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Tiffany Rodrock unabashedly ugly-cried when NWSL side Utah Royals ceased operations in 2020. A diehard Royals fan and head coach to her pre-teen daughter’s soccer team, the Royals had been fundamental in Rodrock’s life, allowing her to make connections with its coaches and players, and point to them as strong, powerful role models for her own daughter and her teammates. The loss of the club felt immense.
But a few weeks ago, Rodrock was sitting in the stadium with her now-16-year-old daughter and there was no ugly crying. The Royals had been born again, and that feeling of loss was replaced with the excitement of hope and possibility.
“My daughter just turned to me, and she was like, ‘We’re not ugly-crying anymore,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, we don’t need to,’” said Rodrock. “She’s so excited to be back here, watching the team again. We never saw games in Utah when I was a kid. It just wasn't a big enough market. So to see that it was coming back was hugely exciting.”
With the return of the Royals, old and new supporters are coming together to rebuild the club’s fan base, with a chance to reclaim old traditions while building new memories.
“It really clearly means a lot to a lot of people and it's a huge relief to get it back,” said Keaton Harward, founder of Los Caballeros Reales, a Real Salt Lake and Utah Royals supporters group.
There is nothing worse as a supporter than losing your club. It is the worst case scenario.
The schedules, the routines, the rituals that your life has been built around, all of a sudden, gone. The goals that haven’t been scored yet, the tifos that haven’t been painted, the nights out, the trophies, the moments and magic all still to come, now frozen forever as dreams.
In 2020, then-Royals owner, Dell Loy Hansen, who also owned MLS side Real Salt Lake, and USL side Real Monarchs, made controversial comments that set off a chain of events that led to Hansen putting all three of his clubs up for sale. The Royals were the first casualty, with all players being moved to the Kansas City Current, an expansion team that would begin play in 2021.
The news was devastating for fans in Utah, who had seen the team become an integral part of their lives.
“It’s so hard. I mean, the day after we got the news, I had to take the day off work,” said Allison Tidwell. “I was so sad. I don’t think I truly believed that they were coming back.”
In the aftermath of the team’s departure, fandom fell quiet. Many Royals fans tried to keep up with the club’s players, most of whom were now with the Kansas City Current. For others, it became too hard.
“I was invested in the players,” said Rodrock. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, they’re gone, bye.’ I followed them and watched everything that was happening in Kansas City, and all of the growth that they’ve had was really exciting.”
“When they were here last time, I became a huge fan of women’s soccer, and then when they left it kind of became a sore spot,” said Harward. “I tried to continue to watch and support when they were in Kansas City, but it just hurt to see it.”
In the three seasons after the Royals’ players departed Utah, the NWSL blossomed in almost all ways, smashing attendance and revenue records and revealing the true potential power of the women’s game.
NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman prioritized growth, and since the new owners of Real Salt Lake retained a reported $2 million expansion option to revive the Royals as an expansion team, Salt Lake City shot to the top of the list of potential new clubs.
And what happened was one of the rarest things in sports. A resurrection. All of those dreams that had been frozen in time in 2020 could begin to thaw. The Royals were coming back.
In March 2023, the NWSL made it official, announcing that the Utah Royals would join the NWSL for the 2024 season. A month later, club legend Amy Rodriguez was announced as manager.
“She was so insanely important as a player for Utah,” said Rodrock of Rodriguez. “She is such a strong powerhouse, and so massively a part of the community. Being that strong of a leader, I’m inspired listening to her talk to the players.
On March 16, 2024, 1261 days since they last took the field in Utah, the Royals took the pitch again. They dropped their home opener 2-0 to the Chicago Red Stars, but it was a powerful night in the stands, full of big and small moments.
For Tidwell, it was the sound of the wind whipping against the giant flags in the south end of the stadium before the game that got her. She had been attending RSL matches so the environment wasn’t new, but to hear that sound, then look down and see women warming up? That was special.
“I was like, ‘No, these are ladies warming up, my ladies are back, my team is back,” she said. “It was so good.”
For Rodrock, it was being back by the bench, near the players, building that familiar banter with new faces.
“It’s still good to hear the coaches, still good to hear the players, to get to interact with the players,” she said. “It’s a whole new group of girls here, and I’m still trying to figure out all of the names on the roster. But having that openness, that camaraderie, they’re willing to be a part of the fan base. So I will love that forever.”
But the club’s rebirth has also brought new challenges. The fan base had been dormant for so long that it’s taken some time to rev things back up again. The Court, the Royals supporters group formed during the first iteration of the club, has slowly started to revive itself. In the meantime, several RSL supporters groups have also begun to lend their support at games.
Los Caballeros Reales, an SG in its first full season, is focused on creating a unique experience for Royals games.
“We don’t want the support for the women to feel like a downgraded version of what we’re doing for RSL,” said Harward. “We want it to be its own thing. There are some songs you hear all over the place, but we’re trying to make it a point to make them unique for the Royals as opposed to singing all of the same things. We do a march to the match with RSL, but we’re trying to unify supporters and march out of the match for the Royals. So, we’re trying to do some little tweaks to how we do things, to do some unique supporter events just for the Royals.”
“It’s a new team, it’s not the same team,” said Rodrock. “So I like the idea of not having everything being exactly the same and filling out this crowd, because it does feel a little different than the last crowd, and I’m excited to see what the new personality is going to be.”
The Royals have struggled early, only taking four points out of six games in this young season. But, the rough start is tolerable with the knowledge that they have something that wouldn’t have been thinkable in recent history, time.
“We’re not looking good at the moment, but I don’t really care,” said Tidwell. “Last year, I did not have a team that could lose. Now, I have a team. I will take it.”