Utah Royals bring back retired USWNT international Amy Rodriguez as relaunched club's 1st head coach
Utah Royals bring back retired USWNT international Amy Rodriguez as relaunched club's 1st head coach
Rodriguez, 36, has spent the past two seasons as an assistant coach at alma mater USC after retiring shortly after the Royals' first relocated to Kansas City.
SANDY, Utah — The next coach of the Utah Royals, or first coach for the relaunched and rebranded club under new owners David Blitzer and Ryan Smith, will be a familiar name to former Royals fans on the Wasatch Front.
The club announced Thursday the naming of Amy Rodriguez as the first coach in the relaunched club’s reimagined history that will begin play in the National Women’s Soccer League in 2024.
"Empowering women both on and off the field has been an underlying driving force throughout the journey of our Return of Royalty. The hiring of head coach Amy Rodriguez embodies this Utah Royals' mission to advance women's careers in our Utah community and beyond," said Utah Royals president Michelle Hyncik, Rodriguez’s high school teammate and captain who played collegiately at Harvard, in a club statement.
"Amy's commitment to excellence, winning, community and family aligns with our Utah Royals' creed and we are honored to have her at the helm to lead us into the next era."
A regular “coach on the field” during her final years playing in her third professional league, Rodriguez was part of the first group of U.S. international players to earn sponsorship from U.S. Soccer and the NWSL to receiving their coaching licenses, when she earned her B-level certification. She’s currently in the process of her A-level senior coaching license.
The former Utah Royals FC forward scored 15 goals in 47 appearances across three years in Utah, where she played from 2018-2020 before the club relocated to Kansas City and eventually became the Kansas City Current.
Rodriguez moved with the team for part of the 2021 season before being traded to North Carolina, where she scored three goals in 15 appearances with the Courage before retiring at the end of the season.
Since retirement, the one-time U.S. international who scored 30 goals in 132 caps that included the 2015 Women’s World Cup title and two Olympic gold medals has been an assistant coach at her alma mater, USC.
“Returning to Utah is a dream I never knew I had and it is with the utmost humility that I step into this role as your Club’s head coach,” Rodriguez said. “My time with the Royals is among the greatest years of my professional career. The Utah community fully embraced my family and made this state feel like home for not just myself, but my husband and kids as well. We were devastated to leave and I left feeling like there was still unfinished business on the table. I cannot put into words just how excited I am to get to work and bring Royalty back to this community.”
The Lake Forest, California native will get her first head coaching job of a club she once held dear when her and her husband Adam, who played water polo at USC, moved their young family to Utah while A-Rod spearheaded the Royals’ attack. And though the former All-American and national champion has two years’ worth of experience on the sideline, in addition to 11 seasons as a professional, she admits that moving into the manager role will be a step up and require a bit of a learning curve.
"Anytime you step into a role that is above you, there's definitely way more responsibility that comes with it," she told ESPN. "There's an excitement [and] a potential to make something my own and that gets me fired up.
"But I take it with a great amount of responsibility that I'm going to now step into, and I'm going to give it my very best. I think as a player, I always leaned on hard work, and I think similarly in this coaching role, I'll do the exact same."
The club’s expansion notice by NWSL means Rodriguez — in partnership with Hyncik and the Royals’ soon-to-be-named general manager — will be in charge of starting up a new team from scratch, from an NWSL expansion draft following the season alongside fellow 2024 debutants in the Bay Area to the NWSL collegiate draft next winter.
Having a full year to scout, navigate and ramp up to that build — as opposed to roughly 100 days the first time the Royals launched — will only benefit her.
"We have a very large task at hand, and we're starting from scratch, so building the infrastructure and player identification and player acquisition, creating a staff, building what I would need to make this the most successful organization in the end," Rodriguez told ESPN.
"So even though it's a big task to start from scratch, it's also a wonderful opportunity to build something that we want from the ground up. And I'm looking forward to it."