Season of success: First Royal Palms SC women's soccer team wins league title

The new women's soccer team in Palm Coast is giving former high school and college players a chance to continue playing the game and younger players a chance to learn and play at a higher level.

  • By Michele Meyers
  • | 9:05 a.m. August 1, 2024
  • Palm Coast Observer
  • Sports
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“It’s official — we won the league,” Royal Palms Soccer Club coach Ramtin Amiri said about his women’s team.

Amiri coaches the first Royal Palms Soccer Club women’s team in Palm Coast. It is part of the United Premier Soccer League. Royal Palms launched a men’s team in the league in 2019 and started the women’s team this year. Amiri committed to coaching the team in February.

“It’s new for me coaching girls — women,” he said. “I’ve always coached boys. With boys, it’s dealing with egos and a lot of it. With women, it’s a lot more learner-friendly. They don’t show their egos and they’re willing to learn. They show up to practice and work hard. They are not chatting about how good they are. Coaching them is actually easier for me because of their willingness to learn and get better.”

Tryouts were held on March 27 at the Indian Trails Sports Complex. Amiri said games were initially scheduled to start in May but were postponed until June 23 due to the lack of players or administrative issues that plagued other teams. Three teams competed this season — Royal Palms, Four Corners Football Club and Polk United Football Club. They played each other twice during a very short season.

Royal Palms played the last two games of the UPSL Southeast Conference Florida Central Division season in a double-header on Saturday, July 20, and split the results. Royal Palms walked away with a 6-0 win in its first game against the Polk United in a blistering 93 degrees and a smothering 80% humidity. That evening Royal Palms lost 2-1 to the Four Corners women.

Royal Palms traveled to Polk State College in Winter Haven for the first game of the day. Amiri said it was stressful because of the hot weather and the lack of substitutes who were delayed due to an accident on I-4. For the second game against Four Corners, the Royal Palms players traveled to the Northeast Regional Park in Davenport.

...With women, it’s a lot more learner-friendly. They don’t show their egos and they’re willing to learn. They show up to practice and work hard. They are not chatting about how good they are. Coaching them is actually easier for me because of their willingness to learn and get better.
— Ramtin Amiri, Royal Palms SC women's coach

“We had to play two games in one day which is basically unheard of in UPSL,” Amiri said. “The second game, unfortunately, we lost a really good defender (Eva Sites) during the warmup due to field conditions. Honestly, it felt like it was green concrete not green turf. We actually ended up losing another player (Caitlynn Lewis) later in the game doing the exact same thing. It was two non-contact injuries. We were already low on subs plus the girls had already played a whole game earlier in the day in 100-degree weather.”

Following the loss, Amiri said that Four Corners would need to win by 15 points or so in its last game to win the division. Four Corners won the game 1-0 against Polk United on Saturday, July 27, which gave Royal Palms the Central Division championship.

Amiri’s younger sister, Saba, is a midfielder on the Royal Palms team. Both siblings played soccer at Flagler Palm Coast High School. Ramtin Amiri went on to play one season for Daytona State College, then Royal Palms where he played in over 43 games and scored over 31 goals. Last year, he helped his team win the UPSL Florida State Championship. He is beginning his fourth year as FPC's boys head soccer coach and has recently been hired to coach the Ormond Beach Soccer Club’s U17 and U11 boys teams.

Saba played for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University while getting her bachelor’s then master’s degrees in Human Factors Systems. She said she really enjoys playing with Royal Palms.

“It’s definitely a fun experience after playing in college and high school,” she said. “It’s like coming back to the sport that I love and the people I played with at FPC like Malia (Dalzell). It’s just a good environment. I have a good relationship with everyone regardless of whether it’s on the field or off the field. It makes it a lot more enjoyable that my brother is the coach. We both are out here playing the sport that we love. It’s both our passions.”

Twenty-three players make up the Royal Palms roster including three current and four former FPC players, three former Matanzas High School players and one former Seabreeze High School player. Recent FPC graduate Savannah O’Grady helps coach the team while she rehabilitates her knee following surgery to  repair a torn ACL, MCL and meniscus suffered during a game against Matanzas on Dec. 5.

The youngest player on the team is 15-year-old Ivy Chen who will be an FPC sophomore in the fall. She plays midfielder for the Bulldogs and Royal Palms. She said she has learned from others who have played her position, including, Saba, Denise Davalos and Tori Martino.

“I feel like on this team there are a lot of older players, so it’s obviously better to learn from them just like from my high school team last year when I was a freshman — I had a lot of seniors I learned from,” she said. “It feels nice (being part of this team) but also I know I have to work harder because all of these girls are much better than me.”

The most experienced player on the team is former Matanzas player Miracle Porter who scored 238 goals during her high school career and was named Florida's Miss Soccer in 2017. She went on to play at Florida Atlantic University and signed with the French Division 1 Feminine Stade de Reims professional team in 2021. In 2022, she played for Lithuanian team FC Gintra, then was signed by Glasgow City in 2023.

In August last year, Porter returned home to Palm Coast. She said she had not seen family for three years and, also, had not received a professional contract worth signing. She took six months off and knew she needed to get back into shape. That is when player Alexis Savage and Amiri reached out.

“Honestly, for me, I love it (being back) because I was oversees and my family really didn’t get to see me play at that level,” she said. “Just being home and being able to play in front of them, it’s just like when I was younger when I started playing. It’s really nice to be home. Friends and family come to the games that haven’t seen me play since I left home for college.”

Morgan Long is the lone former Seabreeze player on the Royal Palms team. She graduated this year and will be playing soccer for Daytona State College in the fall. She said she wants to play two more years after she graduates DSC but is undecided where she would like to go. Her DSC coach, Hope Clark, recommended she play for the Royal Palms team this summer.

“With this team, a lot of the players are ex-college players so the competition is a lot higher (than in high school),” Long said. “High school is a lot of fun and I played with those girls for four years. When I went in, I only knew one player from FPC so it was kind of intimidating but I got used to it. I had a lot of fun playing with them.”

She said the players made her feel better about herself. They brought her confidence level up in preparation to play at the college level. 

“Before, I feel like I was lacking in confidence,” she said. “They’ve brought my confidence level up. I feel like that has made me a lot better. For them, I play center back and midfield so I like being in those diverse positions because I don’t know what I’ll be playing in college.”

Amiri said the women’s league is an important addition to the community and hopes people can see the progress that was made in a short amount of time.

“For the league, I’d like to see more teams,” Amiri said. “I hope people realize that we’re doing good things on our side for men and women. Our men’s program is the longest lasting UPSL team in Florida. Hopefully, the women will have that same success. The women won a trophy their first summer —the men took a little longer but they did as well. Royal Palms Soccer Club, as a whole, is doing good things and I hope when we start in the fall that we get more women to play for us after seeing what we were able to do over the summer.”

 

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