"eqs-premium-tag\"><\/div>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p>Alex Morgan\u2019s legacy can be hard to define with one sentence, as her longtime professional career included fighting for equal pay, helping to grow the <a href=\"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/category\/nwsl-national-womens-soccer-league\/\">National Women\u2019s Soccer League<\/a>, the sport itself, and the wider world of women&#8217;s sports.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>But one part of her legacy that doesn\u2019t get as much mention is Morgan\u2019s fight to return to playing after giving birth to her firstborn daughter, Charlie, back in 2020. While she benefited from earlier generations of <a href=\"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/category\/uswnt\/\">U.S. women\u2019s national team<\/a> players who <a href=\"https:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/uswnt-soccer-moms-maternity-policies-120032682.html\">paved the way in continuing to play after motherhood<\/a>, Morgan herself helped secure stronger protections and standards for mothers in the sport.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne 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],\u201d Morgan recalled during her retirement press conference last fall. \u201cThat was a really special moment to be able to enjoy with some of my teammates knowing how far we\u2019ve come and the support that we now get as moms and still as professional athletes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>While there\u2019s a growing acceptance for mothers returning to elite levels of sport, it wasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"equalizer-paywall\">\n<div class=\"paywall-block\">\n<div class=\"paywall-heading\">\n      Access the best women&#8217;s soccer coverage all year long\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"paywall-body\">\n     Start your FREE, 7-day trial of The Equalizer Extra for industry-leading reporting and insight on the USWNT, NWSL and beyond.\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"paywall-button\">\n      <a href=\"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/eqs\/subscribe\">Subscribe<\/a>\n  <\/div>\n<div class=\"login-note\">\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/?memberful_endpoint=auth\">Existing Users Sign In Here<\/a>\n  <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"paywall-fade-block\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alex Morgan helped to establish standards for mothers in the NWSL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7359,"featured_media":91548,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":true,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,82,659,2469,9],"tags":[52,1791,34,768,845],"class_list":["post-91547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-nwsl-national-womens-soccer-league","category-orlando-pride-nwsl","category-san-diego-wave-fc","category-uswnt","tag-alex-morgan","tag-extra","tag-featured","tag-nwsl","tag-uswnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91547"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91586,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91547\/revisions\/91586"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalizersoccer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}