As Sporting KC prepares for its 1,000th match, hear from someone who played in Game 1

Sporting Kansas City is poised to reach a significant milestone, but before celebrating what’s to come, it’s instructive to look back.

When the San Jose Earthquakes visit Children’s Mercy Park on Saturday, it will be the 1,000th competitive match in Sporting Kansas City’s history. That’s across all competitions.

Much has changed in the 26 years since the first match.

• Ownership has gone from Lamar Hunt to Sporting Club

• The team name has evolved from the Wiz to Wizards to Sporting Kansas City

• Their home has moved from Arrowhead Stadium to CommunityAmerica Ballpark to the crown jewel of American soccer stadiums, Children’s Mercy Park.

Sean Bowers was on the field for Match No. 1 with the Kansas City Wiz on April 13, 1996, and he’s thrilled to see how the game has changed for the better.

“That’s part of where we as players saw everything in 1996 is having soccer specific stadiums,” Bowers said. “We played at Arrowhead, which is a football stadium. That’s the best that was there at that particular time. And it was an amazing experience. But playing in that new stadium (Children’s Mercy) would be amazing. And that’s where we are today. I mean, all of these are steps that we’re taking to better soccer for both men and women.”

Bowers was there from the first step as the Wiz won their inaugural match, defeating the Colorado Rapids 3-0 in front of 21,141 fans at Arrowhead Stadium. A few things have changed since then in Major League Soccer games. The clocks used to count down, like in basketball or football, regular-season shootouts are gone, and the “offensive minutes” stat (how often a team had the ball on the opponent’s side of the field) has been discarded.

Bowers, a defender, remembers the curiosity gap among fans that first day.

“It was pretty exciting with all this build-up coming into MLS — What is MLS? And what’s going on with it?” he recalled fans asking. “And just doing it at Arrowhead and having a great crowd and obviously having a great game. ...

“All of us were kind of pioneers of bringing outdoor soccer back in the United States. And it was pretty cool for us, just because a lot of us that were on our team, especially that first year in the first game, had a lot of indoor backgrounds.”

Indoor soccer had been the predominant version of the game in America since the North American Soccer League folded in 1985. A small American Professional Soccer League popped up, but the APSL struggled for survival with teams coming and going during its seven-year run beginning in 1990.

The first coach in Sporting Kansas City history was Ron Newman, who was a legend in indoor soccer.

Newman brought in players like Bowers, Preki and Mark Chung who had been playing the indoor game. But he also featured some outdoor stars who had played for their national teams: That list included Mo Johnston (Scotland), Uche Okafor (Nigeria) and Vitalis “Digital” Takawira (Zimbabwe).

Takawira made an instant impact with Kansas City, scoring a pair of goals in the opener and celebrating by dropping to the ground on all fours and crawling. The “Digital Crawl” became a fan favorite, and even non-soccer fans in Kansas City knew about it.

“I had no idea what the ‘Digital Crawl’ was. I don’t even think we knew anything about it until he brought it out,” Bowers recalled. “But that was awesome. We had so many different awesome personalities.

“Guys with not a lot of experience like myself, in terms of really high international level, and guys like Mo Johnson, who is a legend in Scotland, and Eric Eichmann and Frank Klopas (who played for the U.S. national team), Uche, who played in two World Cups — it was just such a great balance for players in that first year, and having the year that we had was pretty amazing.”

The Wiz made the playoffs that first season and advanced to the Western Conference finals before losing to the Los Angeles Galaxy.

A transformation

A name change to Wizards followed the local club’s first season, and the franchise won the MLS Cup in 2000. But the league contracted — shuttered — a pair of teams in 2002, and while the Wizards avoided that fate, by 2004 there was talk the franchise might relocate.

Hunt sold the team in 2006 to a local group headed by Cliff Illig and Neal Patterson, and the team moved out of Arrowhead and eventually into Children’s Mercy Park by 2011.

The team changed its name to Sporting Kansas City and the re-brand and new stadium signaled a transformation not only for soccer in Kansas City but MLS in general.

Bowers, who is now the general manager of the San Diego Sockers indoor team, attended his first game at Children’s Mercy Park last year. It was a completely different experience than when he played at Arrowhead.

“Everything was just so brand new (in 1996),” he said. “Looking at it now, where teams are with all their supporter groups, I think we only had got a couple of people beating on the drums in the back. And again, I think that’s something that has evolved and progressed.”

Indeed. Major League Soccer has more than a toehold in the American sports scene now. It has planted deep roots. Soccer is flourishing in Kansas City, especially.

The Kansas City Current women’s soccer team has its own training facility and is building its own new stadium near downtown KC, along the Missouri riverfront. The National Performance Center near Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kan., features five full-size fields and anything else a national team, women’s or men’s, might need.

And the 2026 World Cup will include games in Kansas City.

“It’s just really amazing, having sons and daughters that are in the game and now they have all these opportunities when they come out of college,” Bowers said. “I came out of college in ‘91, and there was very little opportunity for outdoor soccer, other than the APSL, which was on its last legs, and a lot of it was indoor.

“Now look at everything that’s going on, and I think MLS has contributed to all of it,” he continued. “Now you have MLS and MLS Next Pro, you have the USL Championship, USL 1 — my son plays at NISA (National Independent Soccer Association).

“That’s five different leagues that are going on that are just direct effects from starting the MLS in ‘96. And then on the women’s side, look at all of that that’s going on with the NWSL and WPSL and all those things. If we were to have legacies for my years in MLS, it would be now having all these opportunities for players coming out of college.”