KC Current owner won rugby national titles in college. Now, she’s hosting matches.
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- Angie Long helped Princeton win back-to-back club national titles in 1995 and 1996.
- Long and partners built CPKC Stadium, the first stadium solely for a women’s soccer team.
- CPKC Stadium hosted the Pacific Four Series doubleheader and international rugby matches.
Few things get Angie Long more excited than talking about the latest on her Kansas City Current squad.
But get her talking rugby, and the woman’s soccer owner will quickly explain why it’s one of the most fascinating games in the world.
“Part of me feels like I played this game forever,” Long told The Star. “I remember you learn how to catch the ball, you learn how to throw, you learn how to hit. Mostly as a back, my contact was not really shoulder to shoulder, but rather you’re driving into the other team and pushing them back so that we could advance forward over the ball.”
Her favorite details of the game have influenced her life: teamwork, cohesion, strong women striving for a goal.
It’s what made her leave her golf career at Princeton to play rugby, which was a club sport until as recently as 2022. She became an All-American fly-half (the main attacking playmaker) and inside center (a secondary playmaker) and helped the Tigers win back-to-back national titles in 1995 and 1996.
The club women’s rugby program was respected like any other sport on campus; the team was honored by President Bill Clinton when he gave the university’s 1996 commencement speech.
Throughout Long’s career, she’s taken those skills and memories with her, from working on Wall Street to co-owning the Current with her husband, Chris, and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his wife Brittany Mahomes.
With the Current, the Longs have built CPKC Stadium, the first stadium in the world exclusively built for a woman’s pro soccer team, and are in the process of building a shopping district around it.
The Longs’ motivation behind buying the team was to empower not just women’s soccer, but women’s sports on a global scale. It’s why the stadium has hosted college and youth soccer matches, lacrosse and now international rugby for the second consecutive year.
The Pacific Four Series, an international rugby tournament featuring four of the world’s top teams, will play a doubleheader on Friday evening. Canada, the second-highest-ranked team in World Rugby (the sport’s sanctioning body), will face third-ranked New Zealand at 5:15 p.m. Eighth-ranked Team USA will battle seventh-ranked Australia at 8 p.m.
The doubleheader comes after the 2025 event in Kansas City saw record-breaking attendance for a women’s rugby match when Canada faced USA. Kansas City is also on the shortlist to be a host for the 2031 Men’s Rugby World Cup and the 2033 Women’s Rugby World Cup when they are hosted in America.
Looking to promote women’s rugby, Long wanted to host the tournament last year as the U.S. team prepared for the 2025 Rugby World Cup. The sport has seen tremendous growth in interest the past few seasons due to many factors, but pointedly the 2024 Paris Olympics, 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup and international player/personality Ilona Maher, who played in last year’s match.
Capitalizing on those factors, Long considered last year’s experience a success.
“I was definitely emotionally overwhelmed that, not just that number of fans that came out for the match, but the experience that the fans had, how much they loved it,” Long said. “I feel like: Here’s this game that I love and know, and not that many people know it, and definitely a lot of people understand it. And for them to see it and go, ‘Oh my gosh, what an awesome sport.’ That was really exciting for me.
Long added, “It was also really exciting to meet the athletes themselves, and just for them to see what it can be like to be a professional athlete in a top-tier facility. I think they were blown away, and that made me so happy and proud that we could give them that experience.”
One unique part of Princeton’s championship run: For the first championship, in 1995, the team was coached by graduate student Alex English. When he got graduated with a Ph.D in art history, the team was led by senior co-captains Ashley Kline and Erin Kennedy, according to Princeton Alumni Weekly.
There were 80 women on the team when Long first joined, and they all trusted their captains, Long said.
“That’s how strong our culture was, that we’re able to kind of keep winning, keep performing,” she said.
Long, a former youth goalkeeper and multi-sport athlete, was a captain her senior season in 1997. Princeton won third place that year.
“Obviously, the only time in your life it probably feels disappointing to get third in the country is when you’ve just gotten first twice,” Long said with a laugh.
Long had about 20 of her teammates come down for the match. Ten teammates are coming for the doubleheader.
She’s passionate for another opportunity to showcase the sport she loves and hopes for more record-breaking moments on Friday.
“It felt like a niche thing when we did it,” Long said. “There were 200 women’s collegiate teams in (1995-97). ... It’s not even small then. But it’s obviously growing now, and to get the opportunity to teach it at the youth level, to have that coming around, I think is great.”
