U.S. women’s national team and Portland Thorns forward Sophia Wilson and Arizona Cardinals receiver Michael Wilson announced they are expecting their first child.

The couple revealed the news Wednesday on Instagram.

 ‘Life just keeps getting sweeter,’ said the shared post of the two with ultrasound photos.

The athletic couple first met when they were both freshmen at Stanford in 2018 and have been together since. They got married in January.

WOMEN’S SPORTS: The latest news and insider insights from USA TODAY Studio IX.

‘My career, it has to stop for a period of time when I am pregnant so that’s not something we can just let happen at any moment,’ she said.

The news comes as the Thorns are set to kick off the 2025 NWSL season on March 15, meaning Wilson will likely miss the majority of the season. The team posted a congratulatory message on social media and said it is ‘proud to support her through this incredible new chapter.’

Wilson has been a star on the pitch ever since she was a highly-rated prospect in high school. She won an NCAA championship with Stanford in 2019 and was the No. 1 pick at the 2020 NWSL draft. She was named the league MVP in 2022 as she led Portland to its third league title.

In addition to her college and club success, Wilson has been a star for the USWNT. She was named US Soccer Female Player of the Year in 2022 at the age of 21 and was a critical member of the gold medal winning team at the 2024 Paris Olympics. She is part of the ‘Triple Espresso’ attack with Trinity Rodman and Mallory Swanson.

Michael Wilson was drafted by the Cardinals in the third round of the 2023 NFL draft and is coming off a solid second-year in the NFL. He played in 16 games in 2024 with 13 starts, and caught 47 catches for 548 receiving yards and four touchdowns, second-most on the team.

A coin toss went South Carolina’s way. Just about everything else is coming up Texas. Vic Schaefer’s Longhorns are among national title frontrunners.
Texas earned a share of SEC regular-season title in first year in the conference.
As SEC Tournament arrives, Texas remains in hot pursuit of what would be the program’s first national championship since 1986.

The coin on the back of Greg Sankey’s hand said South Carolina received the No. 1 seed in the SEC women’s basketball tournament, but the net around Vic Schaefer’s neck – cut down after the Longhorns’ 29th victory in 31 games – told a different story.

Schaefer’s Texas Longhorns are SEC champions, too.

And no coin flip would erase the smile from Taylor Jones’ face as she slid through burnt orange and white confetti on the court at Moody Center after No. 1 Texas smashed Florid 72-46 on Sunday to secure a share of the SEC’s regular-season title in the Longhorns’ first season in the conference.

“We worked hard to get to where we’re at now,” Jones said afterward, “and I don’t think that will stop, either way the coin landed.”

Texas and South Carolina tied atop the SEC standings with just a single conference loss. The teams played each other twice and split those games. So, a commissioner’s coin toss determined the No. 1 seed for this week’s SEC tournament.

WOMEN’S SPORTS: The latest news and insider insights from USA TODAY Studio IX.

The toss went South Carolina’s way. Just about everything else is coming up Longhorns.

Texas rides a 13-game win streak with a team built to contend for a national title. No clearcut front-runner exists for the national championship. Southern California, UCLA, South Carolina, Notre Dame and Connecticut join Texas among the favorites.

“I’m not trading my team for anybody,” Schaefer told me last week. “I love my team, I love my kids, and I’ve seen my kids do some really special things this year.”

This is the sort of team and season Schaefer envisioned when he accepted the Texas job in 2020.

Texas has long ranked as a strong program – it’s an NCAA women’s tournament regular – but it last won a national championship in 1986, when Jody Conradt’s team went 34-0.

Schaefer previously coached Mississippi State to two national runner-up finishes, and when he left that job for Texas, he declared that he was coming to make Texas great, not good.

Now, he works just a couple of blocks away from the address of a since-demolished hospital where he was born in Austin.

“I’m a Texas boy,” said Schaefer, who grew up in Houston and graduated from Texas A&M, “and, in my industry, I felt like the University of Texas was the best job in the country. I felt like coming here, this was a place where you could win multiple (conference) championships and have a chance to win a national championship.”

Texas shows versatility during climb to No. 1 in country

These Longhorns, who are ranked No. 1 in the USA TODAY Sports women’s basketball poll for the first time, win in a variety of ways.

Last week, they gutted out a 57-26 win against Georgia by limiting the Bulldogs to 30.6% shooting. Six days later, they received 32 points from their bench while dominating Florida in the paint.

Texas and UConn are the nation’s only teams that rank in the top 20 in both scoring offense and scoring defense.

They force bundles of turnovers that jumpstart their transition attack.

Madison Booker, one of the nation’s best players as a sophomore, teams up with Jones, a sixth-year senior, to provide Texas with a formidable frontcourt. Senior point guard Rori Harmon stirs the drink on offense and provides dogged defense.

Schaefer considers this the best shooting team of his career, but the Longhorns also defend the way their coach likes, helping them survive the occasional off shooting night.

“I believe in my team,” Schaefer said. “I’ve seen them fight for some gritty, gritty victories. They’ve shown me a level of toughness that I’m convinced on any given night, they can compete with anybody in the country.”

‘Job’s not done,’ as Longhorns enter SEC Tournament

Schaefer won a national championship as an associate coach at Texas A&M under Gary Blair, before he elevated Mississippi State to its best run of success in program history. His Bulldogs snapped UConn’s 111-game winning streak in the 2017 Final Four. Schaefer looks back fondly on his years coaching the Bulldogs and says no other job could have pulled him out of Starkville except for Texas.

Schaefer remembers a meeting with Texas’ other head coaches in 2022 after his team had reached the Elite Eight in his second season. As Schaefer scanned the room, he realized the coaches of 10 Texas teams either won the national championship or finished as the national runner-up during that athletic season.

“My team went to the Elite Eight, and we weren’t even good enough to finish in the top half of the room,” Schaefer said. “That’s how elite this place is. … The standard here is championships.”

This veteran-laden squad embraces that mentality. And even as the Longhorns soaked up a moment of enjoyment Sunday while they reflected on their regular-season achievements, Texas’ floor general made a declaration.

“The job’s not done,” Harmon said.

Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.

NASCAR sued 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports, stating in court documents that the two companies “willfully” violated antitrust laws by essentially trying to ‘blow up’ the Charter system to obtain their financial goals.

Teams that have charters are guaranteed 36 spots each race weekend.

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in the Western District of North Carolina and obtained by USA TODAY Sports, also names Curtis Polk, who is Jordan’s agent, as a defendant. 23XI Racing is co-owned by Jordan, Polk and driver Denny Hamlin. Front Row is owned by Bob Jenkins, who made his fortune as a restaurant franchisee.

The countersuit from stock car racing’s biggest division follows 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports, suing NASCAR in October, calling them ‘monopolistic bullies,’ accusing the organization of restraining fair competition and violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, preventing teams from competing ‘without accepting the anticompetitive terms’ it dictates.

The recent charter agreement was presented to teams in September, just days before the start of the NASCAR playoffs. 23XI and Front Row Motorsports were the only two teams who did not sign it.

Takeaways from new lawsuit involving Jordan, Front Row and NASCAR

In the lawsuit, NASCAR said the two teams ‘willfully violated the antitrust laws by orchestrating anticompetitive collective conduct in connection with the terms of the 2025 Charter Agreements, alleging that the two teams are unhappy with the commercial terms of the current deal

“This is not the first time that 23XI and FRM have sought to impose their viewpoints, and those of their counsel, on the racing teams writ large,” the lawsuit said. “And it is truly ironic that in trying to blow-up the Charter system, 23XI and FRM have sought to weaponize the antitrust laws to achieve their goals.”

NASCAR says that Polk conspired to undermine business through shady negotiating and that his schemes date back to June 2022, alleging Polk violated the Sherman Antitrust Act, which outlaws monopolistic business practices. The organization also said that Polk made boycott threats when it came time to negotiate the new charters, likening his team to an ‘illegal cartel, who used ‘active threats and coercive behavior,’ to maintain their status.

‘Curtis Polk knowingly and actively orchestrated and participated in this illegal conspiracy, while working as a member of the TNC on behalf of the (Race Team Alliance) and aiding 23XI’s and Front Row’s participation in the scheme, also constituting a violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1,’ the lawsuit said.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Lionel Messi’s next match with Inter Miami will be against a team on the rise from Jamaica.

Inter Miami and its collection of former FC Barcelona stars will host Jamaican Premier League champion Cavalier FC at Chase Stadium on Thursday night at 8 p.m. ET. It’ll be the first of two matches in the round of 16 of the Concacaf Champions Cup tournament.

The match is among the most significant matches any soccer team from Jamaica or the Caribbean has played because of Messi. The World Cup champion’s presence alone makes this feel like a David vs. Goliath matchup.

‘That’s actually my favorite Bible story,” Cavalier FC coach and sporting director Rudolph Speid said during a news conference Wednesday.

Speid was in a lighthearted – or an irie mood – before the matchup.

Asked about how Messi could perform after resting and not playing Inter Miami’s last match Sunday in Houston, the coach said with a smile: “I know he rested because he wanted to be his best to play us.”

How to watch Inter Miami vs. Cavalier FC match on TV?

The match will be available on FS2 in English and ViX in Spanish.

Is Messi playing against Cavalier FC?

Inter Miami said Messi is expected to play when they announced he did not travel for the 4-1 win against the Houston Dynamo. But coach Javier Mascherano was coy about Messi’s status for the match.

“He’s training. He trained (Tuesday). He trained (Wednesday). But we’ll see,” Mascherano said. “He’s in good health, but we’ll see what’s best for us. That’s the reality.”

Cavalier FC excited about opportunity to play Inter Miami

Cavalier FC is playing in the Champions Cup tournament for the second time in as many years. They qualified directly into the round of 16 by winning the Concacaf Caribbean Cup in December.

As they watched Inter Miami dispatch Sporting Kansas City in the first round last month, Speid said the team wanted face Inter Miami all along. He personally attended Inter Miami’s home match against Sporting KC Feb. 25, when Messi scored a goal in a 3-1 win and Inter Miami advanced 4-1 on aggregate score.

‘Oh, we were cheering for them. We wanted Inter Miami to come through so we could play them,” Speid said. “All the persons in Jamaica were telling us, ‘Let’s hope it’s Inter Miami.’”

The matchup against Inter Miami will be the second time Cavalier has faced MLS competition: They lost to FC Cincinnati by scores of 2-0 and 4-0 in the first round of the tournament last year.

Inter Miami’s Sergio Busquets – one of five former Barcelona standouts on the squad, including Messi, Luis Suarez, Jordi Alba and Mascherano – said Cavalier ‘may not be so well known to us, but we know that if they are in this competition, it is on their own merits.’

‘They will be eager to face us and make it difficult for us,” Busquets added.

Cavalier knows it needs to make some noise in Thursday’s match, because they want Messi to play in the second leg March 13 at National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica. They have already announced a sellout of 35,000 tickets for the match.

“We have to take something home, especially to force Leo to come home and for Jamaicans to see him,” Cavalier FC defender Jeovanni Laing, 23, said.

Added Speid: “We’re really looking forward to doing well. I think it will inspire a generation of players in Jamaica itself, just because of what will happen. We’ll play them here. Everybody will be watching on TV. And, also in the return leg where we expect a packed stadium, and everybody just talking about the game. That inspiration is much more for the country than just our team.”

Cavalier is the reigning Jamaican Premier League champion. They’ve won the league twice in the last four years thanks to a focus on cultivating young players across the country capable of playing on Jamaica’s youth national teams, Speid said.

‘We have two 16-year-olds, two 17-year-olds, two 18-year-olds, one 19-year-old, five 20-year-olds,” Speid said. ‘They are really talented players. They just need an opportunity.”

Speid believes five years from now, the players on his team will be among the best in the country.

On Thursday, they could face the best player in the world.

‘This is like a dream come true for us as players, Jamaica as a country and as a whole for the Caribbean. But we can’t get starstruck,” Laing said of facing Messi and Inter Miami. “We have to play and perform well.

‘This is an opportunity to show our talents on the bigger stage, because millions will be watching. It’s a good thing. It’s a good opportunity.”

Tennis star Emma Raducanu opened up Tuesday about the mental anguish she experienced at the Dubai Tennis Championships last month when she was targeted by a stalker.

‘I was obviously very distraught,’ Raducanu told reporters in Indian Wells, California, as she returns to action for the first time since the ordeal, which resulted in the man being escorted out of the arena by security personnel.

‘I saw him in the first game of the match and I was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to finish.’

‘I literally couldn’t see the ball through tears. I could barely breathe. I was like, ‘I need to just take a breather.”

The 2021 U.S. Open champion said the same man had previously approached her twice off the court in Dubai and was also present during her matches in Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Doha.

The man has since been banned from all WTA tournaments. He was also detained by Dubai police, but Raducanu later decided to drop the charges against him.

‘It was a very emotional time,’ said Raducanu, who took a week off before returning to the tour.

‘After the match I did break down in tears, but not necessarily because I lost. There was just so much emotion in the last few weeks of the events happening, and I just needed that week off to take a breather and come here.

‘I feel a lot better.’

There aren’t many weaknesses with Auburn this season. The Tigers have been near the top of the rankings all season and seemed destined to earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament.

But if you listen to Auburn head coach Bruce Pearl, things aren’t all peachy, as was the case when the top-ranked Tigers strolled into College Station to face Texas A&M on Tuesday night.

The result was a wire-to-wire 83-72 victory for the Aggies, handing Auburn just its third loss of the season.

‘They physically manhandled us,’ Pearl said. ‘And if this team is going to continue to win, we’re going to run up against teams like Texas A&M or like Florida or like Duke that are big and physical.’

The Tigers were outrebounded 41-25, and 24 offensive rebounds led to 29 second-chance points for A&M.

‘We have no excuses to allow those guys to get 24 offensive rebounds,’ Pearl said. ‘I give Texas A&M all the credit. Our guys were physically dominated. So no, I don’t excuse our guys at all. We’re better than that, but not tonight.’

Auburn’s Player of the Year candidate Johni Broome had just eight points, his second straight game scoring under double figures.

Auburn (27-3, 15-2 SEC) concludes its regular season on Saturday against Alabama and the Aggies (21-9, 10-7) hit the road to take on LSU before the conference tournament starts next week in Nashville.

The USA TODAY app gets you to the heart of the news — fast. Download for award-winning coverage, crosswords, audio storytelling, the eNewspaper and more.

Athletes who represent Team USA at the Olympic or Paralympic Games will be eligible to receive at least $200,000 in post-retirement benefits as part of a new support plan announced Wednesday.

The plan, fueled by a $100 million donation by philanthropist Ross Stevens, will allow each Team USA athlete to receive a ‘Stevens Financial Security Award’ consisting of two six-figure payments. Eligible athletes will be able to access $100,000 over a four-year period following the end of their Olympic or Paralympic careers − specifically, 20 years after their qualifying Games or when they turn 45 years old, whichever is later. Their families or beneficiaries will also receive $100,000 upon their death.

In a statement announcing the plan, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee added that the benefits will multiply with each additional iteration of the Games in which the athlete competes − meaning a two-time Olympic athlete would receive $400,000, and a three-time Paralympian would be eligible to receive $600,000.

‘Because of Ross’ extraordinary generosity and philanthropic creativity, we can create more than a financial safety net,’ USOPC chairman Gene Sykes said in a statement. ‘We can build a springboard that will propel these athletes to even greater heights beyond their Olympic and Paralympic careers.’

The USOPC said the $100-million ‘anchor funding gift’ from Stevens, the CEO and founder of Stone Ridge Holdings Group, made the program possible. It is the largest single gift in the organization’s history.

‘Team USA athletes, extraordinary individuals, have proven they can achieve greatness and represent our incredible country with pride,’ Stevens said in a statement. ‘The Stevens Awards honor the sacrifices they have made on behalf of all Americans while inspiring the development of their dreams in the post-Games chapter of their lives.’

The post-retirement support program offers a creative solution to one of the fundamental issues in Olympic and Paralympic sports.

Unlike in major professional team sports, where athletes have the security of a contract that pays out regardless of performance or injury, most Olympic and Paralympic athletes rely on sponsorship deals and appearance fees to make up the majority of their income. For big stars like gymnastics gold medalist Simone Biles and 100-meter champion Noah Lyles, those income streams are massive. But for the average Olympic athlete in a sport like table tennis or water polo, they are usually not available.

‘The reality is that’s only the top 5%,’ water polo player Kaleigh Gilchrist said last summer. ‘The rest of us are living paycheck by paycheck.’

National governing bodies and international federations have offered various stipends to help fund athletes’ training and support them during their careers. The USOPC also pays athletes who medal at the Olympic or Paralympic Games; In 2024, they received $37,500 for every gold medal, $22,500 for every silver and $15,000 for every bronze.

Yet because so much of the money is dependent on performance, many athletes feel it’s not enough − especially for early-career Olympic athletes, who are trying to get a foothold as a professional. A 2020 survey of nearly 500 elite athletes across 48 countries by advocacy group Global Athlete found 58% of respondents didn’t consider themselves financially stable.

The USOPC said the Stevens Awards will help address this issue by providing the sort of savings that Olympic and Paralympic athletes do not have a chance to accrue.

‘Admiration of U.S. Olympians and Paralympians is uniquely bipartisan, uniting all Americans, and reminding us of our shared humanity,’ Stevens said.

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @tomschad.bsky.social.

(This story has been updated to add a video.)