The announcement of a National Women’s Soccer League franchise arriving in Utah sparked excitement in a state where women’s soccer has long been an epicenter of passion and talent for the game. For Real Salt Lake owner Dell Loy Hansen, once the prospect of bringing an NWSL team to Utah became a reality, he wanted to quickly act on the opportunity to begin ushering in a new era of soccer in the ‘State of Sport’.
Over the last two weeks Hansen joined with General Manager Craig Waibel, Vice President of Soccer Operations Rob Zarkos, VP of Communications Trey Fitz-Gerald and Chief Business Officer Andy Carroll to travel the country to meet with league representatives about the NWSL’s move to Utah. Urged on by Hansen, the group leading the charge on bringing the team to Utah acted quickly – a familiar way of operating for people who know RSL’s owner well.
“Dell Loy has the energy of ten people. When he gets going on something, he really is relentless,” Waibel said. “His excitement is contagious and by the time he’s done explaining his vision you just want to hop on board and enjoy the ride with him.”
Hours of travel went into the development of bringing the team to Utah with copious amounts of man hours playing an integral role in the inception of the club, but Mr. Hansen’s drive to make it happen stood out among the crowd.
“Our owner is so committed and he’s been so passionate about everything so our thought was ‘strike while the iron is hot’ and meet with U.S. Soccer to understand what they needed in this process, then meet with the NWSL,” Zarkos said. “It’s taken a lot of effort from a lot of people to make this happen very quickly.”
Using Hansen’s quick thinking and passion for the game and RSL, the club is now tasked with creating a team that the world’s best women’s players want to contribute to and play for. Slated to begin play in April 2018, the club has a very short time to develop a world class roster that is competing for championships every year, a challenge everyone is willing to partake in.
With the club now having a women’s franchise the goal for Hansen is now to help develop not only the best team in the NWSL but to help develop and contribute players to the defending World Cup champion U.S. Women.
“Everything starts really quickly and we have a short runway to get this all done. We’ve already made a few calls and we don’t walk here very often, we run,” Waibel said. “This isn’t something we are going to wait on. You get out there and get the right people for the job.”
