Prepping the pitch: Getting CPKC Stadium ready for the playoffs and national spotlight

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - The Kansas City Current played its first season in CPKC Stadium in 2024.

The stadium is the first of its kind, the first purpose-built women’s sports stadium in the world.

In a year filled with firsts, it only makes sense that the stadium plays host to the National Women’s Soccer League Championship for the first time.

“Very busy. Very, very busy. With the Big 12 [Tournament], plus kick-off to playoffs, it has been a wild week,” said Stefanie Tomlin, the general manager of CPKC Stadium and vice president of stadium business development for the KC Current.

Tomlin oversees the stadium and the training facility, also a first of its kind.

“Everything with four walls. That’s my domain. I’m the mistress of the four walls,” she jokes.

With all eyes on Kansas City and CPKC Stadium, Tomlin and her team have been meticulous when it comes to pitch maintenance.

“I’ve got security on site 24 hours,” she said. “I’ve got my grounds team here usually between four and five in the morning to start. We are assessing the pitch day by day, hour by hour. They’re not sleeping much, but they are killing it out there!”

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The cooler temperatures and less sunlight make maintaining the perfect pitch a challenge, but Tomlin has complete trust in her crew. She credits their hard work and innovative ideas for the field remaining in top form.

“One of the beautiful things about our grounds team is they take a brave approach. We cranked up the heat underneath [the pitch] and covered it so it would trap the heat in. Then we put lights on top of the areas that get less sun so that they would grow. We created a little greenhouse out there.”

The team at CPKC Stadium wants to guarantee fans have an experience they will remember for a lifetime.

“Normally these matches take months to plan and put everything together. Here we had a couple of weeks,” said Ben Aken, the vice president of community relations for the KC Current.

“There is a large team and several departments that will make the experience at a playoff game come together for fans,” he said. “My group is working on all the activities at the [County Club] Plaza and really getting the community excited. Face painting, special airbrush tattoos that say ‘Teal Time.’ We have these big clocks that are around the city so fans can take pictures with those.”

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Aken said they want the playoffs to be a celebration for the fans and the players.

“Giving them the opportunity to cheer on their team and just appreciate them for the season of hard work in this historic year,” he said.

“Some of our players started playing on high school fields when they first started with the NWSL, so to have the culmination to be here in the stadium specifically built for them, we are just excited to provide that platform for them,” he said.

Tomlin says her team is more than ready to make sure the new platform is ready to go.

“We have prepped for this. We have been ready for this since Day One. It was just about getting our systems correct, getting our operations correct, streamlining efficiencies, and making things optimal so that when we go here, this is a well-oiled machine,” she said. “The standard is excellence. We aren’t worried about troubleshooting right now. A lot of stuff we are doing right now is muscle memory.”

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As for what they hope fans take away from their experience at CPKC stadium? Tomlin hopes they feel “electric.”

“I want them to understand that they are the part that makes it. They are the secret sauce,” she said. “When they come in here and they’re loud and they’re cheering, the team hears that. They feel that.”

“I think it’s something we all need to cherish and embrace,” Aken added. The collective effort of supporting women’s sports. I hope someone walks away and says, ‘Wow, Kansas City does it right.‘”

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