KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The bar is forever raised.
With the opening of CPKC Stadium on Saturday, a women’s professional team finally has a stadium built just for them. Not one already occupied by a men’s team, or to be shared with a university or as part of a community complex. One designed to their specifications, including a locker room that’s theirs and theirs alone. One that has everything a stadium for a men’s team would have, including 10,000-plus seats, luxury boxes and high-end concession stands.
One that lets the world know the women’s game, and the athletes who play it, aren’t going anywhere, and should be treated like the professional athletes they are.
“You can’t unsee what we’ve done. And once you see it, it changes other people’s vision and other people’s expectations of what is right,” Kansas City Current co-owner Angie Long told USA TODAY Sports on Friday, the day before CPKC Stadium opened along the city’s riverfront.
“Not too many people are asking us now why those women need their own stadium,” Long added. ‘Because they see it and get it.”
There have been professional women’s leagues in the United States for almost 30 years now. But for too much of that time, general acceptance of the WNBA and the NWSL, as well as its predecessors, has been grudging. At best.
They were made to play on high school fields and at facilities that lacked basic amenities. Like locker rooms. They were relegated to the hinterlands, far from the cities they supposedly represented. Their own owners treated them like charity projects, rather than a worthwhile investment.
Even the two stadiums built previously for women’s teams as the primary tenants were, at least initially, small and/or not what a top-level professional men’s team would accept.
The message was clear: We’re letting you play, little girl. Be grateful for what you’ve got.
“We’ve never felt like we’ve had a home,” Michelle Akers, who was part of the first U.S. women’s national team in 1985 and went on to win World Cups in 1991 and 1999, said during the pre-game festivities Saturday.
Thankfully, that is changing. Interest in women’s sports is skyrocketing and women athletes have become more forceful in refusing to accept inequity. There also has been an influx of owners, in both the NWSL and WNBA, who recognize supporting women’s sports isn’t just a noble cause. There’s serious cash to be made, but it means treating women like the professionals they are.
“When we announced that we were going to be building the stadium, a reporter asked me, `Why can’t you just play at Children’s Mercy Park?” Long said, referring to the home of Sporting KC, the Major League Soccer team. “And my answer was, `Why should any professional team not deserve to have their own stadium, their own home, their own place to play?’”
Looking around CPKC Stadium, and seeing the players’ reaction to it, the answer seems so obvious. And so ridiculous that it has taken until now for it to happen.
When the Current saw their locker room in the new stadium for the first time, Michelle Cooper was so excited she skipped across the floor. Lo LaBonta, who has spent half of her 10-year career in Kansas City, joked, “I get a locker? I get a shower? Is this crazy?”
The signage, the colors, the merchandise being sold — everything is for the Current. Nothing is borrowed or handed down. They are not guests in somebody else’s home or part-time tenants, having to make sure they take everything with them and are leaving no trace of themselves behind after games.
This is their home, their permanent home. Everything in it is for them and belongs to them.
“It’s a game changer,” NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman said. “I think it’ll have an even greater impact than anyone can imagine.”
As Long said, once you see CPKC Stadium, you cannot unsee it. Nor can you ignore the question of why a women’s team is any less deserving of having a space of its very own than a men’s team.
One of the Current players who scored in the 5-4 victory against the Portland Thorns was 16-year-old Alex Pfeiffer. Unlike the veterans who are not far removed from the days of sub-standard facilities, Pfeiffer will play her entire career with there always being at least one stadium built specifically for a women’s team.
It might not sound like much. For women’s sports, however, it’s a monumental shift.
‘This is something that will change the world of women’s soccer,’ Current coach Vlatko Andonovski said. ‘This is the beginning of the change.’
One that is long overdue.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.