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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Royals' new sporting director, Kelly Cousins, visited Salt Lake City for the first time last week from her native London.
In addition to several media engagements, part of Cousins' duties on the trip was picking out the tile color in a new Royals-specific training facility in Herriman.
"A lot of gold," team president Michelle Hyncik said.
Cousins and Hyncik slipped in the training facility design talk as if it was business as usual, but everyone in the room knew it wasn't.
The Royals trained in Sandy during their first iteration and never had a permanent home to call their own. Team owners and leaders hope to change that this time around.
"They believe that if the players don't have the resources and the support — and the proper facilities are a huge part of that — that's going to obviously translate and permeate everything in the organization," Hyncik said of the team's owners. "So at the base, they want the best of the best in terms of facilities, training facilities and support."
Groundbreaking for the "huge, multi-million dollar" facility is set for next month, creating a space that is exclusive to the Royals within the larger Zions Bank Real Academy campus.
Hyncik said the team owners — led by David Blitzer, Ryan Smith and Jessica Gelman — "handed over the keys" to herself, Cousins and head coach Amy Rodriguez to make all the decisions on the training facility.
"Picking out a soothing carpet for moms that are pumping, like all those really tiny details are super gratifying," Hyncik said.
The trio of team leadership solicited feedback from the NWSL players' union in addition to the benefit of having Rodriguez as a former Royals player to help with first-hand experience.
"The last couple of months, we've just been working so hard together and bouncing ideas," Cousins said of working with Rodriguez and Hyncik. "And I think everything comes down to what's going to be right for the players, for the team, for the fans and the community, and then for the club going forward to be successful."
Showing the pathway to the pro world. @AFCU | @UofUHealthpic.twitter.com/wtrhuClurq
— Utah Royals (@UtahRoyalsFC) August 18, 2023
The trio wants to establish a culture of hard-working and humble people, both on and off the field, and Hyncik said Cousins' collaboration with Rodriguez early on has exemplified that culture.
"(Kelly) and Amy had this really 'birds of a feather' type of mentality that gelled really nicely," Hyncik said. "Kelly is super collaborative, which matches the culture of our organization. We don't want big egos and bullies. We want it to be a very humble, hard-working atmosphere."
Cousins and Hyncik both added that this applies to the on-field product as well, forming a vision for the types of players they want to go after in building a roster ahead of the inaugural 2024 season.
"Trying to find 22 to 26 players that all suit your philosophy and everything; it's going to be difficult to do that at once," Cousins said. "But I think we've been able to build that strategy to kind of then start identifying players.
"And obviously we've got free agency coming up in the next couple of weeks, so that's one avenue that we'll see, looking at right now, what players are available and what players then do we want to go after. Then obviously we've got the expansion draft."
The expansion draft will give the Royals the opportunity to choose up to 12 players from the existing 12 NWSL teams. Fellow newcomer Bay FC has the first pick, after which the two teams will alternate picks.
The Royals own the No. 1 pick in the NWSL Entry or college draft; dates for both drafts have yet to be announced. The current NWSL regular season ends on Oct. 15.
