How his soccer-loving family shaped Taylor Booth (2024)

Fifteen years ago, Taylor Booth was fouled in the penalty box during a soccer game at Eden Park in Eden, Utah.

Typically, the team’s star player would take the resulting penalty kick, but 8 year-old Booth grabbed the ball, placed it on the penalty marker and lined up to take it himself. Though two years younger than all of his teammates, there was no doubt in his mind that he should take the kick — his first one ever.

That moment “was the beginning of something really special,” his mother, Kelli Booth, told the Deseret News, noting that she often still thinks of that day when she passes the park.

Since that day, Taylor Booth has not only made it out of Eden — he’s built an international soccer career.

This week, he will be a part of U.S. soccer history as a member of the first U.S. men’s team to play in the Olympics since 2008 — when he was just 7 years old.

The honor isn’t lost on Booth, who is now 23.

“It’s a special feeling, for sure. I mean, it’s something you always watch as a kid,” he told reporters last week. “It’s a dream come true.”

And it’s a dream that wouldn’t have come true without his family and his Utah soccer roots.

How family led Taylor Booth to his Olympic moment

Soccer is in Taylor Booth’s blood.

His parents, Chad and Kelli, played soccer in high school and collegiately at Weber State and Utah State, respectively. Knee surgery ended up derailing Kelli’s college soccer career but then led her to meeting Chad while skiing.

The Booths’ eldest son, Carver, played soccer at Weber High School and “will tell you he taught Taylor everything he knows,” Kelli Booth said.

Younger brothers Zach and Tanner also embraced the game. Zach Booth plays professionally in Europe, and Tanner Booth plays for Utah’s La Roca Futbol Club.

“For as long as I can remember, we were always kicking the ball around, whether it was inside or in the backyard. And now with me playing pro and my little brother Zach playing pro as well, it’s special. It connects our family,” Taylor Booth told the Deseret News. “Football is definitely the center of our family.”

Kelli Booth describes the sport as the family’s language, noting that the boys were always kicking, juggling or bouncing a soccer ball, even on hikes or while waiting for a geyser to erupt at Yellowstone.

“Every member of our family loves it, eats it up, and so in a way, it’s brought us all together, even though we’re at different stages in life and different ages,” she said.

The family loves soccer so much that their unfinished basem*nt was converted into an indoor soccer field after a young Zach asked Santa for it. Chad served as Santa’s helper that Christmas Eve, using turf he found on KSL Classifieds.

The indoor field allowed the boys to play through the long, cold winters in Eden, and it kept the family sane — despite the same basem*nt window being broken three times.

The Booth family’s lives didn’t stop revolving around soccer when the boys got older.

Kelli Booth, an educator, and her husband, Chad, fly out to Europe to watch Taylor and Zach play professionally during her winter, spring and summer breaks. Extended family and friends also plan European vacations around the boys’ games.

“I hope it’s a ride that keeps going because I’ll miss it. I’ll be sad when it’s over,” she said.

In February, the family was on hand to watch the brothers play against each other for the first time. Both scored in the match — Zach scored his first goal for Volendam and Taylor scored his first hat trick.

“It was a special day. Thinking back on it, I kept saying it was written in the stars before it happened,” Taylor Booth said, as the Deseret News previously reported.

Now, the entire Booth family will travel to France to cheer on their Olympian in a stadium large enough to fit a crowd 75 times the size of their hometown population.

“I can’t even wrap my head around it. It’s a dream,” Kelli Booth said. “A small town boy goes to the big city to play in the Olympics, like, that’s the Hallmark story. It’s the inspirational story that we all go to the movies for.”

How Taylor Booth relied on faith to overcome adversity

When an 11-year-old Taylor Booth showed up to La Roca Futbol Club in Layton, Utah, for the first time, he was the shortest player on the U-13 team and the youngest by at least a year. But that didn’t matter to La Roca’s director, Adolfo Ovalle, once he saw the young man play.

“This kid can flat out play. He had a vision. He saw the field really well. Yes, he was the smallest, but he was so good, in my opinion, so good already. So he is a year and a half younger? I don’t care. He can start for my team, you know?” Ovalle told the Deseret News.

Even in just his first year with La Roca, Ovalle considered Booth to be one of the top players on the team.

“Then by year three, he was clearly the best player on the team, so his development was so fast,” Ovalle said. “It seemed like everything I was trying to work (on) with my team, Taylor was absorbing and becoming better and better and better.”

At just 14 years old, Booth left Eden and La Roca to join the Real Salt Lake Academy in Arizona. Two years later, he moved to Florida to join U.S. Soccer’s U-17 residency program to prepare for the U-17 World Cup.

Then one year after that, he signed with one of the biggest clubs in the world, Bayern Munich, at age 17 and moved to Germany, where he spent five years before moving on to the Netherlands to play for FC Utrecht in the Eredivisie.

All together, the 23-year-old has spent nearly the last 10 years living away from home.

“I think the biggest challenge has probably been being away from my family. It’s crazy to say it feels normal now, just because I’ve been away from my family for so long,” Booth said. “I can remember those first few years away from home — it’s difficult, I mean, because all your other friends and family are having normal high school experiences, doing normal things, and you’re in a dorm halfway across the world just waking up, training, repeating every single day.”

At times, other parents have judged the Booths for allowing Taylor to leave home as a teenager.

“I’ve had people say to my face, that kids should be with their mom until they’re 18,” Kelli Booth said. “Who am I to get in the way of his dream? ... Professional sports is a short lifespan, and you got to make the most of it. But it is difficult. It is challenging to have them away. But then on the flip side, you see the maturity. You see the life skills they gain. You see them become really high functioning adults that are navigating the world on their terms, and that’s really rewarding as a parent to see.”

Throughout his career, Taylor Booth has found solace through connections with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Kelli Booth said.

He has been able to find a family away from home through the worldwide church, especially with the missionaries, she added, recalling that a senior missionary couple for the church, the Lloyds, took him under their wing while he was stranded in Munich during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He has also made friends with the young elder missionaries, inviting them over for pizza and giving them Bayern Munich jerseys, she said.

“It’s such a rare combination to be LDS and to be playing professional sports in Europe. There just aren’t very many. I don’t know that he’s come across another LDS player, so that’s tricky. But it’s a cute little ward and branch, where he’s lived in different places. They’ve all been darling with him,” Kelli Booth said.

Taylor Booth’s journey from La Roca in Utah to the Olympics

Thirteen years after Taylor Booth started playing for La Roca, the Olympian gives a lot of credit to La Roca and Ovalle for their hand in his career.

“I think once I started playing for La Roca, is when I kind of really started taking football serious. (Ovalle) had a younger son who was playing in the Real Salt Lake Academy, and he had a serious talk with me, and he said, ‘Yeah, look, I think you could have the potential to do exactly what he’s doing and even play for national team one day,’” Booth said. “He really helped me realize that all of this dreaming at a young age was possible, and I think it helped me so much.”

Booth is Ovalle’s first player to become an Olympian, and he couldn’t be more proud of his former star. Ovalle talks to his current players about the Eden native, watches his games in the Netherlands and will even call him after a good game or play.

“It just makes me feel so happy and so proud of him, and he is making so many other kids in my club feeling hopeful. They feel like there’s a hope that they can do the same thing,” Ovalle said.

Ovalle believes the U.S. are lucky to have Booth on their squad with the talent and experience he brings. Watching Booth’s Utrecht games, Ovalle has seen how Booth has become a more well-rounded player.

“Any given day, he’s the one that wins the game for Utrecht. Any given day, he is the one that creates all the chances,” he said. “He’s a more complete player than before. He knows how to defend really well. He works back, he tracks people back, he defends, he knows how to keep results. So he’s a guy that is a team player that just sacrifices for his team for the common objective of winning as a team.”

The Olympian has one more year left at Utrecht, and Ovalle thinks their are bigger things in store for the young star.

“He’s an amazing human being and an amazing soccer player, and I believe he hasn’t reached his ceiling yet. I believe that he has still a long ways to go, and that there’ll be another big club that will sign him sometime soon.”

Taylor Booth and the U.S. men’s team will play their first match of the 2024 Paris Olympics on July 24 at 1 p.m. MDT.