Children’s Mercy Park makes transition from soccer pitch to football field ahead of KU opener

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - The Kansas Jayhawks will not play their home football games in Lawrence this year. David Booth Memorial Stadium is under renovation, which means KU does not have an on-campus stadium for the 2024 season.

Instead, the Jayhawks will play two non-conference home games at Children’s Mercy Park and four conference home games at Arrowhead Stadium. Wednesday afternoon, KCTV5 stopped by Children’s Mercy Park to find out how stadium crews are transforming the soccer stadium into a football field.

“This place is going to be packed, it’s going to be loud, it’s going to be intimate,” said Josh Blackford, the Vice President of Operations and General Manager at Children’s Mercy Park. “I think it’s going to be an awesome experience for KU fans coming out here on Thursday night.”

Children’s Mercy Park last hosted a football game seven years ago, when it hosted the Division II National Championship from 2014-2017. The stadium also hosted K-State’s spring game in 2015, but KU’s season-opener against Lindenwood will be CMP’s first Division I football game. Stadium personnel are relying on their past experiences as they prepare for Thursday’s game.

“Once we heard that Children’s Mercy Park was going to be a host venue for the University of Kansas, we immediately started dusting off that playbook, per se,” Blackford said. “This isn’t something that’s unusual for us. We do have some history here, now we are just upping our game to a Division I level.”

Children’s Mercy Park typically hosts 17-22 soccer matches per year, but it was also built to host football. The stadium can easily fit a regulation football field and even has permanent spots for uprights. Play clocks have also been installed on both sides of the field.

READ MORE: No. 22 Kansas begins season vs Lindenwood at Children’s Mercy Park as its stadium gets rebuilt

While KU will play two home games at CMP, the stadium will continue to host soccer matches for Sporting KC, as well as one U.S. Men’s National Team match. Football and soccer need different lines painted on the turf, but Blackford said that won’t be an issue between events.

“We use a special type of paint. It’s a little more removable than what we would normally use,” Blackford said. “Once we put it down, we can come back through with, essentially, power washers and some pressurized water and start to remove some lines. We have a natural grass pitch here, so we are really removing a chalk-based paint from the grass.”

The school will provide . KU’s student section will sit inside the Cauldron, placing the school’s rowdiest fans less than 10 yards away from the east end zone. Sporting KC thinks Children’s Mercy Park will deliver an elite game day experience.

“This is a very intimate venue. It’s smaller in capacity, but you are as close to the field, as close to the action as you possibly can,” Blackford said. “That’s a very different experience from what you would normally see at a regular stadium or even at Arrowhead.”

The turf at Children’s Mercy Park is NorthBridge Bermudagrass. It’s about ¾ inches tall currently, which is longer than it plays for soccer matches – when it’s typically cut between a quarter and half an inch. The field crew at CMP says the longer blade length provides some protection to the turf.

“We’re not worried about the damage we’re going to see from the football. We do know the movements and the activity we are going to see Thursday night is a lot different from what we would normally have with soccer; these are heavier athletes, they are more physical, the movements are different. The pitch is going to respond,” said Blackford. “We hosted KU out here for a practice in early August. We got a good sense for those movements, and we got a good sense for how this pitch was going to respond.”

No. 22 Kansas and Lindenwood will kickoff Thursday night at 7 p.m. Oddsmakers tab the Jayhawks as 45.5 point favorites.

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