The Utah Royals are redefining what it means to be a soccer mom

Utah Royals forward Michele Vasconcelos hates to admit it, but she was devastated when she first learned she was going to be a mom.

The former BYU star was ready to start her professional career when the Chicago Red Stars drafted her in the second round of the 2017 NWSL draft. But two weeks later, she found out she was pregnant.

Vasconcelos missed the entirety of what was supposed to be her rookie season and trained on her own practically up until giving birth to Scarlett, who is now almost 7 years old.

Because a contract isn’t guaranteed for draft picks, she had to earn a roster spot a year later while caring for a 7-month-old.

“I was a little bit sad to be honest, but then as soon as she was born, it all made sense,” Vasconcelos said. “It was definitely a shock because I had her when I was 23, but it’s been fun because I got to grow up with her, too. ... I just think of all the places that we lived, and she’s been part of all of it and made it that much better.”

After stints in Chicago, Kansas City, Spain and Portland, Scarlett is now cheering on her mom in Sandy, Utah, where she plays for an organization that’s working to redefine what it means to be a soccer mom.

The Utah Royals pride themselves on being a team run by women, for women, but they’re also a team run by moms, for moms.

Club president Michelle Hyncik

As if launching a professional soccer team into its inaugural season wasn’t stressful enough, Utah Royals president Michelle Hyncik did so last year while juggling a pregnancy, three kids under age 5, and a battle with melanoma.

One week after giving birth to her fourth child, Hyncik was back at work with her now 5-month-old daughter, Violet, who she jokes has been on Zoom calls her entire life.

Hyncik realized that if she wanted to be a mom, she’d have to prioritize it — even if the timing seemed inconvenient.

With her first, she was the senior counsel for Major League Soccer during CBA negotiations. Her second pregnancy came during the COVID-19 pandemic, and her third occurred while helping Real Salt Lake transfer to new ownership as the team’s general counsel.

“There’s never going to be a good time to take time to have a baby,” she said. “You’ve got to make sure that you have a career that’s supportive of having your kids along for the ride.”

Effective time management is essential to balancing all of her responsibilities. Hyncik said she strives to be efficient and intentional with the time she’s away from her family.

“Because I do want to see them before they go to bed, and I want to spend as much time as I can with them,” she said.

She credits the Royals’ ownership for their support of both her and family. Previously, Hyncik felt she had to keep her family life separate from her work life, but not here in Utah.

Hyncik wants the entire team to feel that same support. The team’s new training center, which will be unveiled in June, will accommodate moms and will include a mother’s room for breastfeeding and a child care room that will eventually have a full-time nanny. Gone are the days of pumping on toilets or bathroom floors.

“I find that here in Utah and with this organization, this ownership group, they fully just welcome and embrace the full person who you are,” she said. “I never feel ashamed or that I have to hide the fact that I have four young kids.”

Sporting director Kelly Cousins

For sporting director Kelly Cousins, the Royals organization has made her experience with her second child completely different than her first — in a good way.

Cousins was coaching at Reading FC in England when she gave birth to her eldest daughter, and it wasn’t common practice to bring your children to training. But now, Cousins can bring baby Halle to work everyday and nobody bats an eye — unless it’s to notice how adorable she is.

“The people within the club have made it feel so easy, and everybody’s, as you can see, everybody’s great with her. They love her to pieces,” she said. “I feel safe in the environment that I am in to be able to balance those things and, when I get home, really focus on the children.”

Similar to Hyncik, Cousins was juggling building a brand-new team with the demands of caring for a newborn. She started her position with the Royals 20 days after giving birth to Halle and later moved her young family from England to Utah.

Motherhood has changed Cousins. Previously a workaholic, she enjoys coming home to her children, turning off her sporting director-brain and just being Harley and Halle’s mom.

“First and foremost, in a job like this, you can go home and just smile. They bring a smile to your face the whole time,” she said. “You feel that unconditional love, and they just bring so much joy and fun to your life and they just take all your worries away — unless it’s about them.”

Cousins hopes the Utah Royals, an organization run by moms, will inspire other women.

“You can be at this level, and you can have a family. You can do both things,” Cousins said. “Hopefully, like, just by us doing that, we’re empowering other people to believe that they can do the same thing and they don’t have to stop their careers because they have a family.”

Head coach Amy Rodriguez

This Mother’s Day, Utah Royals head coach Amy Rodriguez will be 2,000 miles away from her sons, 10-year-old Ryan and 7-year-old Luke, while she coaches on the sideline of SeatGeek Stadium in Chicago.

But Rodriguez and her family are getting used to finding ways to feel close when they’re apart.

When Rodriguez, who was previously with the Utah Royals as a player, returned to Utah to coach, her sons and husband, Adam Shilling, stayed in Orange County, California.

Living away from your kids is “not for the faint of heart,” Rodriguez said, and takes quite the emotional toll, but she knows “this career won’t last forever.”

“I developed a callus to it. You really have to be committed,” she said. “There are some really hard days. There are FaceTimes where I have to hide my tears from my kids because I’m upset that I am away from them for so much.”

Rodriguez is grateful she’s coaching in Utah — a short hour-and-a-half flight from her family, whom she tries to see every two weeks — and for the modern convenience of FaceTime, which allows her to watch her sons’ baseball games from afar.

While the separation is hard, Rodriguez believes it’s worth it to chase her dreams and to show her sons that they can chase theirs, too. Her 2015 FIFA World Cup title and two NWSL championships all came after Ryan was born.

“They can just see how much their mom accomplished,” she said. “I feel proud to be a role model for them.”

But even with all of those accolades and the ones still to come, being a mom ranks “No. 1” for Rodriguez in her long list of accomplishments.

“Family over everything,” she said. “Step off the field, it’s just a game, it’s your job. But the one thing that remains constant is the family piece, and that’s something I’m probably the most proud of.”

Forward Michele Vasconcelos

The NWSL has come a long way in supporting moms since the beginning of Vasconcelos’ and Rodriguez’s careers, and the Royals are playing a key role in ushering that change along, Vasconcelos said.

She joked that planned updates to the training center and leadership’s embrace of moms could thwart her plans of waiting until after her career is over to expand her family — which would make Scarlett happy.

“Scarlett does keep asking. She’s like, ‘Can you just have a baby right now?’” she said. “I don’t think she understands the time that it takes to grow a baby.”

Today, Vasconcelos carries few of the worries that once troubled her eight years ago of how motherhood and her soccer career could coexist.

To get through that time of uncertainty, Vasconcelos, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, leaned on her faith. She now feels that having Scarlett when she did has been a blessing and was needed for her personal development.

“That really helped me a lot to see the light and to lean on that to like, ‘OK, like this is how it’s supposed to be, like this is (God’s) plan for me right now,’” she said. “This soccer world can be a little bit heavy at times, and so having the joy and the innocence of a child in my life has been really special.”

Three weeks into her rookie season in 2018, Vasconcelos made her professional debut starting against the Royals in her hometown of Sandy. She still remembers the emotions of holding a baby Scarlett, who was wearing a Red Stars onesie, after the game.

“That was really special just to have that,” she said. “My little family and I, we did it.”

Vasconcelos is grateful for the flexibility her career provides to spend time with her daughter and to be Scarlett’s mom. She said being a professional athlete “has been an awesome mom job” for her.

“I love going home and being able to forget the soccer player Michele, which is such a big part of my identity, and just being able to spend time with her because she loves me for me. She doesn’t care how I play,” she said. “Being a mom has given me a really good perspective that soccer is not my end-all, be-all.”