Utah Royals FC delivered a statement to the rest of the NWSL with its dominant 5-1 win over the Portland Thorns on Sunday.
It was Utah’s third match in seven days following a 4-1 win over North Carolina Courage and a 1-0 loss to Washington Spirit, a team that has been in the last two NWSL championships.
On Sunday, the Royals conceded a goal to Portland’s Sophia Wilson 34 seconds into the match but bounced back and scored the most goals in a single match in club history.
“If you believe in yourself, nothing’s impossible. I think that’s a reality,” Royals head coach Jimmy Coenraets told reporters afterward.
Wilson’s quick goal could have proved disastrous for Utah, but the team settled in and dominated the Thorns.
“It was just such shell-shock because it happened so quickly, and I think that I’ve seen this group bounce back so many times throughout the year,” midfielder CeCe Delzer, who scored a brace, said. “I think that as a collective, we didn’t want to harp on it too much and just remember there was 89 minutes left in the game. There was a lot of time for us.”
Forward Cloé Lacasse, who had three assists in the game, said the team had to “take a breath and make sure that we were going to control the rest of that game.”
Utah did just that, putting the rest of the league on notice.
“I think it just shows that we’re here to compete. We’re here to stay in the mix,” Delzer said.
On Sunday, Delzer scored the Royals’ first two goals of the match to equalize in the 35th minute and then take the lead in the 47th.
In the 68th minute, Sandy native and former BYU star Brecken Mozingo then scored her first goal of the season three minutes after entering the game.
Then the Royals started scoring every 10 minutes with forward Kianna Palacios finding the back of the net in the 79th minute and center back Kate Del Fava adding the final exclamation point in the 89th.
“This group just has the ability to bounce back,” Delzer said. “We’re not going to let anything really jar us. Obviously, it’s not ideal giving up a goal in the first minute or so, but I think it just puts us in uncomfortable positions, the positions that we need to not shy away from.”
A team of goal scoring threats
Mozingo’s goal made her Utah’s 11th goal scorer of the season. Utah Royals FC plays unselfishly with a scoring by committee offense, and it’s working.
“Everyone you bring on the pitch is doing their jobs and is trying to contribute to what the team needs,” Coenraets said. “I think that’s very special this season.”
Utah’s 31 goals of the season are the most in the league and its 186 shots only trail San Diego. For context, the Royals only scored 28 goals in 2025.
The Royals still have 12 more games left this season, and the club scored nine goals just last week.
“You scored nine goals for a team that last season struggled very heavily with scoring goals, and all of a sudden you’re number one in the league when it comes to scoring goals,” Coenraets said. “I think it’s finding a way, and again, like, do we have the biggest stars? No, but we’re finding ways to score goals. And we have 11 goal scorers, so that keeps us going.”
Mozingo hadn’t appeared in a game since July 5, a game where she only played 12 minutes. The former BYU product wasn’t even on the active roster for the Spirit game, a decision Coenraets said was to bolster the midfield to compensate for an under the weather Narumi.
It only took Mozingo three minutes to make an impact.
The roster’s depth and the threat that all the players can provide is “the beauty of our roster,” Delzer said.
The team’s togetherness also adds to Utah’s success.
“Our locker room is very much where we want to give each other our flowers and celebrate each other,” Delzer said. “I think you see that on the field, everyone working together towards one goal.”
Surging to the top and facing ‘world-class’ players
Utah currently sits in third place in the NWSL standings, four points behind first place Gotham FC. A stark contrast from the 12th and 11th place finishes of the last two seasons.
ESPN even has the club ranked first overall in its NWSL power rankings, writing, “there’s just no doubt that Utah is the real deal this year.”
Lacasse, who leads Utah in both goals (6) and assists (7), called Sunday’s win “a big three points” in the club’s pursuit of its ultimate goal.
“I think it’s very honest that this season we are competing to be at the top of the table, and we are right there,” she said of the message the win sends. “I think it’s just certain moments that we have to clean up at times. Like, the first minute of this game wasn’t ideal. You never want to start that way, but it was what we did right afterwards.”
Following the loss against the Spirit, Coenraets described the lone goal conceded to Trinity Rodman as a “lapse of five seconds against a world-class player.”
On Sunday, Coenraets said the same could be said of Wilson’s goal.
“I think it’s just a miscommunication between a few players, but also again, like you know what they’re doing, you know where they’re going to go, but still you allow them to do so,” he said.
Like Lacasse, Coenraets said those lapses need to be fixed if the club wants to be competitive.
“If we want to compete, those are lapses we have to get out,” he said. “But then you also realize that in a three-game week, you come back, you go over it, and you actually put down a statement. I think that’s something that people should talk about in the league.”
When game-planning, Coenraets said “you might shut (players like Rodman and Wilson) down once, twice, but you know they’re going to do something different.”
He noted Wilson “coming that deep to get the ball, which she never does,” to score her goal. Those adaptations are what Utah needs to have an answer for, according to the head coach.
“When that happens, take pride because they’re changing to us, but then how do we react on it? What happens when Wilson is doing all of that stuff?” he said. “I think they’re on a tier where, yeah, we have to learn as an organization, as a team, like, how do we deal with it? Knowing that, yeah, some players you will never stop. I think that’s a reality. It’s just finding a way as a team to stop them.”
While excitement of this season and the possibility of Utah Royals FC earning its first-ever playoff appearance may be on fans’ mind, that’s not Coenraets’ focus just yet.
“I think my only wish is just to keep it going,” Coenraets said. “I think keep on focusing on us and just the process more than pushing for the playoffs and pushing for all that stuff. That will happen if we do the right thing.”
Up next, Utah Royals FC travels to Colorado to play NWSL newcomer Denver Summit FC on Saturday. The match will be broadcast on ION at 2 p.m. MT. Utah beat Denver 2-1 in their first and last meeting in May, which was dubbed the Continental Divide, but that was without USWNT captain Lindsey Heaps, who joined Denver this summer.