The U.S. women’s soccer team is still savoring its victory after capturing the World Cup championship this summer. But off the field, the players continue to battle a gender discrimination case against their employer, the U.S. Soccer Federation.

The women are demanding pay equal to that of their counterparts on the men’s national soccer team. U.S. Soccer says it pays women more than men in salaries and game bonuses.

Last week, mediation efforts between the two sides broke down, so on Monday a federal judge set a trial date: May 2020, just weeks before the women’s team will begin play at the Tokyo Olympics.

Women’s team co-captain Alex Morgan says she doesn’t see the trial as a distraction.

“I don’t think we know soccer without distraction. We feel like we have always been fighting for a seat at the table and we have always fought for everything that we’ve earned, so having the case be pushed up to May I think is good overall,” Morgan tells NPR’s David Greene.

Interview Highlights

On whether the rift between her team and U.S. Soccer can be healed

Obviously, as it gets closer to trial, it’s probably going to get uglier, so I think that will take more time to heal. However, knowing that U.S. Soccer is our employer and we want to represent our country on the highest level and we want to move forward together … I’m hopeful in the next nine months that we can find a resolution that suits us both in that the women and the men are paid equal in compensation. If not, then I can see it continuing on this path until trial.

On whether the rift could get in the way of attracting more kids to the sport

We’re not going to reap the benefits from equal pay. Who’s going to reap the benefits is that next generation. So I think those young girls and that next generation should feel confident that they’re in good hands and that we are setting up this structure and this compensation and this true equality for them.

On her plans to participate in a fourth World Cup

I’m really confident that I can continue to play at the top of my game for another four years, so I’m really excited to continue on this journey with the national team, and with my club team, Orlando Pride, in 2023, whether that’s in Australia or wherever else because there’s currently 10 countries bidding for the 2023 [Women’s] World Cup. I hope to be there.

Milton Guevara and Jessica Smith produced and edited this story for broadcast. Heidi Glenn adapted it for the Web.

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It’s a windy, hazy summer morning on the Snake River plain in southeastern Idaho, and Shoshone-Bannock tribal member Trevor Beasley is hanging out near his horse trailer. It’s about an hour before the Fort Hall Reservation Indian Relay races begin, and he’s watching as a teammate gets a little too close to his favorite mare.

“Got to watch out for her, she’s a kicker,” Beasley says as his teammate jumps out of the way. “That’s your warning right there, man.”

The mare’s name is As Thunder Rolls. She’s a tall, muscled animal — perfect for Indian Relay racing. The sport is one of the ways Indigenous tribes in the West celebrate their history and culture. In it, jockeys leap onto a different bareback horse, not once, not twice but three times as they race around a track.

Beasley loves it.

“The ride, the speed, the love of the horse,” he says. “The power.”

Indian Relay racing began around a century ago but its origins stretch back more than 300 years to when tribes like the Shohone and Bannock first climbed onto the backs of horses acquired from the Spanish.

“That’s what we survived on,” says LaGrande Coby, president of the Fort Hall Indian Relay Association. “Gathering our food back in the day. Travelling from different reservations to different reservations.”

It’s a relationship that survived forced assimilation and western tribes’ loss of land.

On the day of the race at Fort Hall, about a hundred Indian Relay fans are sitting in reservation’s rodeo bleachers sipping Coke and eating barbeque.

The rodeo track begins filling with horses and men wearing neon jerseys with bright-colored ribbons attached.

The jockeys get ready, a horn blows, and they’re off racing around the dirt track. Dust flies up from the horses’ hooves as the riders whip the animals. It’s a windy day. Grass and hay seed are blowing around and the horses fly through it.

As they end their first lap the jockeys leap off their first horse, sprint to the second and take off. This is when things get chaotic. A man is knocked down and one animal even takes off without a rider. It gallops wildly off the rodeo track and into the grass staging area where folks frantically wave their cowboy hats. They’re trying to contain it.

Back on the track, the jockeys are now on their third horse and the last leg of the race. The team called Cedar Ridge wins. Trevor Beasley watched the race from the sidelines.

“Pride is really what it means around here,” he says. “A lot of people take pride in it.”

He says, win or lose, everyone who participates in Indian Relay is celebrating their horsemanship and their history.

This story came to us through the public media collaboration Mountain West News Bureau.

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Two former Major League Baseball stars, pitcher Octavio Dotel and infielder Luis Castillo, have been implicated in a massive drug trafficking bust in the Dominican Republic. The country’s attorney general, Jean Alain Rodríguez, announced Tuesday that the operation targeted alleged drug kingpin César Emilio Peralta, also known as “César the abuser,” and the extensive criminal operation he led.

Castillo is not the current Cincinnati Reds player of the same name. The Luis Castillo accused by authorities played with the then-Florida Marlins and the New York Mets.

Hundreds of narcotics agents, prosecutors and other government officials took part in the attempt to dismantle Peralta’s network, which Rodríguez called “the most important drug trafficking structure in the region” and that also included alleged money laundering. Dotel is among the suspects arrested, and Rodríguez named Castillo as one of the 18 figures linked to Peralta — though both Castillo and Peralta remained at large at the time of the attorney general’s announcement.

Rodríguez did not immediately specify the role authorities believe the two former baseball players performed in Peralta’s operation. He said his team had collaborated with the U.S. during the investigation, exchanging information with the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury got involved Tuesday as well, sanctioning Peralta and his organization as “significant narcotics traffickers.”

“César Emilio Peralta and his criminal organization have used violence and corruption in the Dominican Republic to traffic tons of cocaine and opioids into the United States and Europe,” Sigal Mandelker, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement released by the department. “Treasury is targeting these Dominican drug kingpins, their front persons, and the nightclubs they have used to launder money and traffic women.”

“Only God knows the truth,” Castillo said on Instagram after Rodríguez’s news conference.

During his playing career Castillo was a three-time All-Star, three-time Golden Glove winner and World Series winner as part of the 2003 Florida Marlins. Dotel, for his part, is one of the all-time MLB leaders in the number of franchises for which he played: 13 teams during his 14-year career.

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