The new KC Current stadium is ushering in a pivotal era for women’s sports worldwide

Fifteen days before the inauguration of CPKC Stadium on the Berkley Riverfront of the Missouri River, Kansas City Current co-owner Chris Long stood inside the shimmering stadium that’s the first in the United States — and among scant few in the world — purpose-built for a women’s professional team.

With the lingering finer points of the 11,500-seat, approximately $120 million ultramodern venue being attended to all around him, Long thought anew about the magic in the monumental NWSL enterprise that was nearly entirely privately financed.

As he gazed at the Kansas City skyline to the southwest and then turned back toward the river and the Christopher Bond Bridge, he thought about the connective symbolism in that triangulation — the crux of the vision Long and his wife, Angie, sought to achieve.

All at once, the site pays tribute to the roots of the city itself along the adjacent banks and rushing water, makes a statement of redemptive renewal and proclaims testimony to the present and future of a region on the move.

“Don’t you feel it?” Angie Long said on the October 2022 day they broke ground on the site, one of well over 100 times she surveyed the scene before and after that.

“How special and amazing this location is?”

And you could feel it then … and all the more tangibly now.

‘Beyond the confines of our crest’

The “crown jewel,” as Chris Long aptly likes to call it, suggests a Kansas City that isn’t merely up to date but forward-thinking — a notion that’s certainly in motion.

Even amid the Chiefs’ dynasty, the Current and its stadium, designed by Generator Studio and built by J.E. Dunn and Monarch Build, is a more common denominator in Kansas City recently being part of numerous recent must-see lists.

That includes The Wall Street Journal’s 10 Best Places to Visit in 2024, Travel + Leisure’s 50 Best Places to Travel in 2024, Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2024 and The New York Times’ 52 Places to Go in 2024.

You’d think we’re not just the so-called “Paris of the Plains” but Paris itself — and there’s more to that relationship that we’ll come back to.

While one element of this pioneering movement shines above all else, the appeal is multi-tiered and multiplied by standing for so much at once, as implied in the iconic Current crest created by Willoughby Design.

It features two stars for the two states the club represents, vertical lettering of KC to signify standing on “the shoulders of the women who came before” and the image of a current that pushes “beyond the confines of our crest.”

Accordingly, the initiative also funded by co-owners Brittany and Patrick Mahomes — a revolutionary face of KC in his own right — will stand as a bastion of accessibility and inclusivity. That’s inherent in its embrace of women athletes and message to those who would emulate them, and apparent through a variety of contemporary accommodations.

And that broader spirit of connectivity is reflected in the stadium being uniquely situated as the first visible major attraction of the city en route to downtown from the still-fresh new Kansas City International Airport. It’s also in walking distance of the Kansas City Streetcar riverfront extension that’s expected to be ready in 2026 — a delayed development that figures to alleviate the stadium’s controversial parking issues and jarring pricing.

Speaking of 2026, CPKC Stadium and the Current’s practice facility in Riverside are part of the reason the region not only will host six FIFA World Cup games at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium but has the further capacity to anchor base camps for international teams and their entourages.

‘Real, physical embodiment of Title IX’

But one particular image loomed largest to Chris Long, on a rare day Angie Long was unable to attend, even as he envisioned the Current’s grand opening of the stadium — and season opener — on Saturday, March 16, against the Portland Thorns.

The match will be covered by numerous national and even international news outlets and broadcast nationally on ABC, which is planning a 30-minute pre-game show from inside the stadium.

“The one moment that I want to make sure I pause, and I don’t do anything other than focus on this moment, is when the players officially first walk out onto the pitch and just capture how loud it is, capture their faces,” Long said. “Just capture the electric aspect of what we have here.

“Because you can’t replicate that again.”

It’s no less than a sociological pivot point after all, conceived amid 50th anniversary celebrations of Title IX but propelling the meaning of the landmark 1972 ruling into another dimension.

“This is like the real, physical embodiment of Title IX,” Angie Long said at the dedication of the club’s $19 million training facility in 2022 — an assessment that today speaks aptly to the broader meaning.

“It’s fun to think about generationally. My mom wasn’t even allowed to play sports, and I was but I was wearing the hand-me-down jersey.

“And our daughters look at this and say, ‘I want to be a professional athlete.’ … It’s taken a while. But it’s so impactful; it’s changed everything.”

As have the Longs, whose initiative and constancy to the community Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has compared to the likes of Chiefs founder Lamar Hunt and Royals founder Ewing Kauffman.

“They’re very compelling and unapologetic, which I really appreciate, in their demand for excellence,” NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said at the stadium’s groundbreaking ceremony.

Dynamic and engaging as are the Longs, whose investment management firm, Palmer Square, held $12 billion in assets at the time they launched the expansion team in 2021, Berman would also tell you that you can’t have a conversation with them and “not immediately conclude that they mean business.”

“They are like, ‘This league deserves the best, and we will deliver the best,’” she added then. “Not just in the NWSL but globally. Their benchmarking was not really within our league.”

‘We don’t let that (memory) pass us by’

Now, investments in training facilities and stadiums have set a standard that has rippled through the NWSL.

According to a league source, 10 clubs are actively looking for land and/or working toward new training facilities or substantial upgrades. Expansion teams essentially are required to have a plan to create a dedicated training facility and a solution for a competition venue.

Meanwhile, though, the Current organization occupies a rarefied place as the trendsetter for this … and who knows how much more in other contexts?

That’s why former Current midfielder Kristen Edmonds in 2022 thought about all the days playing on fields of weeds and changing clothes in sheds and lamented that suddenly the only thing missing from the training facility was “a time machine for me to get five years younger.”

And why new midfielder Bayley Feist said last week that “we’re really blessed to be in this position” — a contrast to her days with the Washington Spirit and not having priority in sharing facilities with men.

And why midfielder Vanessa DiBernardo smiled at the mention of her Chicago Red Stars days, playing on a Division III football field at Benedictine University in Lisle, Illinois.

“We don’t let that (memory) kind of pass us by,” she said.

From where they started to where it’s going, she added, “pushing the boundaries is amazing.”

Incredible in its own way for coach Vlatko Andonovski, the adoptive Kansas City treasure who previously coached the U.S. Women’s National team.

It wasn’t until Andonovski, from Skopje in North Macedonia, moved to Wichita in 2000 that he even knew females played soccer when he happened upon youth teams playing.

“Brilliant,” he called that moment in a 2019 interview with The Star.

He laughs about that now. But it’s part of his appreciation for this movement that has a new sort of brilliance to it now.

‘A very fortuitous trip’

For all the generational shifts in this, there’s a nice twist in the narrative:

While it’s true that Angie Long’s daughters can look at all this and say “I want to be professional athlete,” none of this may have happened if not for daughter Mary competing on a Midwest all-star team that had the opportunity to play in France during the 2019 Women’s World Cup.

And for that matter, her trip was nearly canceled.

“‘This is so much time away from Palmer Square; I don’t know if I can do this,’” Chris remembered telling Angie. “And I almost pulled the cord on it and told Mary she couldn’t do it.”

If they hadn’t experienced what was ahead, would they have even considered what’s come to pass since?

“No,” said Chris Long, who smiled and called it a “very fortuitous trip.”

During the near-month they were in Paris with Mary, joined by their three other children for a week, the Longs were enamored of the competitions themselves. But they were also taken in by the fever pitch surrounding the event, the evident zeal for the women’s game and the way it all mesmerized their children.

They were dazzled by the first-class facilities, including a sense of how fundamental they were to the advancement of the women’s game. And they were fascinated by the scope of the worldwide audience — including how television kept flashing to the scene in the Power & Light District back in Kansas City.

All of that and more infused in them a sense that Angie Long once called a “tipping point” in momentum of the women’s game. That it had blossomed beyond what she had first perceived in 1999, when the World Cup had been in the U.S., to a more global scale and arc.

Next thing you know, they started thinking of what could be and building a financial model to “ground ourselves,” as Chris Long put it. They consulted with the late Grant Wahl, the renowned sportswriter and voice of the soccer world who went to Shawnee Mission East with Angie and attended Princeton with each of them.

Wahl was a vital sounding board who could tell them the hard truths and issues but also a dear friend and ardent supporter of going forward — both in terms of buying the franchise and creating autonomy and building the training facility and stadium.

While the missions are on a different scale and in certain ways not comparable, it stands in contrast to the Royals and Chiefs seeking more public funding for their own projects. The DIY stadium and environs, which will include a variety of other events, evokes the resolute rolled-up sleeves and self-reliance of Norman Rockwell’s portrait of “The Kansas City Spirit.”

“It’s almost impossible for me to believe that we’re standing here having done this,” Angie Long said last fall at the dedication of the press box in Wahl’s name, “and he’s not here with us.”

They’ll no doubt feel his presence, though, on March 16 and beyond in a stadium of their own.

Along with the glow of an international spotlight, a Kansas City basking in the reflected glory, a team of women reveling in its meaning and a generation of girls who can see their hopes and dreams before them in ways their predecessors never before could.

And they’ll hope, too, that this inspires more of the sort of boldness and imagination this took.

“What I think about that’s incredibly powerful is this concept of ‘more,’” Chris Long said. “Where every person that comes in here is going to engage with this stadium, these players and with this sport in a different way.

“And because of this being a first in so many respects, they’re going to leave there and maybe want to do something first of their own.”