ROS Presents: Counterattack

Telling their stories opens the door for Sinead Farelly and Mana Shim — and the NWSL itself — to undergo radical transformations.

Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim go public with their stories of abuse and coverup in the NWSL and, in doing so, inspire a reckoning across women’s soccer.

The creation of Angel City FC, a new NWSL team owned and operated by women, promises the kind of culture players have long envisioned for the league. But Sinead Farelly is deeply concerned that the league and its players will never reach their potential with coaches like Paul Riley still in positions of power. So, she decides it’s time to finally tell her story.

The National Women’s Soccer league launches, creating new opportunities for elite female soccer players, including Sinead Farrelly, Michelle Betos and newcomer Mana Shim. But the imbalance of power and lack of oversight that defined previous leagues persists; coaches remain powerful and unaccountable gatekeepers. Sinead vows to take her and Paul’s secret to the grave, but it leads her down a path of self-destruction. At the same time, Paul pulls the same moves on a new player — but she has no intention of keeping quiet.

Sinead Farrelly leaves college early to go pro. But when she arrives, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Abysmal pay, poor conditions, and league instability create a culture in which players have little protection or power. But her coach, Paul Riley, is a soccer legend. He pushes her to play her best—but he also pushes beyond her personal boundaries. At first, she laughs off his inappropriate comments, but eventually his advances cross the line. This episode brings listeners inside the culture of women’s and girls soccer. Host Briana Scurry explores the undercurrent of sexism that has historically pervaded its power structures, media coverage, and often, coach-player relationships.

The US Women’s National Team’s historic World Cup win in 1999 changed the narrative for female athletes everywhere and inspired a generation of soccer-loving kids like Sinead Farrelly, a little girl in small-town Pennsylvania with big soccer dreams. Host and goalkeeper Briana Scurry relives that iconic summer and reflects on the legacy of activism, organizing and sisterhood in women’s soccer in this inaugural episode of Counterattack. She also traces the orgin story of Sinead Farrelly, whose experiences in the pros eventually change the game forever.

World Cup champion goalkeeper Briana Scurry follows the journey of Sinead Farrelly from young soccer phenom to league whistleblower to comeback kid in Counterattack, launching May 11. Sinead’s experiences in professional soccer and her brave decision to speak out ignited the revolution taking place in professional women’s soccer today. Through determination and collective action, she and her fellow players are continuing a long tradition of sisterhood in women’s soccer. They are changing the game and forging a new path forward—for themselves, for their league, and for the next generation of little girls with big soccer dreams.

Two-time MVP Elena Delle Donne is considered one of the best to ever play in the WNBA. In 2019, she led the Washington Mystics to their first WNBA championship in franchise history. Playing through three herniated discs, a broken nose and a knee injury, Delle Donne managed to dominate in the winner-takes-all Game 5 putting up 21 points, 10 rebounds and five assists. “I was given all the warnings. I was told, like, this isn't the greatest way to go about this,” Delle Donne told In the Moment’s David Greene, “but I wasn't gonna listen.” Delle Donne’s decision to ignore warnings from team doctors and play through her injuries helped the Mystics cement the win. She credits her mindset about playing through the pain to her older sister, Lizzie, who has cerebral palsy and was born deaf and blind. “The things she has to overcome is way more than any of the pain that I had to deal with in Game 5,” Delle Donne said. In The Moment’s David Greene sat down with Delle Donne at the Mystics practice facility in Washington, D.C. to discuss that game and how her close relationship with her sister helped shape her uncommon career path in the WNBA. Find out about upcoming guests and other news by following Religion of Sports on Twitter or Instagram. Subscribe to our newsletter for more sports news.

In the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup final, the USWNT suffered a devastating loss to Japan after the 2-2 match went to penalty kicks. In 2015, the two teams faced each other again in the final and this time, Carli Lloyd and the USWNT had something to prove. Lloyd went on to become the first woman in FIFA World Cup history to record a hat trick in a final in their 5-2 win over Japan. Lloyd sat down with David Greene for a special live taping of In the Moment to relive her historic hat trick.

The trauma from violent hazing can lodge itself inside the victim, metastasizing in the years that follow. In our final episode, we’ll find out how Rodney, as well as other people who have more distance from their hazing incidents, have dealt with it years down the road.

When a violent hazing occurs, the natural impulse is to search for ways to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This effort to stop hazing has been going on in the U.S. for decades. But how effective has it been? And is it even possible to change something so ingrained in our culture?

We’ve all heard that ‘snitches get stitches.' It’s a rule on the streets but also on many sports teams. So what happens when kids speak out about being hazed in high school?

What role do coaches and other school leaders have in a hazing incident? And how much oversight can parents expect when their kids participate in school sports? We look at Rodney’s coach, his background, and ask what, if anything, could have been done differently.

What if the person being hazed is kinda having fun? Is all hazing a bad thing? A lot of guys on Rodney’s team say the locker room “tussling” just went too far in Rodney’s case. In this episode, host Iggy Monda looks at the range of hazing in U.S. culture, as well as in his own past, to try to find the line between horseplay and abuse.

What does hazing look like in high school sports today? Our series begins in Mobile, Alabama, where Rodney Kim, Jr. was a freshman with dreams of making the varsity football team. But a brutal locker room initiation changed everything.

Roughhousing is a new narrative series examining hazing culture in high school sports today. Host Iggy Monda takes listeners inside locker rooms to hear deeply personal stories from kids who have been hazed, parents who have fought for accountability, people who have hazed others, and coaches who are afraid of what their players might do when they’re not looking. Ultimately, he asks why hazing is so ingrained in American culture and what it says about us. From Religion of Sports and PRX, Rough Housing launches February 23.

Larry Fitzgerald is considered one of the best wide receivers of all time, and is expected to be a first ballot NFL Hall of Famer. He’s also executive chair for the Arizona Super Bowl LVII Host Committee. In his 17 seasons with the Arizona Cardinals, he made it to the Super Bowl just once. In 2009, the Cardinals were the underdogs against the Pittsburgh Steelers. They were behind Pittsburgh most of the game until the last few minutes of the fourth quarter. That’s when Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner connected with Fitzgerald, who avoided two safeties to make a 64-yard touchdown. With 2:37 left in the game, Fitzgerald thought the Cardinals were on their way to victory. Then came the play that still haunts Fitzgerald: Ben Roethlisberger hits Santonio Holmes for the final touchdown ending the game with a Steelers win. You can still hear the pain in Fitzgerald’s voice more than ten years later. “Uhhh man, it's just like pure heartbreak,” Fitzgerald told In the Moment’s David Greene. “It's a feeling of despair [and] hurt that’s really hard to even express.” Fitzgerald last played in 2020. He says he’s now focused on supporting his community as executive chair of the Arizona Super Bowl Host committee. He’s also a minority owner of the Phoenix Suns and in 2005 launched The Larry Fitzgerald Foundation in honor of his mother, who passed away as a result of breast cancer in 2003. The ROS audio team also has an exciting announcement about what’s coming up next. Stay tuned..

When the Yankees lost the ALCS to the Astros this week, Hall of Famer Pedro Martínez turned an old insult back on the Yankees and their fans. "I have one question for all of New York: New York, who’s your daddy now?" he said. The former Red Sox ace was calling back to the 2004 ALCS when Yankees fans mercilessly chanted that phrase at him. This week, we share an exclusive interview from In the Moment with David Greene. Martínez talks to Greene about that historic season and how he was able to draw fuel from the Yankees taunts. “Little did they know that chanting ‘Pedro, Pedro’ worked to my advantage,” he said. Martínez also reveals how he would pitch against current sluggers like Aaron Judge, and insists that his era of pitching was the toughest ever. Subscribe for free to In the Moment with David Greene to hear the full episode.

Joan Niesen, the host of Crushed, is back with a bonus episode exploring baseball’s latest steroid controversy. Find the entire seven-part series in season one of this feed. Today, on the rare occasion that a pro baseball player tests positive for anabolic steroids, it’s widely assumed that he’s a cheater and few people ever pause to consider that there might be more to the story. But, is there? What if testing has gotten too good, and MLB policy has gotten too rigid? And what if innocent players are seeing their careers derailed as a result?

Would Pistorius be convicted of murder? Finally, Judge Thokozile Masipa delivered her verdict, and it drew a visceral reaction from across South Africa. Afterward, how would the Steenkamp family, the prosecution team, and the Paralympic community move on?

During his murder trial, Pistorius claimed he’d mistaken Reeva for an intruder, when he shot her in his home. He listed instances where he’d been the victim of crime. But for many South Africans, there was a coded message in Pistorius’ words –– the fear of black people invading white people’s homes. They even have a term for this fear: Swart Gevaar.

Pistorius was arrested and charged with murder, and prosecutors Gerrie Nel and Andrea Johnson took the case. Nel and Johnson reviewed the crime scene, the evidence, the witness testimony, and were of the opinion that Pistorius killed Reeva on purpose. They viewed this as a case of gender-based violence, in a country where such crimes are sadly common.

In this episode, we remember the life of Reeva Steenkamp. She was an activist, a mentor, an aspiring lawyer, and a model whose career was about to take off. Her future was looking bright, when she met Pistorius in the Fall of 2012. Then three months later, he shot her dead in his home.

As Pistorius rose to fame, the media began learning more about him, and some of the details seemed … troubling. He drove at excessive speeds. He had an obsession with guns. He crashed a boat into a jetty. And the details of his private life were worse. In hindsight, it’s easier to see the warning signs we missed, or chose to overlook, along the way.

Pistorius was so dominant, he set his sights on a new goal: running against able-bodied athletes at the Olympic Games. Now he faced more questions, more scrutiny. Scientists wondered if the races would be fair, and Pistorius struggled to qualify. But he was buoyed by the support of his home country, South Africa, where he was considered a hero.

In the early 2000s, the Paralympics were headlined by star sprinters Marlon Shirley and Brian Frasure, when suddenly a new challenger emerged –– a teenager from South Africa named Oscar Pistorius. He immediately began dominating the sport, winning medals, setting records, and signing endorsement deals. But Shirley and Frasure had questions about how this newcomer was winning all these races.

False Idol re-examines the rise and fall of Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic sprinter who murdered his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. Journalist Tim Rohan traces Pistorius’ path to infamy, deconstructs his heroic image, and remembers the life of Steenkamp, as he tries to understand how a tragedy like her death could have happened. Launching August 26th, 2021.

Joan Niesen talks with Tim Rohan, host of False Idol, the latest narrative podcast from Religion of Sports and PRX. The new series re-examines the story of Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic sprinter who killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day 2013. False Idol launches with two episodes in this feed on August 26th.

More than 100 years after banning pitchers from using foreign substances on balls, MLB is finally enforcing that rule in an effort to resurrect lagging offense. But is the league cracking down on the right culprit? In this bonus mini-episode, Joan explores the physics of ball doctoring and asks what baseball’s current scandal can tell us about the evolution of the game.

Baseball still feels the aftershocks of the steroid era. Has it recovered, or has it just forgotten and moved on? And what happens when a sport that's built on nostalgia ignores its own history?

In 2005, Congress forced star athletes and baseball leadership to finally confront their steroid problem on national television and answer questions on Capitol Hill. There were a lot of things the government got right that day, but some very important things it got wrong.

In the years after Barry Bonds was crowned home run king, baseball's steroid problem became too big to ignore. Fans began to look for someone to blame, a villain—but truth and accountability remained elusive.

Baseball has always had a murky code of ethics, a rulebook that feels more like a suggestion. Did that culture pave the way for steroids? And, in baseball and in life, where do we draw the line between advancement and cheating?

At the height of the steroid era, players across baseball had to decide if they should use—and reap the benefits—or stay clean. We meet two such players and follow the ripple effects of their choices.

When reporter Steve Wilstein started asking questions about a bottle of pills in Mark McGwire’s locker, it set off a chain reaction that would cast doubt on the home run record and the power that had come to define baseball.

What happens when your love of a sport is built on a major-league lie? Sportswriter Joan Niesen was a kid in St. Louis in the summer of 1998, when the home run race made baseball magic. Mark McGwire was her favorite player, and she tracked his every move that season as he chased baseball immortality. But the spectacle of that summer was not what it seemed. McGwire and countless other players had been using anabolic steroids for years. Now, Joan is revisiting the steroid era to untangle the truth from its many myths and search for answers. What happens when our heroes let us down? What can those years tell us about sports culture in America? And what is the legacy of baseball’s farthest-reaching scandal?

Sportswriter Joan Niesen is revisiting the steroid era to untangle its truth from the many myths, examine the legacy of baseball’s farthest-reaching scandal, and explore what it tells us about sports culture in America. Launching on April 1, Opening Day 2021.