Ali Krieger isn’t letting her divorce from Ashlyn Harris stop her from having a positive new year.
“I have never felt more happy and more free, so I feel excited for the future,” the former U.S. women’s soccer player, 39, told E! News in an interview published on Wednesday, January 17. “I’m excited for a new chapter. … I’m excited to discover new passions.”
Part of Krieger’s new chapter includes spending “more time” with her and Harris’ kids, daughter Sloane, 2, and son Ocean, 17 months. She told the outlet she hopes to “meet up at the playground and go to brunches and do birthday parties” with other families.
When it comes to coparenting with her ex, Krieger revealed it’s been “so far, so good.”
Us Weekly confirmed in October 2023 that Harris, 38, had filed for divorce from Krieger the month prior after nearly four years of marriage. The two met while playing for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team and tied the knot in December 2019. They adopted Sloane nearly two years later followed by Ocean in August 2022.
Starting 2024 as a single mom, Krieger told E! News she hopes she can “continue healing and I continue to have a deeper relationship with myself and discover myself a little bit deeper on that type of level,” adding, “I haven’t had that much time for just myself.”
Not long after their uncoupling, news broke that Harris had begun seeing actress Sophia Bush following her respective split from estranged husband Grant Hughes. According to court documents obtained by Us in August 2023, the One Tree Hill alum, 41, and Hughes separated 16 days after celebrating their first wedding anniversary on June 11, 2023.
At the time, Krieger seemingly responded to Harris’ new romance by sharing an Instagram photo of herself with her kids. “My happy place,” she captioned the post.
In another Instagram post, Krieger wrote that she was in her “Beyoncé lemonade era,” while sharing pics of herself playing soccer. Krieger did not explicitly accuse Harris of cheating, although Beyoncé, 42, wrote her 2016 Lemonade album after her husband, Jay-Z, was caught in a cheating scandal.
Harris, for her part, denied rumors that she had been unfaithful via a lengthy Instagram statement. “Several weeks ago, a process that had been ongoing privately for some time became public. Ending a relationship after almost 13 years of friendship, teammate-ship, marriage and coparenting (many of them good years) is a decision that was not made lightly,” she wrote in November 2023. “We agreed to center our children, continue therapy, separate and to move forward with our lives.”
Harris added: “Two happy families are always better than one unhappy one. This process is never easy, but we were making our way through.”
