| Victoria Jackson
I’m not from Kansas City – actually, I had never before even been to the city – but I, like many other women before me with no ties to the place, made my pilgrimage to CPKC Stadium on the shore of the Missouri River this month. CPKC Stadium is the first purpose-built stadium for a professional women’s sports team. In the world.
I’m the type of person who cries at every inspirational women’s sports ad. I think that I am not alone in responding with such emotion to depictions of athletes defying stereotypes, proving the haters wrong, or working very, very hard to excel against all odds. The unseen, unspoken subtext in these ads is the overwhelming wall of resistance these women were breaking through. My generation in the U.S., born in the ‘80s, never lived in a world without Title IX, but our moms, aunts, and grandmas did, so we were not that far removed. We grew up with men’s sports on our TV screens all the time but with limited access to women’s sports. Team USA was who we most often saw women repping on our televisions, and these, of course, were more rare occasions.
Those ads, whether they be Nike, U.S. Soccer, Gatorade, or anything else, tug on my girls’-and-women’s-sports heartstrings. They remind me about how hard athletes and the people who care about women’s sports had to work simply to get to do what most boys and men took for granted and understood as their birthright and the natural way of things if they were exceptionally talented on the field, diamond, or court. Watching live women’s sports was also challenging when I was growing up, though those of us lucky to live near college towns had more opportunities. I’m grateful that my dad thought to get us season tickets to Northwestern women’s basketball when I was obsessed with the Chicago Bulls and Michigan’s Fab Five.
Professional leagues were men’s domain for most of my childhood. My high school years, however, were bookended by the establishment of new pro leagues in basketball and soccer. The WNBA launched coming off the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games, but Chicago didn’t have a team in the W in those early years. The WUSA followed a similar scheme, leveraging the successful 1999 U.S.-hosted World Cup to start the country’s first professional women’s soccer league.
That league, the WUSA, kicked off after I had left Chicagoland for college, and in Chapel Hill, thanks to the dynasty established by Carolina women’s soccer’s many stars and coach Anson Dorrance, we too were awarded a WUSA team.
They played in the stadium shared by our UNC soccer and track and field programs, and during their season, they plopped bleachers down on the backstretch of our track. You know, the aluminum ones, made of long rows of benches with no backs. The ones where, if you dropped something, it fell to the ground below and you could climb underneath to retrieve it. They were the same type of bleachers my parents had sat on when I played AYSO soccer as a kid, the ones that are hard and severe and freeze your backside when it’s cold out. Close your eyes and you can hear the clanging sound of a high school friend’s approaching steps on them. More recently, and two pro women’s soccer leagues later, I ventured out to rural Maryland to sit on similar bleachers to watch the Washington Spirit in an NWSL game coming off the 2019 Women’s World Cup.
Did I get misty eyed entering CPKC Stadium, surrounded by thousands of fans and quality swag and the good snacks and drinks, and observing the first-rate design and entertainment features on the same level as the most cutting-edge of new stadiums where the best teams in the biggest sports in the world play? Let’s just say I was relieved that the place was so packed that the people I was with weren’t able to see my face as we navigated our way around the sold-out crowd. Just like I know I’m not alone when I cry at women’s sports ads, I’m sure I was not the first to have this sort of emotional experience when first entering CPKC Stadium. I got a little teary again when I pulled on the seat bottom to plop down, lean back, and enjoy my individualized stadium chair. And its cupholder.
Am I nostalgic for cold, rock-hard bleachers? Nope! Certainly not when I’m watching world-class athletes.
The KC Current dominated play against the Seattle Reign and won 2-0, with a penalty kick from Brazilian star Debinha and a header by the team’s prolific goal-scorer Temwa Chawinga from Malawi… which we later learned had a bet riding on it that Coach Vlatko Andonovski would have to dye his hair Current teal like hers. (It also was Chawinga’s birthday, and the crowd serenaded her after the goal and during her sprint over to Andonovski to tease him about his new hairstyle.)
The win clinched for the club their first major trophy, and with five games in the regular season still remaining. No NWSL team had earned the shield, the award for winning the regular season, this quickly. Angie and Chris Long, the team owners who should be commended for their vision, are determined to make the Current the best team in the world; and while the likes of Barcelona and Arsenal across the Atlantic might want a word, they are well on their way. This club, these fans, this stadium … they make me proud of a place with which I’ve had no relationship until I met them.
As the good folks in CPKC like to say… KC BABY!!!