Senior Mary Long dug her teal shoes into the grass — positioning herself to jog a lap around the field. Her hair and red jersey waved as her jog turned into a run.
She couldn't help taking a victory lap around the newly built Kansas City Current stadium. It was her first time seeing the fully completed stadium and she was ecstatic.
Her victory lap ended as she met up with her family and prepared to take pictures in front of their accomplishment — the world’s first stadium dedicated solely to a women's sport.
Though Mary had been on countless soccer fields in her lifetime, this one felt completely different to her. This one was theirs. And this one was perfect.
Ever since Mary's parents Angie and Chris started the process of founding the KC Current in 2019, their family has become a vital part of the team — through attending almost every game before the team had their own stadium and was playing at Children's Mercy Park and supporting the build process of creating the CPKC Stadium. The Long family feels proud to be making history with women's sports and they strive to support the team however they can.
The idea all started after then-12-year-old Mary returned from a month in Paris playing soccer in a superclub event against French teams during the 2019 Women’s World Cup. The combination of watching World Cup games and attending Mary’s games in between ended up being an experience the Longs just couldn't shake.
“The real catalyst was Mary,” Chris said. “Through that experience, both by seeing [soccer] through her eyes and the inspiration that gave us, but also just seeing the power of the global game and seeing what was going on with investment in the European clubs and investment in the Australian clubs, we just left that event and said ‘We’ve gotta bring a team to Kansas City.’”
Being able to observe soccer in one of its most influential areas of the world inspired them to bring it back to Kansas City where the people they love could bear witness to the power of the sport.
But establishing a successful women's soccer team in Kansas City would take more than just familial support. For the next year, Chris and Angie worked side-by-side through countless emails, meetings and presentations to convince the National Men’s Soccer League to anoint them an expansion franchise which would give them the legal ability to form a team and brand.
All soccer expansion franchises — including for women's teams — must go through the National Men’s Soccer League, according to Chris. This guarantees people can’t just start their own team and assures a sense of harmony and order in the league.
Late East alum and soccer journalist who helped bring soccer into the mainstream in the United States — Grant Wahl — was one of the first people the Longs contacted and guided them through the process of funding a team and obtaining an expansion right.
“It took a lot of networking and a lot of demonstrating that Kansas City was a good market and that we deserved a team,” Chris said.
To this day, they still attribute much of their early success to Grant and his help. Through this work and their roots in Kansas City, they were ultimately able to persuade the National Men’s Soccer League that their hometown was in fact a strong market. And their claims about Kansas City’s sports market rang true as they’ve been able to accumulate a large and steady fanbase with consistently high attendance.
"Of course the other part of it is [that] Kansas City is the best sports market in the world in our view," Chris said. "We knew that having these amazing women professional role models right in our backyard would be incredibly well-received and the community would support it."
But their increased busy schedules from the new stadium that year didn't pull the family apart. They still found time for their weekend trips to the gym and family dinners — a trend that continues despite constantly-shifting schedules and an endless stream of practices and games for their four kids.
Their kids had been involved from the start. After first hearing about the idea to start a women’s soccer team over their family dinner, then-eighth-grade Abigail Long began brainstorming logos for their soon-to-be team. And in what her family claims to be classic Abigail fashion, she incorporated her signature color: teal.
The Longs spent a year on branding by doing studies on color, merchandise and logos. Yet the teal color stuck, making its way onto the iconic Teal Mobile — a bus selling KC Current merchandise.
“One of the first drawings she had [created] had a shade of [teal],” Chris said. “The reason we have teal is because of Abigail, and teal has become a calling card for the team. Teal Town, the Teal Mobile, that dates back to her.”
Their trademark color now appears on merchandise, the stadium and countless articles of clothing around their home — the color is a symbol of their family that’s stuck with the team since the beginning. Their matching teal tennis shoes and wardrobes filled with homeland red, teal and navy are a testament of their devotion to the team.
Abigail and Mary weren’t the only Long kids with influence on the new team. Chris believes that freshman Christopher and seventh-grader Teddy have expanded the KC Current’s fanbase to teenage boys around Kansas City. They encourage their friends from school and sports teams to attend the games and root for the team by inviting them to games, promoting merchandise sales and getting friends and family excited on game days.
With their help, the family can now count on kids across Kansas City of all ages and genders to show up to the games and cheer the team on.
“[The expanded audience] is a cool thing that [Christopher and Teddy] brought but really more emblematic of the fact that women's sports are for everyone,” Chris said. “It’s a really powerful thing to watch the skill and power of these elite women.”
Despite the gradual success the team witnessed at first, 10 months into owning it, the Longs realized they needed to start looking for a place to house a stadium for the team.
Though Chris and Angie visited multiple potential build sites together, they immediately fell in love with their current location at Berkley Riverfront Park in Downtown Kansas City and couldn’t see the team located anywhere else.
“You can’t miss it,” Angie said. “You feel it. There’s something really special about being there on the river. I grew up in Kansas City and it's one of those areas that you always kind of wonder ‘Why isn't anything down here?’ It’s amazing down by the river.”
The Longs feel the location embodies everything they represent as a team, a family and a city. They saw untapped potential in an area of their city they felt held immense symbolism and displayed the rich culture of Kansas City and chose to act on it.
When it was time to break ground, the family appeared together decked out in KC Current hard hats, navy construction vests and a shovel, ready to start the building of a historic stadium.
“It was a big moment,” Angie said. “We threw a huge party for the city when we broke ground and obviously our family was there.”
The Longs had spent months before and after this moment with contractors and designers laying out the stadium and planning everything from how security would be set up to what restaurants and businesses would be included in the stadium. And while everything was changing, their kids were with them every step of the way — if not through direct impact on the stadium, through the support they showed their parents.
“My parents being the drivers of this, it’s definitely a topic of conversation at our house very often,” Mary said. “Sometimes they’ll ask us for our opinions or what we think about this so it's been really cool to be involved from this side. I got to help my mom design parts of the stadium like the Pitch Club area interior.”
Since then, Chris and Angie have brought their family together through this shared experience and even their community together through hosting parties and events to celebrate the success of the team and the history being made. Before and after games the family can be found celebrating with close family and friends sometimes at home and sometimes in the stadium — a space that’s become somewhat of a second home to them.
Now, the Long family attends every game together and continues to invite friends and extended family to support the team with them.
“For us it’s been an incredible bonding thing but I think that moment [of walking onto the field for the first time] was sort of a cool thing especially as a mom and a dad,” Chris said.
Thanks for highlighting an important issue, well said.