Pitch Perfect

KANSAS CITY, MO — Back in October 2021, Kansas City Current Owners Angie Long, Chris Long and Brittany Mahomes made one of the most historic announcements of investment in women’s professional soccer history. The owners shared their plans for a $140-million soccer-specific stadium at Berkley Riverfront Park. What is known as CPKC Stadium, it is the first soccer stadium purpose-built for a National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team.

Fast forward a few years and CPKC Stadium was named a “2025 Professional Sports Field of the Year” recipient by the Sports Field Managers Association (SFMA), one of the industry’s leading authorities on sports surface management. The award recognizes excellence in playing surface quality, maintenance practices, innovation and overall management.

Under the Surface

Sure, most of the accolades should be given to Jerad Minnick, Vice President of Sports Turf and Grounds, and his staff at the stadium, but let’s throw proper flowers to Midwest Laser Leveling for what you don’t really see underneath the playing field.

Midwest Laser Leveling, Topeka, Kan., specializes in providing smooth, safe playing surfaces which can be achieved using precision laser grading equipment. Back in 2023, Frank Masterson, Director of Operations, Midwest Laser Leveling, and his four-man crew worked for nearly two months installing the field, which also included an under-field heating system that took two weeks to install in and of itself.

In fact, evidently impressed so much from the first install, in 2025, Midwest Laser Leveling was tasked at installing the field at another soccer venue, Riverside Stadium, home to the KC Current II—a farm team for the KC Current team, so to speak—and located at the KC Current Sports Complex, which is a 2,000-seat outdoor stadium, featuring a FIFA-certified, heated grass pitch. 

While installation layouts for both fields are nearly identical, CPKC stadium’s drainage system incorporates 4-inch lines across the field that are spaced 10 ft. on center because they are part of a SubAir system—which essentially acts as a massive underground vacuum to aggressively pull moisture through the soil—that can push air into the field root zone or pull moisture out of the root zone. The Riverside stadium has a traditional field drainage system.  

Roll Out the Radiant

The heating systems were actually firsts for Midwest Laser Leveling. In terms of ease of installation, jobsite and time efficiency, and on-time scheduling, this was done in part using REHAU’s RAUMAT radiant mat system, which makes installation faster, simpler and more precise. Preassembled from RAUPEX O2 barrier PEXa pipe and RAILFIX fixing rail, it rolls out ready to install for radiant heating, cooling, snow melting and turf conditioning applications.

A semi-truck delivered approximately 90,000 sq. ft.—70 rolls of 200-ft. sections—of RAUMAT coils per field. According to Masterson, the RAUMAT radiant mat coils were spaced evenly under the sand layer of each field and connected to the 4-inch heating supply and return headers. The headers were then connected to the boilers in the mechanical room. “The goal is be able to keep the field from freezing solid during the harsh Midwest winters, to extend growing seasons, and be able to wake the grass from dormancy before a typical grass field would be awakened,” says Masterson. 

Not only that, the RAUMAT radiant mat system helped expedite job performance efficiency. “Both projects were on tight time frames in order to get grass established during the growing season. The mat system drastically sped up the process compared to rolling out each individual heating loop by hand. Being able to roll the already assembled mats out onto the field instead of the individual lines was a huge aspect of each job. It saved us days of labor and in both cases was a huge reason why the projects remained on schedule,” says Masterson.