Imani Dorsey has helped change the NWSL for the better in 5 seasons. How will she change the Utah Royals?

Dorsey stepped away from soccer 'not knowing if I'll play again' when she stepped away from the 2023 season under the league's mental health leave policy. Now she's back, and feeling better than ever.

Imani Dorsey didn’t know if she’d come back to the game she grew up loving since she was 5 years old.

But after making a professional career in the NWSL, the former first-round draft pick and 2018 NWSL Rookie of the Year with Sky Blue FC simply needed to step away, and she used the league’s mental health leave policy to sit out the 2023 season.

After scoring six goals in 72 appearances with the club that became Gotham FC, Dorsey didn’t know if she would ever return to the game. But after a struggle transitioning from forward to outside back — and doing so successfully — the 27-year-old Duke product needed to take some time to herself.

So with the support of her club, her teammates, and her fiancee, that’s what Dorsey did. While Gotham FC focused on building a championship — which the team accomplished for the first time since 2009 with a 2-1 win over OL Reign — Dorsey focused on herself and her mental health.

While Gotham celebrated its league title, Dorsey also celebrated at the end of the year — celebrating a return to the game she loved, a renewed approach to her profession, and a renewed sense of self-confidence she hadn’t felt since her earliest days playing the game.

But what came first was the scariest moment of her career, when she gave up the grind to figure out how to embrace it once again.

“I think it’s really hard for professional athletes to do that,” Dorsey said during media days with Utah Royals FC, the expansion club where she signed as a free agent in the offseason as a pillar of experience on the youngest team in the league. “I really looked at that time at what my life was like without soccer. I haven’t had that since I was 5 years old. I wasn’t looking at that break like an injury, taking a month off and then coming back. I was really just taking a month, and then evaluating how I feel, and if I need more time. Then another month, and do I need more time.

“What does your life look like without soccer? I think I stepped away not knowing if I’ll play on the field again, and I’m really happy that I came about it with that perspective, because I was able to re-discover my love for it. I ended up going back to Gotham knowing that I wanted to finish the season out, to have closure from a chapter that I felt was really important. What I didn’t realize was, when I went back to training and back to the team, I loved it in a way I hadn’t. I felt fresh, I felt light; during my time off, I was an environmental science and policy major, and so I did some work in that area and spent time with family and friends. And when I came back, I felt light, I felt refreshed, I felt sharp, and I missed it — and I missed feeling like this. I just feel like my perspective on the league is a lot different.”

With her second-ever team in her seventh season in the National Women’s Soccer League, Dorsey and the Royals enter a new chapter in a league that has changed dramatically since Utah’s last team played in the league.

Most, if not all, of the changes have been for the better. A series of abuse scandals and legal troubles expunged the NWSL of problematic coaches and front-office executives, orchestrated a handful of sales to new ownership groups, called for changes from the top down (including a new commissioner) and injected new life into the decade-old league.

The league took massive step forwards in treating its players as people instead of products, as humans instead of commodities. Mental health leave and adequate healthcare were among the earliest calls of a new collective bargaining agreement with the players’ association.

And then there was growth on the field, too, with franchises in Louisville, Los Angeles, San Diego and fellow 2024 expansion side Bay FC in Northern California that didn’t exist when the former Utah Royals dissolved and relocated to Kansas City.

Perhaps, then, there’s some twist of fate or destiny or whatever you might believe, that Dorsey and the Royals — who both came into the league originally in 2018 — will be together as they navigate this new frontier.

“I felt like I was thrown into absolute chaos, and of course, we came here in 2020 for the Challenge Cup — which was an incredible turning point for our country, for the league, for us. In 2021, a lot changed in terms of accountability for the league,” she said. “It created more safeguards and infrastructure to protect players and create a safer environment all together. I think those are the biggest steps the league and each club have made. But also, the level of investment form all the clubs is bigger. We’re starting see clubs want to attract players and tell them to play in this market, that they’re going to take care of you and do things the right way. Players talk; we all know what is going on at all these clubs. But that’s what really attracted me to (the Royals): because of the ownership, the facilities, bringing Amy (Rodriguez) in to coach. There’s unbridled opportunity here.

“It’s a new league, and a new landscape. But I think we’re going to be really proud of how far it has come — and that we’re still moving forward. We’re by no means done.”

Dorsey is excited to get to know a new team, a new city, and a new area of the country after the Maryland native spent her enter life on the east coast, playing primarily in North Carolina and New York/New Jersey.

She can’t wait to take advantage of the Utah landscape, to explore the mountains, the canyons and the desert, and to embrace the state’s local soccer community. But mostly, she can’t wait can’t wait to return to the pitch with her new team, and help them work toward building a championship-level organization.

After a year away, Imani Dorsey is back, better than ever.

“I always knew that this was an incredible opportunity. But for a long time, I felt like I was trying to get to the next level and running out of air and trying to keep up with myself and my own ambitions,” she said. “I realized that this all in my control; this is my life, and what I achieve on a given day is something I should always be proud of — because I’m alway sputting in my best work. I started to see this as an opportunity, not a burden. It was feeling like a burden for a long time, and that weight and pressure I was putting on myself was a struggle. I remember that this is an amazing opportunity to play professionally … It’s an incredible opportunity.”