More Than the Celly Queen: Lo'eau LaBonta Has Built Something Special in Kansas City
Lo'eau LaBonta is loyal. And stubborn, she admits with a laugh. Those are the reasons she gives for sticking with the NWSL's Kansas City Current for nearly a decade, through three incarnations in two different states with seven head coaches.
Through the 2021 season when the team came in dead last. Through the Yates report and the pall it laid over the NWSL. Through yet another coaching change, a new facility, new teammates and, finally, a triumphant 2022 season full of goals, viral celebrations and a trip to the playoffs where the Current were stopped only by the Portland Thorns in the final.
On the cusp of her ninth year and newly 30, she's just had the best season of her career—a career that has lasted four times longer than she thought it would.
After earning an engineering degree from Stanford—where she was a standout soccer player, helping the Cardinal to a national championship in 2011 before getting picked 34th overall in 2015 NWSL draft—LaBonta anticipated playing two seasons and then pursuing a career in her field. Part of her reason, she said, was that at the time, the league-minimum pay was well under $10,000 for the season.
"Yeah, man, I really picked the wrong career," she said, laughing. "We don't get paid enough to stay this long."
LaBonta's engineering brain seems to have been put to good use during her time in the NWSL, though, as she's been constantly building. Over time, she's built a home, a marriage and a career in Kansas City.
Now, she's at the heart of a team and a franchise on the rise, in no small part thanks to a foundation she's helped put in place.
Kansas City is a team that has had to rebuild itself many times over.
Its first stint in town as one of the founding members of the NWSL, under the name FC Kansas City, ended in 2017 with claims of mismanagement. The team then headed to Utah, becoming Utah Royals FC.
"We had good people," LaBonta said of the team's time in the Beehive State. "It's just unfortunate we didn't get results."
Coaches were hired and fired. Its owner there, Dell Loy Hansen, criticized players after they sat out a game in protest of the 2020 police shooting of Jacob Blake, and he was then revealed in an explosive article in The Athletic and another in the Salt Lake Tribune to have a long history of racist behavior toward his Black employees.
The Royals folded and headed back to Kansas City, where they would become the Current. And LaBonta has been there through it all.
"The league has had its trials, its terrible moments," said Desiree Scott, who played with Kansas City in its inaugural season and has done two stints with the franchise. Scott is the only player on the Current roster to play alongside LaBonta for all of her eight years and considers her a close friend.
LaBonta understands the league's trajectory in a way that few others can, Scott said. "It's lovely to have someone who has been there since the beginning, who knows what the league used to be, can see where it's going and is on that journey with you."
"In 2013, when the league began, we didn't have a locker room," said Scott. "We didn't have a pitch. We were playing on high school fields." Now, she says, "Kansas City is really being seen as a place that people want to go [play]."
She said LaBonta was critical in rebuilding a team that finished in last place in 2021 and with helping members who were struggling with the repercussions of the sexual misconduct and emotional abuse found to have been systemic within the NWSL.
The Yates report, released in October, detailed "a league in which abuse and misconduct—verbal and emotional abuse and sexual misconduct—had become systemic, spanning multiple teams, coaches and victims" and said "abuse in the NWSL is rooted in a deeper culture in women's soccer, beginning in youth leagues, that normalizes verbally abusive coaching and blurs boundaries between coaches and players."
LaBonta notes that she has worked with many of the coaches who were named as abusers in the report.
"My first year I was at Sky Blue, Christy Holly was there," LaBonta said. "I was in Kansas City. I went to Utah, Craig Harrington was there. I talked about Huw Williams in the report. I've gone through so many of them."
She said that although she had not personally endured what her colleagues reported, she is grateful that they were heard. "I cannot compare any of my experiences to a lot of the women who spoke up, and I commend them," she said. "I'm so glad it finally came out, because everyone in the league knew about it."
Publicizing what had happened behind the scenes for so many years, LaBonta said, is what forced change. She considers it a chance to rebuild, putting those engineering skills to work again.
"Now we can build this league without being on ESPN about, you know, people getting banned," she said. "And finally start showing the positive things this league is doing, and that women's soccer is doing in the world."
LaBonta provided plenty of joy on the field throughout the 2022 season. She scored eight goals (six on penalties)—more than in the previous five years combined—to go along with four assists. Her most iconic moment came when a video of her twerking during a "celly" (short for celebration) went viral, and she was crowned the NWSL's "Celly Queen" as a result.
"When it hit, I had only maybe done two celebrations, and then I was already crowned [with] that title," LaBonta said, laughing. "I did not ask to be called 'Celly Queen,' but I'm not opposed to it, either."
Now she sees other players and other teams with their own cellies. "I love that every team is doing it," she said. "Obviously, I don't want them to do it against us, because that means we got scored on."
But, she said, it makes people talk, and it makes the game better, and both of those things work in her interest and the interest of the league.
LaBonta noted she has always performed her celebrations, but because she scored so much more often in 2022, more people noticed them. "I got to do it a lot more, and maybe that's why I got the title," she said.
Hailie Mace, 25, a defender on the Current who considers herself "a bit more shy and reserved" than LaBonta, praised the celebrations and the Celly Queen. "It just brings a lot of energy," Mace said. "I think seeing her have so much fun celebrating her goal, or celebrating her teammates, is super inspiring. I look up to that."
LaBonta's journey to royal status in the NWSL took years of dedication to improving her game, and she gives significant credit to Kansas City, both the town and franchise.
She said players know when they move to Kansas City that they are getting neither mountains nor beach. What they are getting, she said, is a town that loves its soccer, and soccer teams that love their town.
LaBonta said that signing with Kansas City was one of the best things she could have done for her career. "They are so player-based," she said. "I saw that I could become a better player. I didn't feel it before when we were KC FC, but when we came back and became KC Current, the city showed up."
It was not for her own sake that she wanted to improve. She saw potential in her team and wanted to improve her game to improve theirs, she said. She credits Vlatko Andonovski, who coached Kansas City from 2013 to 2017 and is now the head coach of the U.S. women's national team.
"He just pulled things out of my game that I could improve on that nobody had ever told me before," LaBonta said. "So I think that was the first time I realized that I could improve so much. That's why I kept doing it."
Andonovski said in an email about LaBonta: "Lo is the kind of player that every NWSL team needs, because of her consistency, leadership and competitive spirit. The way she has worked her way into being a starter in the NWSL and a very important player for the Kansas City Current just shows her determination, worth ethic and passion for the game."
On top of the work that's led to career bests in her production on the pitch, LaBonta has also put considerable energy into creating a positive culture in Kansas City.
"What made us so successful is that we truly did enjoy each other's company," LaBonta said. That's in large part thanks to LaBonta, her teammates say.
Among her teammates, LaBonta is known for encouraging bonding. She is a source of good advice on the field and off, said her fellow Current players, but she sees herself less as a mother figure and more as a cool big sister.
"The community you build on a team, you can't get that anywhere else," she said.
She organizes game nights and card games at her home that include Current players along with those from Sporting Kansas City, where her husband, Roger Espinoza, plays, along with all of their respective spouses and partners. She and Espinoza play pickleball and go bowling around town, always inviting friends to accompany them. "We are out and about a lot, and I love it," LaBonta said.
Mace said, as a fellow homesick Californian, LaBonta was an unflagging champion for Kansas City, encouraging her to explore her new hometown. "She has showed me a lot of good restaurants, coffee shops, places to go out. She knows her way around town, so it's been good having her, especially when I first got here."
Making teammates feel welcomed and supported has come with challenges in the face of everything the franchise and the league has gone through during LaBonta's tenure, but she has risen to them.
Scott credits LaBonta with showing her the value of the hard conversations that brought about change in the NWSL as well as on the Current. "What Lo has taught me is not to be scared to use your voice," Scott said. "I think that's something that a lot of people struggle with. Lo has the ability to have those, for the betterment of the team."
LaBonta said that players on the Current know they can come to her with a team issue and she will turn it into a discussion item. "I'll go to battle for them," she said.
An example is the mental health days built into the new collective bargaining agreement negotiated by NWSL players. LaBonta said the mental side of the game had become harder for her as she got older and was something she had to actively work on.
"I told the team, 'Hey, if you need a mental health day, you don't have to show up,'" LaBonta said. She said it was a struggle for players used to showing up every day and fighting through physical and mental issues to learn to take time off. But, she said: "It's there to use. I don't want anybody to feel exhausted just from showing up each day, and losing their passion for the sport."
LaBonta said that for her and Scott, as well as a few other players who had moved from Kansas City to Utah and back again: "We have this little saying that we've gotten so close through our traumas. It's a sad thing to say, [but] everybody read the reports, and they know that our league went through it."
Mace agreed. "Everyone has had some type of hardship in the league," she said. "So I think that brings us a lot closer. We all have each other's backs."
LaBonta's leadership played a big role in bringing about a culture shift after the team hit bottom in 2021. "We were able [in 2022] to bring in new players and get rid of a lot of the negativity," she said. "There was so much buy-in from the team on the soccer side that I truly think we built great relationships on the field."
She also credits Kansas City's new training ground for improving the team both on and off the pitch. "When we got our facility, our unbeaten streak started," LaBonta said. The Current players no longer had to go their separate ways to see trainers, do physical therapy and recovery or watch film. They did all of this together, as a team.
The Current are also planning to move to a new stadium—the first ever built specifically for an NWSL team—in 2024. "We are developing a home here for so many players to just come out and truly enjoy their career here, and probably prolong their career if they play here," LaBonta said.
LaBonta and Kansas City have high standards to meet in 2023, so she was sure to spend her offseason "totally resetting," she said. "I don't set alarms. It's beautiful"
She and Espinoza traveled to Honduras for a month. "I usually just don't talk about soccer at all for the first month" of the offseason, she said. "I'm usually never in Kansas City. We always leave the country. I try and get my vitamin D on the beach." LaBonta also travels to see her family and friends. The couple check in with properties they own throughout the Kansas City area and do repairs during the offseason as well.
"When we get into season, I'm in full game mode," LaBonta said.
LaBonta would like to make the U.S. national team in the future, with her eyes on an eventual World Cup or Olympic berth. "If anybody ever says they're not trying to get on the national team, they're lying to you," she said. "That's a long-term goal, and I think by doing my short-term goals and being the best in those, I can hopefully reach that point," she said.
She and Espinoza want to start a family eventually, but they are holding off for now. "If Roger could have the child, we would have one by now," she said, but she wants to keep building fitness and building her team back. But motherhood is not far from her mind, and she hopes to return to soccer once she does have kids. "I think one of the biggest flexes that female athletes can do is when they have a kid and come back and play," she said. "That's a goal for me."
With the Current's 2023 season starting Saturday, LaBonta knows the pressure is on her to match the glory of her 2022 season. "If I don't score at least eight goals, somebody's gonna be disappointed," she laughs. "So that's my new standard, and I love it."
She is excited about new players joining the Current, including Debinha, the Brazilian superstar and long the NWSL's most elusive free agent. "Now with Debinha coming in, I'm going to have to get as many [goals] as her, because I can't have her doing all my celebrations, you know what I'm saying?" LaBonta laughs.
She knows the two will be competing for time on the pitch, and she's ready for it. "No matter if you think somebody's coming in to replace you, they're going to make you better because you're going to be fighting for that same position," she said. "And if we're both good together, it's even better that we'll both be out there."
Scott called LaBonta "the heart of our team" and said she hopes LaBonta plays soccer "until the wheels fall off."
LaBonta unabashedly states that her goal is for the Current to "win the whole thing."
"We have the talent and the drive, so I'm hoping we go all the way," she said. All of the pieces are in place, ready for LaBonta to put them together.
.jpg?w=600 "Manning Asked Mendoza to Attend Draft")
.png?w=600 "Top 300 Prospects 📊")
.jpg?w=600 "Report: Pickens Signing Tag")
.jpg?w=600 "Vrabel to Get Counseling, Miss Draft")
