The NWSL enacted mental health leave, and players are feeling the benefits | OneFootball

After just four years as a professional, Imani Dorsey was ready to retire. The game had always been enjoyable for her, who became a star at Duke University before being selected at No 5 overall in the NWSL Draft by Gotham FC. Now, it just wasn’t anymore.

“I got to a point where I wasn’t performing my job safely anymore,” she says today. “I was like: ‘I can’t do this anymore. I will just retire. This is not fun. This is not enjoyable. It continuously became harder and harder to dig deeper and dig back into the tank.”

Dorsey spoke with her parents and fiancé about her state of mind. She also spoke with Meghann Burke, the executive director of the NWSL Players Association (NWSLPA). In time, she decided on a different course of action: In the 2023 offseason, Dorsey became the first player to utilize the NWSL’s mental health leave policy, which allows its players to take six months away while receiving their salary in full. In that time, Dorsey attempted to regain a stability she felt like she had lost, eventually returning to the league with the Utah Royals last season.

“That instability really determined the decisions and how I went about my life,” Dorsey said. “I think going through leave and having this perspective, I’ve kind of taken control of my life in a lot of ways. I needed to step away to take care of myself, and I’m truly so grateful that I did.”

Dorsey may have been the first to utilize the NWSL’s mental health leave policy, but she was certainly not the last. Since Dorsey in 2023, more players have publicly stepped away to prioritize their mental health. Utah’s Carly Nelson did so in 2024, and so too in 2025 did Racing Louisville’s Bethany Balcer and Angel City’s Sydney Leroux. Others presumably will follow them.

How mental health leave came to be

The policy has been in place since 2022, when it was included in the collective bargaining agreement between the NWSL and its players’ association. It was the first of its kind in women’s soccer worldwide.

“The overall protection of the players, the person and mental health, was a really big proponent of the CBA,” said Madison Pogarch, Utah Royals defender and vice-president of the NWSLPA. “We really set a standard for people to be like: ‘it’s okay that you can’t do it every single day, all the time, and it’s okay to take a break.’”

That 2022 CBA was agreed upon as multiple investigations were unfolding in the wake of a reckoning with systemic abuse within the league in 2021. At the deal’s signing, Burke said that “Players drove every decision in this process.”

In 2024, the NWSLPA negotiated a new CBA with the league. That one made headlines for abolishing the college draft – a first for any major US pro league. However, the deal also includes even more mental health support for the players. The 2025 NWSL season is now the first where every team is also required to have both a mental health provider and a mental health performance consultant available to players.

“Having this support for your players is unprecedented,” said Pogarch.

The new mental health performance consultants operate on a strictly confidential basis, must hold a master’s or doctoral degree in sport science or psychology, and be certified. They must also be available to players for “a reasonable amount of time.”

Though there is no requirement for the players to visit them one-on-one, these specialists are available to do so. They are inside the environment, observing the players’ experiences first hand while also holding workshops and presentations that promote mental skills and well being.

For Gotham FC general manager Yael Averbuch-West, these new requirements are just the minimum. Her team and Bay FC are two in the NWSL that have added a full time mental performance coach to their teams, who travel with the squad on matchdays.

“When we look at a 360 view of health, there’s a mental, emotional, spiritual, you could add in so many aspects of a player’s health,” said Averbuch-West. “I think individualization is key. I think that is the gold standard, or North Star, or whatever you want to call it, when it comes to all aspects of health, well being and performance … I don’t claim that we have unlocked the whole puzzle here. But I do think that is a very important area of focus in every team environment.”

Advocating for players

Averbuch-West, who played in the NWSL and in Sweden, uses her personal experience to help bolster the club’s approach.

“I reflect back on a personal level, and so the things that maybe I could have done to better advocate for supporting my own mental health,” she said.

Today, that’s where someone like Agustina de Giovanni would come in. De Giovanni is Bay FC’s full time mental performance specialist, but first and foremost, she views herself as working for the players.

“I advocate for the athletes, that’s my main focus,” she said. “For us, [it’s] understanding their needs, and helping them develop the tools that they believe they need.”

De Giovanni sees the mental side of soccer as just as important as the physical and the tactical. The only difference is that the brain is engaged for far more often than a muscle might be in the gym.

“If you want the same consistency, you have to train this muscle. You need to train this muscle,” she said. “The problem is that this muscle, you are using it all the time. My mission, in my job, in my role, is to bring awareness of how this is important.”

De Giovanni also believes the next step for developing a better mental health support system will be integrating it even further into U.S. soccer’s coaching license courses. In her mind, once it becomes more common in the high performance environment, the stigma that still surrounds mental health specialists will be removed.

She also acknowledges that the NWSL presents unique challenges due to the size of the United States. An away match in the NWSL could incur over 12 hours of total travel time over a three or four day period. All that time spent in the high-performance bubble adds up.

“Mental health support for the players is no different to physical care. The only difference is that there isn’t an objective diagnosis that can be given like with a fracture or a sprain,” De Giovanni said.

“We need to bring the same awareness [to mental health support] that we bring to everything else. It’s nothing about being ‘crazy’. We have problems, yes, but it’s not because you’re ‘crazy’. You’re working on your mind.”

What’s next

The players’ CBA may guarantee them the right to take leave, but the NWSLPA’s mental health focus isn’t limited to the players currently rostered by the league’s teams. Pogarch says that the union is offering lifetime memberships for players that want to keep accessing resources after they retire.

“I think a lot of people are always trying to have a plan before you have to hang up your boots because you never know when the last day is going to be,” Pogarch said.

For Dorsey, the benefit of the program was not just in the time it allowed her to take away from the game, but also in the insight it provided about the environment of professional sports, and how her own personality exists within it. Looking back, Dorsey now realizes that she can trace her mental health struggles to her rookie season and the transition into turning professional. Those first insecurities that she felt as a new player in a cutthroat, high-pressure environment intensified over the years until it became unsafe.

“That was a really challenging transition,” she said. “I think that was a really important part of my mental health journey. I was already feeling like I was struggling just to get my feet under me.”

Whether it was the pressure of competing for a contract, getting cut, or the fear of getting injured, the consequences of Dorsey’s performance became unhealthy.

Today, a NWSL rookie facing similar issues will have somewhere to turn.

Header image: [Photograph: Alex Goodlett/NWSL/Getty Images]