NWSL enlargement aspect the Utah Royals have named World Cup winner and two-time NWSL champion Amy Rodriguez as supervisor.
Rodriguez, 36, spent the previous two seasons as an assistant coach at her alma mater, USC, and now returns to Utah, having frolicked there as a participant from 2018 to 2020 throughout a earlier incarnation of the membership.
Utah was named as the most recent NWSL enlargement aspect final month and can start play in 2024.
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“The second that the Royals group gave me the cellphone name, I had the butterflies in my abdomen,” Rodriguez instructed ESPN through phone. “I used to be so excited to doubtlessly return to a membership that I had a lot enjoyment to play for.
“However this clearly is a a lot totally different function, one that may be a bit daunting. And I am not going to lie. I am nervous concerning the activity at hand. However it’s an thrilling time, too. So I am like, rolling my sleeves up, able to go.”
Rodriguez acknowledged she is going to bear a steep studying curve by way of going from assistant coach to supervisor, in addition to teaching skilled gamers for the primary time.
“Anytime you step into a task that’s above you, there’s undoubtedly far more accountability that comes with it,” she stated. “There’s an pleasure [and] a possible to make one thing my very own, and that will get me fired up.
“However I take it with a large amount of accountability that I will now step into, and I will give it my perfect. I feel as a participant, I all the time leaned on arduous work, and I feel equally on this teaching function, I am going to do the very same.”
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Rodriguez has a protracted historical past with Royals president Michelle Hyncik, as the 2 had been teammates in highschool. When Hyncik recommended they speak over video as an alternative of catching up over the cellphone, Rodriguez stated she was “caught off guard” that this wasn’t only a time to meet up with an previous buddy.
These sentiments continued when she was instructed she was into consideration for the job. She even admitted there have been moments when she thought she “wasn’t deserving” and had extra to study earlier than taking over such a task.
“I simply had mirrored again on what I all the time inform my gamers,” Rodriguez stated. “Earlier than a giant match or opponent, I am all the time like, ‘Do not be afraid to make errors. Be courageous. Go on the market and provides it your finest shot.’ And I assumed to myself, ‘If I ask this of my gamers and I can not do that for myself, then what sort of coach am I?’
“And so I feel that was like a light-weight bulb in my head the place typically with a purpose to develop and to grow to be the perfect model of your self, it’s a must to be uncomfortable. And this undoubtedly makes me uncomfortable, however in one of the simplest ways doable.”
Hynick stated the hiring of Rodriguez is an ideal match with the membership’s broader mission.
“Empowering girls each on and off the sector has been an underlying driving drive all through the journey of our Return of Royalty. The hiring of head coach Amy Rodriguez embodies this Utah Royals’ mission to advance girls’s careers in our Utah neighborhood and past,” The Utah Royals president stated in a membership assertion.
“Amy’s dedication to excellence, successful, neighborhood and household aligns with our Utah Royals’ creed and we’re honored to have her on the helm to steer us into the following period.”
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Taking up an enlargement group, Rodriguez is basically being handed a clean canvas. The identical is true of her first foray into administration. There’s additionally an immense quantity of labor to do, even earlier than she begins to consider what model she’ll need to play.
“We now have a really massive activity at hand, and we’re ranging from scratch, so constructing the infrastructure and participant identification and participant acquisition, making a workers, constructing what I would want to make this essentially the most profitable group in the long run,” she stated.
“So though it is a massive activity to start out from scratch, it is also a beautiful alternative to construct one thing that we wish from the bottom up. And I am trying ahead to it.”
Rodriguez’s profession as a participant spanned a number of leagues, beginning in 2011. She performed for the Boston Breakers and Philadelphia Independence of Ladies’s Skilled Soccer (WPS), and later with FC Kansas Metropolis, the Royals, the Kansas Metropolis Present and the North Carolina Braveness within the NWSL. Over that span, she scored 64 objectives in 102 appearances, and was a part of two title-winning groups in Kansas Metropolis in 2014 and 2015.
At worldwide degree, Rodriguez made 132 appearances for the U.S. girls’s nationwide group, scoring 30 objectives and including 22 assists. She was a part of the 2015 World Cup-winning aspect, and performed on two Olympic gold-medal sides in 2008 and 2012.
Rodriguez is at the moment within the technique of incomes her U.S. Soccer A-level senior teaching license and was a part of the primary group of gamers from the Nationwide Ladies’s Soccer League — supported by the NWSL, the NWSL Gamers’ Affiliation and U.S. Soccer — to obtain her B-level license.