Meet the Utah soccer club that will play for a national championship on Sunday
Provo FC advanced to the UPSL National Championship with a dramatic 2-1 win over Next Level Soccer on Sunday night at Championship Soccer Stadium in Irvine, California.
There’s a Utah soccer club that will be playing for a championship Sunday.
For those who missed, Provo FC advanced to the UPSL National Championship with a dramatic 2-1 win over Next Level Soccer on Friday night at Championship Soccer Stadium in Irvine, California.
Carter Johnson, the former Gatorade Utah player of the year from Herriman who played four years at Utah Valley before finishing his collegiate career at Vermont in 2023, had the match-winning goal in the 99th minute to eliminate Next Level Soccer (Phoenix, Arizona) and advance to Sunday’s finale.
After going down just 12 minutes into the match, Steve Jasso equalized for Provo 10 minutes later en route to the 1-1 halftime draw. That set the stage for Johnson’s dramatic winner, sending Provo to play for the Leonel Lopez UPSL Championship Trophy against New York Renegades FC.
Kickoff is scheduled for Sunday at 3 p.m. MST on the UPSL YouTube channel.
“We’re so excited right now,” Provo captain Gui Leme, the former Utah Valley standout from Lehi, said after the match. “We were nervous, but we finally got it. It can’t feel any better than that.”
Founded in 2011, the UPSL is the largest collection of amateur and semipro teams in the country, with more than 800 teams competing across multiple divisions including Premier, Division I, A League, Academy and Women’s Division. The league operates in the unofficial fourth tier of U.S. soccer, and its teams are eligible to compete in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup qualifying rounds through its national affiliation with U.S. Soccer.
You can watch the UPSL championship semifinal below on the UPSL YouTube channel, where Sunday’s final will also be streamed.
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