KC Current’s Lo’eau LaBonta takes a celebratory lap on bringing home the NWSL shield

Photo by Tarik Sykes

The KC Current are currently leading the NWSL by a wide, wide margin. Leaving all the other teams in their dust during the 2025 season, the team just brought home the coveted NWSL Shield with a slew of regular-season matches remaining. At the front of this soccer war machine is Lo’eau LaBonta, the key midfielder and captain of KCC, who earned her first USWNT call-up in May 2025.

As one of the longest-running faces for the KC club, all the way back to before the franchise was transferred to Utah, her journey with the Current is perhaps the easiest to define narrative of the highs and lows of building a championship in a sport that America is learning to love en masse.

She was 1 of 4 powerhouse NWSL athletes signed by e.l.f. Cosmetics last month—including Melanie Barcenas, Abby Dahlkemper, and Jaedyn Shaw. Part of that partnership has included pop-up events at CPKC Stadium ahead of recent matches, which the sponsor and team have seen as an important way to inspire a next generation of soccer athletes and fans.

The Pitch sat down with LaBonta to discuss breaking records, the impact of big name sponsorships on the Current’s ability to lead the league, and who on the team controls the aux cable for workouts.

The Pitch: How has your day treated you?

Lo’eau LaBonta: I just came from The Dub—the new sports bar focused on women’s sports—where I gave them a jersey to hang on the wall. It’s so great ot live in a city where places like this are opening up. It really shows where the city’s attention and support are heading when you get to see other businesses launch in support of what we do.

You just clinched the 2025 NWSL Shield with four regular-season matches left, and the second-place team in the rankings is so far behind the Current… do you feel like phoning it in a bit? Just for a few games? I know you won’t, but certainly the idea has occurred to you?

You’ve met our coach, right? He won’t let us give anything less than everything, no matter what game it is. Or practice too, really.

In the match before this one, you had four points on the other team with plenty of regular time left on the clock. Do you ever feel like giving the other team a break when it gets, you know, a bit much? 

Same answer as before.

Photo by Tarik Sykes

In that game, the fourth goal was from you, racking up your 14th career penalty kick point, which ties you with Megan Rapinoe’s record. It was also your 25th career NWSL regular-season goal, making you one of only 34 players in league history to reach that benchmark. You and the team are constantly setting new NWSL group or individual records. How many of these are on a ‘To Do’ list on your phone or your fridge? Do you know what you want to obliterate next, or do they just keep happening?

While I’m aware of what my stats look like, a lot of this keeps happening because of working alongside the team I work with. These goals and opportunities pop up because you have other teammates who are also playing at their absolute peak. I’ve got some personal records but I’m almost more proud of the many times I get to assist [Temwa] Chawinga as she plows toward her Golden Boot.

When she gets a Golden Boot, does she share some of it with you? Will she shave off, say, the heel and let you frame that? A token of appreciation?

I just can’t wait to see them hand it to her.

Having signed with Kansas City FC in 2016 and stayed with the team through the Utah years, essentially being one of the only faces for this club for the last decade, what has the journey taught you? What is the story that emerged that maybe you’ve been the player with the only front row seat for?

It’s crazy that you just used the word decade. That’s a bit eye-opening for me. I’m in my 11th season right now, and when we won the shield, they were asking me how I did it. I was telling reporters that it was thanks to the young bucks on the team. But you don’t realize how much we struggled to get here. If you only just got into the Current in the last year or two, all you know is greatness. But there was a struggle to get here. There was only one team that everyone in the league used to compare themselves to, and that was Portland. They were the standard. Now there’s the Current. We put in our own stadium and training facility. We have some of the best technical staff, and I think we have more staff players than members at this point, but that’s what you need. That’s investment. This didn’t happen without sponsorships, including e.l.f., but this is part of the big turn. Women’s soccer is the sport to be a part of, and it is growing, getting endorsements, and those all feed into a momentum that it is fun to be a part of. Now, all the other teams in the league are comparing themselves to KC Current.

Photo by Tarik Sykes

Speaking on that investment, that sponsorship, the stadium—what does that translate to on the field? Because you felt what it’s like to be in somebody else’s space, borrowing someone else’s field before. With this support, what does it change about how you play the game?

I’ve come a long way since I started in my career. People I came up with, like Yael Averbuch, who was once my roommate as a player and is now the GM at Gotham, along with my husband, Roger Espinoza—these are people who have done so much to help forward the Players Association and the push we have for making this sport better for all. There’s this phrase, “Never leave the locker room how you found it, leave it better.” I think that applies to the work I see us doing in the sport. We’re trying to not only guarantee rights and protections for ourselves, but for everyone who comes next. Driving that conversation is helped by each and every person who is in our corner, and that’s everyone, from the players to the sponsors to the fans.

Photo by Tarik Sykes

In that spirit of leaving the locker room better, do you see added benefits in having this locally sourced stadium, makeup stations, and political signature volunteers around the bus drop-off areas? Does this say something to the next generation of female athletes? 

I wish I’d had anything like this when I was a kid. Before I started working with some of these organizations, like e.l.f. Cosmetics, I had to look back on my life. I was raised by only my dad, so I found a lot of femininity from my teammates and their moms. So it feels good to see the visibility right now of women as athletes starting to “pop”—it shows a very young player that this is all possible. And that you can do it while looking beautiful. I find beauty to be defined by confidence. When any of these things help to make people on game day look happier, feel more comfortable, or just remind them of the diversity of human beings coming to a match to celebrate this sport… I’ll be watching things happen on game days from the field and almost get FOMO. I want to be up there living out that part of this experience, too. It’s all just… cool.

Photo by Tarik Sykes

When you coined the term “KC Baby!” as part of a celebration, did you ever consider the future where it might be draped across stadiums, chanted by giant crowds, and decorating streetcars across a major metropolitan city? And when do you get to see residuals for that?

It’s the funniest thing. If that’s my legacy? I’ll take it. The World Cup is coming to KC and Tech N9ne, for his World Cup song, has “KC Baby” as a lyric. People were sending it my way, and I think that’s the coolest thing. When I heard that, it was a real moment of stepping back and thinking how this started as a joke and it has come this far. It started as a joke because we didn’t have a team name, but now it is part of an anthem for the World Cup? That’s wild. But KC has become my home. I’ve been here forever, I’ve been here since the beginning, and I’m not going anywhere. It is a full-circle moment for sure.

Photo by Tarik Sykes

Do you ever get tired? I’ve been wanting to ask you for a very long time. It doesn’t seem like you do. I want to know how to steal that. I want to know how to do that in my life.

If I could bottle it up and sell it, I would. People who knew me when I was young, my dad especially, will share stories about how I used to just wake up like this. I ran into someone from high school on an airplane recently. Vlatko Andonovski asked this person what I was like back then, and this guy said, “This is how she always was.” I tire out my family, I tire out my teammates and coaches. I tire out my puppy. I just don’t know any other way to be.

What’s on your workout playlist?

Well, you need to ask Michelle Cooper about that, because no one on this team hypes me up more than Cooper. She matches my energy, she matches my volume, but she’s the one always on the aux for us. So she’s got the best music. She always knows which move to make, which route to take. So it’s everything from her. You just have to have her send you her Spotify.

Back in August at the Orlando match, there was a three-and-a-half-hour delay due to the heat. What did you do to pass the time? Was it annoying not to know when it started, and to start-and-stop every 15 minutes?

I’ve never experienced anything like that. Normally, with a storm delay, you’d know when things were picking back up. The heat delay kept us on our toes because we didn’t know when it would end. You’d have grapes or a snack, dip your hands in the hot tub—it was a weird time. But, you know, Cooper was on the aux, so we’d get all the right music when we needed it.

What do you eat on game day? How many thousands of calories does it take for you to run that fast?

I’m running more now at 32 than I was at 22, which is crazy. That’s where this league is going. But to answer your question, it is just a bunch of carbs. The morning is pancakes, and then the pre-game meal is pasta, rice, maybe some chicken, a little broccolini—barely, if that, because it is hard to digest—and then just water and hydration tablets. It’s nothing really glorious.

Before you get out of here, what’s your favorite trash TV?

I only watch documentaries. The team thinks that, at least… they always point it out. If there’s ever a sports game on, that’s what’s on in our household. But because of those few years I spent in Utah, now I do watch Real Housewives of Salt Lake City because they go to all these places I know. It’s a little nostalgic for me. I just caught the Netflix doc on the Cowboys, which I really enjoyed. What about you? Any good recommendations for a documentary?

My favorite of all time is from a journalist pal, and it is really weird. It’s called Tickled… 

I’ve seen that one!

Well, then that’s all I have to say about it. Can’t spoil it for anyone else.

No, but that’s a wild one. It is amazing how many true stories there are out there that need telling. At least we’ll never run out.

KC Current play Gotham FC next, on Saturday, Oct. 11 at CPKC Stadium. 

Photo by Tarik Sykes