Mana Shim

This season, I'm talking to people about their Try Hard moments, which are times when they did something terrifying or unexpected, and what lessons they learned from those experiences.

This week's guest is Mana Shim.

She always identified as the soccer player.

And in her 20s, when she was arguably at the peak of her career, everything collapsed.

She had to figure out who she was outside of soccer.

She ended up going to law school, discovering new passions, and even finding her way back to the game that she loved.

My name is Mana Shim and I'm a tryhard.

Yay.

[laughs]

Um, you've since married Mana Shim, who was one of the key whistleblowers in Meg Lenahan's reporting about former Portland Thorns and North Carolina Courage coach Paul Riley, and she was one of several very brave players that spoke up, and then journalists like you and Meg doggedly reported h- just how widespread the abuse was, how widespread the toxicity was.

And it became a league-wide reckoning, and Meg just posted about how it's been five years since the moment that that all really broke open.

So take me back to 2020, 2021.

But for now, let's welcome in Meg Linehan, the person that also penned the article and the investigation five years ago.

Meg, Mana Shim and Sinead Farrelly publicly came forward with allegations of sexual harassment and coercion by then North Carolina Courage coach Paul Riley stemming from their experiences playing under him with the Portland Thorns.

The fallout was immediate.

The Courage fired Riley that same day.

But let, let's start there, Meg.

On a cool Wednesday night in early October, the players of Gotham FC and the Washington Spirit took the pitch for the first minutes of live game action in 10 days.

The National Women's Soccer League had slammed to a halt in the aftermath of former players Sinead Farrelly and Mana Shim sharing their stories with The Athletic, detailing their experiences of sexual coercion from a prominent NWSL coach and the league's failure to investigate.

Their story, published exactly five years ago on September 30, 2021, shut the league down for days with no one quite sure just how it would continue.