USC star Juju Watkins is OUT with a torn ACL 😦

“I still have the medal."

— Jordan Chiles, on her bronze medal from the Paris 2024 Olympics that was later stripped in a controversial decision🥉

Three big stories to know this week in women's sports

1. March Madness delivers the best basketball of the year 🏀

The second round of March Madness ended last night and brought with it some of the most thrilling basketball games of the year. Top moments include:

HIGH: UConn’s Paige Bueckers showed why she’s the projected No. 1 draft pick during the Huskies’ 91–57 performance against No. 10-seed South Dakota State. Bueckers ended the night with 34 points and four steals, marking her second 30-point game in an NCAA tournament and tying her career high in her final home game.

LOW: No. 1-seed USC’s Juju Watkins suffered a season-ending knee injury during the Trojans’ game against 9-seed Mississippi State. Watkins was running down the court when she suddenly stopped and fell to the ground, grimacing and clutching her knee. She was down for a few moments, and was then helped off the court. USC said later that she’ll require surgery and rehabilitation. The question now on everyone’s minds: Can USC make it to the finals without their star?

HIGH: Women’s NCAA teams are finally getting paid! Women’s teams will receive their first-ever prize payouts based on performance this year. (Men’s teams have been getting them since 1991. 🙃) Teams will be awarded $15 million this year, with that number growing to $25 million by 2028. Conferences that send more than one team to the Big Dance will get paid, and there are additional funds for teams that advance further into the competition.

Next up: The Sweet 16 starts on Friday, March 28th.

(Cross Country Skier magazine)

2. Lindsey Vonn is BACK 💥

The alpine skiing star stepped onto the podium for the first time after returning from a five-year retirement. Vonn won second place in the super-G at the World Cup Finals in Sun Valley, Idaho this past weekend. She finished 1.29 seconds back from first place, 11 months before she hopes to compete in her fifth Olympics at Italy’s Milan Cortina Games.

Vonn’s season had some ups and downs leading to this point, with crashes and equipment hiccups affecting some of her races. However, her right knee, which was partially replaced last April after big crashes earlier in her career, has stayed sound and healthy. Prior to this podium, her best finishes were sixth in a downhill and fourth in a super-G on Jan. 11 and 12.

“It’s been a rough season of people saying that I can’t, that I’m too old, that I’m not good enough anymore,” she said after the race. “I think I proved everyone wrong. This means so much to me.”

Vonn, who is 40 years old, also shattered the record for the oldest World Cup podium finisher. It was previously held by Austrian Alexandra Meissnitzer, who made her last podium at 34 years and nearly 9 months old in 2008.

Now that's how you silence the haters.

3. Lorena Wiebes sprints to victory at the first women’s Milan–San Remo in 20 years 🚲

On Saturday, one of the longest single-day races on the women’s WorldTour calendar came down to an electrifying sprint finish, with Lorena Wiebes taking the hard-fought win.

The peloton stayed together for much of the 97-mile race along the coast of Italy, with Anne Knijnenburg (VolkerWessels) breaking away to gain 2:30 on the peloton about 37 miles in. However, several of the top teams, including SD Worx-Protime, Visma-Lease a Bike, Fenix-Deceunick, and FDJ-Suez, launched an effective chase that caught the break and reduced the size of the peloton.

The race’s final two climbs, the Cipressa and the Poggio, proved to be important turning points. After a crash at the front split the pack apart on the lead-in to the Cipressa, riders were forced to execute a hectic chase in order to regroup. It worked, with most of the top riders delivered to the front ahead of the 3.5-mile climb. Pauline Ferrand-Prevot (Visma-Lease a Bike) attacked on the descent, with 13 riders forming a lead group by the bottom.

The peloton reassembled with less than ten miles to go, with 21 riders hitting the Poggio together. At the bottom of its descent, Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) launched her own attack to the finish, putting herself in the lead at the last kilometer with Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) hot on her wheel. Vos took the lead, but Wiebes had a stronger punch, passing her for the win in the last ten meters.

Tip of the week

A new study examined the effects of pre-season energy availability on in-season performance in female collegiate distance runners. The results are telling: The runners who began the season underfueled performed significantly worse, running 5K races two minutes slower than their well-fueled teammates and showing no improvement over the season. The underfueled runners also didn't see improvements in their VO2 max, while the well-fueled runners made gains in aerobic capacity/cardiorespiratory fitness.

We already knew that fueling is critical for athletic performance (and we’ve talked about it in-depth in multiple podcast episodes, such as this one on disordered eating among young athletes), and this study offers more support.

The highlight reel

Flau’Jae Johnson will help clear $5 million in debt for Louisiana families. The LSU Tigers star is the company spokesperson for Experian’s five million consumer debt initiative, which will help 5,000 families in the state get on better financial footing.
No runners finished this year’s Barkley Marathons. The notoriously grueling trail ultra consists of five 25ish-mile loops of the hilly terrain around Frozen Head State Park in Tennessee. Runners have 13 hours and 20 minutes to complete each loop and 60 hours to complete the entire course. Last year, a record-high five runners finished, including Jasmin Paris, the race’s first female finisher, who completed the course just 99 seconds ahead of the time cutoff.
Notre Dame won its 14th overall NCAA fencing championship, along with two women’s individual titles. Eszter Muhari won the title for women’s epee, while Magda Skarbonkiewicz placed first in women’s sabre. 🤺 The overall win ties Notre Dame with Penn State for the most fencing titles in NCAA history.
Gotham FC’s Lilly Reale accidentally scored on her team’s goal during their matchup against the Orlando Pride. 🙁 The Pride won the match 2–0.
Shelby Houlihan returned from a four-year doping suspension to win silver in the 3,000m race at the World Indoor Track Championships. Houlihan was banned in 2021 when she tested positive for nandrolone, which she claimed came from a tainted pork burrito.
Laura Mueller became F1’s first-ever female race engineer this year when she signed with Haas as Esteban Ocon’s engineer. At this weekend’s Chinese GP, the pair scored points, marking the first time a woman race engineer has done so in the sport. 🏆
Olympic gold medalist Kristen Faulkner began her season at Milan-San Remo after sustaining a concussion while training in December. “The recovery process was very up and down. I thought I was good and then I went to team camp and I had to leave team camp early," Faulkner said in an EF-Oatly-Cannondale press release.
The Boston Banshees and New York Exile played the first-ever Women’s Elite Rugby match. The Banshees won by a penalty try, with a final score of 29–27.
A new global 7-on-7 women’s soccer league will debut in May with an inaugural tournament in Portugal. World Sevens Football will host one additional tournament in 2025, with further information TBD, and hopes to expand in 2026.
Zimbabwean Olympic swimmer Kirsty Coventry was named president of the International Olympic Committee, making her the first woman and first African to hold the position.
Wisconsin forward Casey O’Brien was named the 2025 Patty Kazmeier Award winner, given to the top player in women’s DI ice hockey. O’Brien currently leads the nation with an impressive 2.20 points per game and 62 assists.

Your Feisty recommendations

📺 What to watch: A new documentary called The Finisher follows Jasmin Paris’s three-year journey to finishing the infamous Barkley Marathons—a feat she achieved last year.

📚 What to read: Thirty Below, a new book by Cassidy Randall, tells the story of the first women to summit Denali 55 years ago ⛰️

🎧 What to listen to: For women 40+, growing muscles is the key to better energy and performance. Here’s what you need to know.

🙌 What got us stoked: The Los Angeles Marathon’s Legacy Runners have finished every race since 1986—and they have no plans to stop now.