For volunteer chaplain Amy Miller, the final days of Spokane Zephyr FC are about more than the closing of a professional soccer club. They are about honoring people, holding grief, and faithfully walking with players, coaches, staff, and supporters as a meaningful chapter in Spokane women’s sports comes to an end.
Spokane Zephyr FC announced in May that it would not continue operating a professional women’s team beyond the 2025/26 season. The news brought sadness across the Inland Northwest, especially because the Zephyr represented Spokane’s first professional women’s soccer club and a visible sign of possibility for girls, families, and fans who wanted to see women compete at the highest levels of the sport.
For Amy, just completing her second year as volunteer chaplain to the team, the chaplaincy in this season has meant staying present when answers are limited and emotions are raw. The end of a team can feel like a death in the sporting world. Players lose not only a jersey and a workplace, but also teammates, routines, dreams, and a community that had formed around them. Staff members lose daily purpose and relationships. Fans lose a gathering place. Young girls lose a local example of what they might one day become.
Reports around the team’s closure have described many different feelings of frustration, confusion, and sadness. Players learned the team was being disbanded after the season, and supporters expressed disappointment that a city which had celebrated professional women’s soccer would no longer have this team to rally around. Even the club’s own statement acknowledged the energy, belief, and support that helped bring professional women’s soccer to life in Spokane.
In moments like these, chaplaincy becomes a ministry of presence. Amy’s role is not to fix the business realities or explain every decision. It is to listen, pray, encourage, and remind people that their value is not measured by whether a club continues. Wins, losses, contracts, and seasons may end, but the dignity of each person remains.
As Spokane Zephyr FC folds, Amy Miller’s faithful work is to help see out the chaplaincy with care and compassion. She stands in the space between gratitude and grief: grateful for what the Zephyr meant, saddened by what is being lost, and hopeful that the seeds planted through this team will continue to bear fruit in Spokane’s soccer community for years to come.
“It has been an incredible joy and privilege to serve the Zephyr team and organization these past two years. I will deeply miss our weekly coffee hangs and bible study—walking life together. I am inspired by their love for Jesus and one another—and even more so in how they carried themselves through this season of abrupt transition and loss. Couldn’t be prouder of the resiliency and grace exemplified in these women.”
Amy, on seeing the end of her ministry to Zephyr FC
Amy will continue to be available to support athletes, coaches, and staff as some scatter to new opportunities while others remain in Spokane and begin life anew. She will step to the side with Soccer Chaplains United — hopeful that a new chapter might begin but faithful to see this current one to completion.
Soccer Chaplains United is non-profit, 501(c)3 and depends upon the financial support of our partners to carry out our work of developing chaplaincy across all levels of soccer. Please consider making a contribution today to help us continue growing our chaplains and our work. Click the link below to make a gift or check out our Donate page for different giving options.
