Utah Royals Sporting Director Kelly Cousins steps out of the players tunnel and glances around the empty concourses and pitch of America FIrst Field for the first time.
“It really is such lovely ground,” Cousins says to a cloudless September sky as she continues on with her media day duties.
Real Salt Lake and URFC’s combined media team flutter around her, gathering pictures and video as Cousins continues to soak in the newness of it all. A new team, a new country, and a new beginning all at once.
The fresh Utah air rattles past the goalposts as Cousins takes a deep breath.
In less than six months, URFC will play at America First Field again for the first time since 2020. Those concourses will be packed, more than 30 new players will have been announced and ready to take the pitch, and professional women’s soccer will officially be back in the Beehive state.
For now the Royals are still in the process of being built, but the Club’s head architect has officially touched down.
Forty miles west of London and tucked between the river Thames and river Kennet lies the town of Reading, England. A town decimated during the English Civil War, but rebuilt as an important economical center during the industrial revolution. The town’s resiliency is also found in their soccer Club Reading FC, whose men and women’s sides have been known to punch above their weight for years. This is aptly where Cousins was born.
From the beginning, Kelly Cousins helped build her hometown’s women’s team from the ground up.
In 2006, a year of celebration for the town as Reading's men's side reached the Premier League for the first time, the Club decided it was time to start its own women’s team.
Reading F.C. Women began in the fifth division and from the very first season, proved to be a team fitting of the town's ethos, winning the league, promotion to the fourth division and league cup.
To no surprise, Cousins, who would become synonymous with her childhood Club, was there from the start. Her journey began as a player on the team. She would eventually go on to captain as Reading continued to climb the lower leagues of women’s soccer in England.
Following an ACL injury in 2012, Cousins was approached to take over the team as a manager following the Club’s relegation back to the third division. Cousins, who had been helping coach younger players in the Reading setup since she was 16, was excited about the possibility and decided to end her playing career to take a chance at managing. In her first year as a manager, she helped win Reading promotion back to the second division with a positive goal difference of 41.
A trademark of Cousin’s managerial and professional strategy has been player development, and one of the best examples is one of the best women’s players in the world, Fran Kirby.
Kirby, who was named by The Guardian as the seventh best women’s soccer player in the world in 2021 and is Chelsea FC’s women’s team all-time leading scorer, was born in Reading just like Cousins. And, like Cousins, began her career there.
Kirby became Reading’s first ever full time player, and during that promotion season in 2012, scored 32 goals in 21 games. The following season while scoring 16 goals in the second division, she became the first player to ever be named to the English National Team from outside the top flight. That same year she became the youngest ever player to score for England at a World Cup.
With all these accolades, it’s no surprise she was the first ever player Cousin’s negotiated a transfer fee from when Chelsea FC came calling in 2015. A player developed in Reading, and who Cousin oversaw throughout the entirety of her time there.
Meanwhile, after Reading won promotion to the second division in 2012-13, Cousins moved from managerial to a sporting director role and hired Jayne Ludlow as the Club’s new manager.
The two would help Reading finish third, earning Ludlow the opportunity to manage the Welsh National Team. Cousins then took back over the reigns as manager while still holding the responsibilities of Sporting Director, and helped lead Reading to the first division for the first time.
From the fifth division to the first, Cousins had been there for it all.
Reading and Cousin’s reputation of being a team and sporting director/manager that punched well above their weight was solidified during their eight year stay in the English top division. During the 2017-18 season, Reading finished fourth, behind only giants Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City and ahead of Club’s such as Liverpool and Everton.
Reading’s goalkeeper at the time, was 2023 Women’s World Cup star and 2023 England Player of the Year Mary Earps, another English National Team player who’s development was helped by Reading and Cousins.
While other top Club’s in the top division were paired with men’s sides in the revenue giant of the Premier League, throughout Reading’s stay in the first division, the Club’s men side would be in the EFL Championship, the english second division, which only widened the financial gap between Reading and other WSL teams.
Shrewd business and player development weren’t just feathers in the cap for Cousins, they were essential to the Club’s top flight survival. Impressively during Reading’s fourth place finishing in the 2017-18 season, 10 senior players came through the Club’s academy.
The Club would follow that up with consecutive fifth place finishes in 2018-19 and 19-20.
Finally, as the only Club left in the FA WSL whose men's side wasn’t in the Premier League, Reading was relegated from the top division during the 2022-23 season.
Cousins saw Reading go from the fifth division of England all the way to finishing fourth in the first division. From playing in 6,500 capacity Cherrywood Road from 2006-2015, to 10,000 capacity Adams Park from 2015-2019, to finally sharing 24,000 capacity Madejski Stadium with the men’s team in 2020 onwards. Reading FC Women’s truly was a Club built from the ground up, in large part thanks to Cousins work as a sporting director and manager.
Now instead of a stadium minutes from the River Kennet, near the home she’s known all her life, Cousins stands at ground zero of her newest challenge at the base of the Wasatch Range.
A new Club, ready to be rebuilt.
“I can’t wait to get to work,” Cousins said.
