Angel City players are grateful for vast support of moms

For Sarah Gorden, Mother’s Day is special because it’s not just a celebration of motherhood. For her, it is also a celebration of perseverance, courage and survival.

Especially survival.

Gorden became pregnant during her freshman year of college, and for most of the next 12 years she tried to balance her life as a professional soccer player with her responsibilities as a single mother. It wasn’t easy.

“Honestly, I look back and I have no idea how we overcame that,” said Gorden, who earned $8,000 as an NWSL rookie with the Chicago Red Stars in 2016, less than the city’s minimum wage. “We’re not making money. We were definitely using help and support from the government. And then help from family and friends.

“I’m impressed and proud of the part of me that survived that. But that was no way to live.”

As the memories come back, so do the tears.

Angel City midfielder Ariadina Alves Borges leaves the field with her son, Luca, at BMO Stadium on May 2.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

“It’s so hard to explain,” said Gorden, now 33 and captain of Angel City, as she dabbed away tears with a tissue. “Not having enough money, not enough time, wondering if I’m being selfish, wondering if I’m making the right decision. Ultimately it came down to: I didn’t feel like I had another [choice].”

A decade later, the NWSL minimum salary is $50,500 and the league’s collective bargaining agreement guarantees mothers job protection, full pay and benefits for the duration of a pregnancy-related absence, child care allowances and subsidized arrangements for women traveling with children up to 14 years old.

Angel City, founded by three mothers, has gone above and beyond what the league has required by supporting mothers with benefits that include a fully stocked day care center at the team’s practice facility on the campus of Cal Lutheran University.

“From the beginning, we always strive to support the whole player. Physically, mentally, emotionally and psychologically,” said Julie Uhrman, one of the founders of Angel City and now the team’s senior advisor. “And then supporting them if they arrived as parents or became parents. It’s not just about the players. The staff too.”

Uhrman, who raised two children while building a successful career as a media and entertainment executive, speaks from experience.

“They can do both and excel at both,” she said of her players. “And we’re going to provide them with the support and the environment to do that.”

On its active roster of 25 players, Angel City has four mothers – the most in the NWSL. The work that has gone into the infrastructure currently in place for them was carried out by Sarah Smith, the team’s former medical and performance director.

Smith, who left the club in January and now advises elite athletes — primarily skiers — in Utah, said the support she received from Uhrman and others during her own pregnancy two and a half years ago inspired and informed her work with Angel City.

“Having the management of the club and the leaders of the club, and then wanting to be able to support all the players in their different journeys, all the way to motherhood, I was really happy to be a part of it,” she said. “But it really started with me just experiencing this and being able to share these experiences.”

Angel City forward Sydney Leroux’s 9-year-old son, Cassius, waits for his mother to leave a team at BMO Stadium on May 2.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

The first player she guided through this journey was Scotland forward Claire Emslie, who gave birth to a son in December.

“I’ll be honest. After seeing everything she wanted to do for moms in the game, I couldn’t wait to become a mom,” Emslie said. “We weren’t even thinking about having a child. But knowing what she wanted to do if there was a pregnant player made me want to have a child because I knew it was the best place I could be.”

Emslie, 32, was cleared to play in Angel City’s game against San Diego on Saturday – the day before Mother’s Day – after missing the last 12 months on maternity leave. But she continued to train right before giving birth, and that, combined with the year without weekly professional soccer training and the physiological changes her body went through during pregnancy, made her better, she says.

“I feel better. I’m different,” she said. “I’ve gotten a lot stronger and that’s something you can’t develop in competition. My speed is back. I think I’m actually faster. And there’s also kind of an effect where you have more red blood cells in your system now. So they say your cardio is actually better.”

A footballer’s best years – between the ages of 25 and 29 – overlap with their best childbearing years. But until recently, women had to choose between a family and a career. Today, many people choose to do both.

Sophia Wilson, former scoring champion and NWSL MVP, and Mallory Swanson, her teammate on the United States women’s national team, both missed the game in 2025 to give birth. They are among 28 mothers in the league, and more are arriving with the NWSL’s latest availability report showing six teams missing players going on maternity leave.

Angel City player Claire Emslie, who is pregnant, visits a nursery the team built for the players.

(Courtesy of Angel City FC)

Emslie’s own experiences tell him those numbers will continue to rise.

“I’ve come to a point where I need[ed] to start thinking about life after football. And if I want to start a family, because of the biological clock, I have to start trying soon,” Emslie said. “It’s now a pretty normal thing to have a baby and come back.”

“Now I wish I had done it when I was younger,” she added. “Having a baby and still playing, they go on the journey with you. So to have, say, five, six years of professional football with a family, it’s incredible.”

Smith believes the drive of star players such as Wilson and Swanson – and before them, Manchester United’s Alex Morgan and Hannah Blundell – has brought the issue of motherhood into focus in football.

“That’s where the game is. I think you can probably see it across the league, the number of mothers,” Smith said. “And it’s a variety of circumstances. It could be mothers whose partners have carried children. It could also be players who are planning to have children in the future and want to freeze their eggs. What I wanted to make sure was that we supported all of these different circumstances.”

This included the design and procurement of the training center nursery that Angel City inherited from the NFL’s Rams in the fall of 2024.

“We put stuff in for Caiden, for Sarah’s son, because it wasn’t just for Claire,” Smith said. “We wanted to make sure that all the players and their partners felt good and comfortable. You just want to take some pressure off the players.”

Angel City Captain Sarah Gorden with her eldest son, Caiden, during a photo shoot.

(Courtesy of Angel City FC)

When the club inherited the Rams’ nine-acre training facility in 2024, Angel City designated the largest of the offices for the nursery. The office belonged to head coach Sean McVay and now features pink and light blue painted walls, a crib, changing table and a menagerie of stuffed animals.

“We want players to come to Angel City because we are the best place to grow as an athlete and as a human being,” Uhrman said. “And, you know, it’s really important to think about the fact that they may want to become mothers at some point or they will become one.”

Gorden remembers a time not so long ago when that wasn’t the case. Early in her career in Chicago, she said she had to bring her son to a team meeting and was punished by being benched. Another time, she couldn’t find childcare on the day of a game – a Mother’s Day game.

“I just remember bawling all morning and feeling so stressed,” she said.

Gorden has a fiancé who helps with his parenting duties, and his son Caiden, now in middle school, has grown into a sweet, empathetic boy.

“So yeah,” Gorden said, smiling through tears, “a lot of progress. The league gets it now.”