Angel City FC's Ali Riley Shares IVF Journey Alongside Mira
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 07: Ali Riley #5 of Angel City FC smiles as she walks on to the field ... More before a match against the Houston Dash at Banc of California Stadium on June 07, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by)
When Angel City FC defender and captain Ali Riley found herself out for the NWSL 2025 season due to an injury she was presented with a unique opportunity to consider family planning; an area of many women athletes' lives that must constantly be contemplated and navigated alongside excelling at their sporting craft.
For Riley, family planning and thinking of the future was not uncharted waters as the soccer star froze her eggs in 2021 while in Sweden when she played for FC Rosengård. However, the injury that has led to her missing a large majority of the 2024 NWSL season and this entire year led to a chance to learn more about her body, hormones, and options for family planning partnering with company Mira as she decided to pursue IVF. Mira provides at-home hormone testing and tracking tools to help women further understand their bodies in terms of fertility, ovulation patterns, menstrual cycles and even peri and menopause.
Riley, a person deeply connected to transparency and authenticity, has been open with not only herself, but her fans and social media audience sharing her IVF journey on Instagram and advocating for the education that Mira provides to women. This education is an important component for Riley as she felt Mira has armed her with the tools to understand more of what was happening in real time with her body, 'I feel there was such a lack of education for me when it came to fertility, women's reproduction, and how hard [conceiving]
Ali Riley shares the details of her IVF journey alongside Dr. Rachel Meandelbaum who adminsters a ... More needle-free IVF catheter.
Through tracking her hormones with Mira Riley was able to receive concrete information in real time and create a routine tracking her hormones while she completed her IVF cycles. She explained, 'I felt like I had a roadmap in front of me.' She continued, 'When I saw that I was still in a late reproductive phase, I felt a sense of hope. And being able to track my levels at home during IVF gave me peace of mind between doctor's appointments — I wasn't left wondering what was happening inside my body.'
Again, Riley made the intentional decision to share these intimate parts of her life externally in an effort to break the taboo of discussing issues of women's reproductive health, and the struggle that is in many ways exclusive to women athletes. She stated, 'I want people to know that this is a part of our journey, as a family and these are things that we are not talking about are stigmatized and it's taboo. And I just realized for us, women athletes who would have to take time off to get pregnant, we might not make enough money to be able to support a family while playing soccer because of our salaries. All these things that I really wanted to be open about.'
Further, Riley wants to shed light Mira's products as it could arm her fellow athletes with information to make decisions sooner, 'If there's one thing, especially as athletes, we could have information about our own bodies to make informed decisions and take one bit of stress off my colleagues' plates—and at least it would be their choice how early they want to do it, or they would just know the risks of waiting. I just want there to be something so that women athletes can focus on being an athlete and that's something we've never been allowed to do.'
Ali Riley shares her IVF story via her Instagram page @rileythree
Despite the congruence between Riley's story and Mira's mission, the partnership evolved organically as Mira began to take notice of women athletes during the Olympics discussing their bodies, training, and performance. Mira was connected to Riley through a marketing agency, and as she shared her IVF journey Mira sought to support her and work together. Mira recognized the power of storytelling that Riley could have on other women. Belen Copetti, creative director at Mira explained, 'We also thought that athletes are these figures that people really look up to, they're seen as these, you know, disciplined, inspirational people that just people really listen to their stories. They're very interested in them, especially in the wellness sector. And so when we reached out to Ali, she had this perspective as well, because she really wanted to inspire the younger generations of athletes to be able to plan.'
Again, partnering with Riley for Mira allowed a wider reach and audience to their product that as Copetti described, 'provides a Nanobold technology, lab grade built-in technology that actually reads your hormone levels in real time with a lot more accuracy compared to other trackers on the market today allowing you to get the most personalized data.' She expanded stating, 'It's two times more accurate and it's about 10 times more reliable than other trackers on the market.'
Beyond its accuracy, Mira is built to be affordable and accessible, Copetti outlined, 'Lab visits are not only expensive but they're also not accessible for everyone. Not everyone can, you know, grab their car and just drive if they don't have the time. It's about time, it's about money. It's about all sorts of inconveniences and also because when you go to the lab you probably get confusing results or you get just one result. Whereas with Mira you get real-time results, you get them every day and you get an app that allows you to understand everything about your body at a glance.'
Riley discussed candidly that the majority of her family planning has been done on her own and out of her own pocket which can get costly and stressful quickly. This is especially relevant as professional women athletes in the USA's two major professional systems (NWSL and WNBA) have only recently begun making strides in women's reproductive healthcare. In 2020, the WNBA rectified a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that included full salaries on maternity leave, a child care stipend, and benefits to support adoption, surrogacy and fertility treatments. These items will most likely be highly advocated for in the WNBA's CBA coming in 2026. This year, the NWSL's CBA that will be in place until 2030, also included an article for family planning, stating, 'NWSL shall also secure a vendor to assist players with family building benefits such as IVF/IUI treatment; fertility medication; egg, embryo, and sperm preservation; ovulation tracking; fertility testing; genetic testing; and surrogacy.'
These are impactful new practices and resources for women athletes, especially for players like Riley that has played in the NWSL and previous iterations of the league where these types of services were not considered or offered. Riley explained this could be due to the ways in which the system of professional sports have traditionally been founded, administered, and governed, mainly by men. She said, 'I think from a very large scale when it comes to women's sports or no, when it comes to sports, a lot of the decision makers and a lot of the traditions are built off the back of men's sports. And so, if you're building a league and you're thinking of a standard player agreement, or benefits given to players, are you gonna think about childcare? Are you gonna think about time off for these things that male players haven't really spoken up about wanting ever? I think in women's sports we're just a little bit behind.' She continued, 'I think when you look at clubs we're products, right? And so how can you get us to perform? I don't think that fertility and family planning come to mind, but I think we can change that and I think if you don't want your players to be stressed out, it is something that we can really help our athletes with. And then the next step too is if you are informing players about their bodies.'
Again, the majority of sport performance and medicine research has been conducted with men and on men's bodies and applied to women athletes. Riley has been especially keen on this gap now due to her own journey expounding, 'Most research in sports medicine is based on men's bodies,' she explains. 'There's a huge lack of education when it comes to fertility, IVF, even menstrual cycles — it's still taboo in many teams.' Thus, reproductive planning policies, rights, and options being included in women's professional sport CBA's is a large step in the right direction as it will allow athletes access to not only much stronger support systems, but autonomy and control over their own decisions.
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