Euro 2025: Kosola's goal secures Finland's 1-0 win over Iceland in tournament opener

THUN, Switzerland (AP) — After missing three earlier chances, Katariina Kosola scored in the 70th minute to give Finland a 1-0 victory over Iceland in the opening game of the Women’s European Championship on Wednesday.

Kosola cut in from the left flank to curl a rising right-footed shot into the net and fully take advantage of Iceland having a player sent off 12 minutes earlier.

In the first half, the 24-year-old Kosola forced Iceland goalkeeper Cecilía Rúnarsdóttir into a diving save and fired two more shots just over the crossbar.

Iceland’s own left winger Sveindís Jónsdóttir, who will join Angel City in the United States after the tournament, missed with a clear chance to level the game in the 75th. Jónsdóttir also went close deep into stoppage time.

Iceland went down to 10 players in the 58th when midfielder Hildur Antonsdóttir was shown a second yellow card for a dangerous tackle.

Both teams had failed to win a game at each of their previous two Euros tournaments.

“The result is important for our confidence,” Kosola said after Finland ended a winless run that stretched to Euro 2009. “It was the kind of goal I have been practicing a lot. I had a couple of chances in the first half.”

Finland's win is a strong move in Group A, which has no clear standout team and is widely seen as the most finely balanced at the 16-nation tournament.

Norway later joined Finland on three points, beating host Switzerland 2-1 in Basel after the official on-field opening ceremony for what was the second of 31 games in total. Basel hosts the final on July 27.

“It’s terrible to lose and we feel frustrated,” Iceland coach Thorsteinn Halldórsson said in comments reported by UEFA. “It is an even group and we knew Finland were good, but our first half wasn’t good enough.”

Iceland also was hurt by having captain and star defender Glódís Viggósdóttir slowed by a stomach illness before being replaced at halftime, rather than a knee injury that forced her to missed playing time in Bayern Munich’s German league and cup-winning season.

“I’ve had it for a few days. I tried to play with it but couldn’t,” Viggósdóttir said.

Euro 2025 started with two Nordic teams playing in the heat wave that had Switzerland sweltering since before the squads arrived in the Alpine nation.

It had cooled to 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27 Celsius) for the 6 p.m. kickoff in Thun as electric storms threatened nearby. It was just 52 degrees (11 C) and cloudy in Iceland’s capital Reykjavik though 73 degrees (23 C) in Helsinki.

Finland last won a game at the Women's Euro in 2009, while Iceland had drawn 1-1 in each of its three group-stage games at Euro 2022 and lost all three at the 2017 edition.

Jónsdóttir’s fast-driving runs and long throw-ins were a regular threat, and two of Iceland’s most dangerous attacks were denied by Finland defender Emma Koivisto blocking the ball.

Finland defender Natalia Kuikka, who plays for Chicago Stars, said the last 15 minutes had been “pretty chaotic. At the end, Iceland were just coming at us, so it honestly didn’t feel like they were missing a player.”

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Finland players celebrate after the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Finland fans celebrate at the end of the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Iceland's Sveindis Jonsdottir reacts after the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (Alessandro della Valle)/Keystone via AP)

Finland 's Katariina Kosola, center, celebrates after scoring her side's first goal during the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Finland 's Emma Koivisto, right, challenges for the ball with Iceland's Sveindis Jonsdottir during the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Finland 's Katariina Kosola reacts after missing an opportunity to score during the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Iceland's Glodis Viggosdottir sits on the pitch after an injury during the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025.. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Finland 's Katariina Kosola, left, scores during the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (Anthony Anex/Keystone via AP)

Finland 's Katariina Kosola, right, celebrates after scoring her side's first goal during the Euro 2025, group A, soccer match between Iceland and Finland at Arena Thun in Thun, Switzerland, Wednesday, July 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.

West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.

The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.

Decisions are expected by early summer.

President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.

Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.

“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”

She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.

Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.

She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.

Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.

“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.

Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.

The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.

About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.

Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.

"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”

But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.

“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”

Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”

“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.

One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.

Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”

The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.

The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.

The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.

The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.

If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.

“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)