Lo’eau LaBonta Is Leveling Up — And She’s Taking All Of Us With Her
“Wehadall female pilots flying over us in fighter jets. The stadium was packed. That was the moment when I finally let it all sink in and I got absolute chills,” says Kansas City Current midfielder Lo’eau LaBonta on a video call, describing the first game of the season on March 16. “I am just a very small piece of this huge picture, but I felt everything in that moment, and I have never been more proud — not just of myself but of my teammates, of my organization, of this city and the sport.”
That season opener also happened to be the Current’s first game at the Canadian Pacific Kansas City arena — the first stadium in the world purpose-built for women’s professional sports. Two of the four co-owners of both the soccer club and the stadium are women (Brittney Mahomes and Angie Long, both former soccer players).
To say that game was a moment is a vast understatement. Girls, women, theys, and male-presenting allies cheered incessantly for the home team, who scored flamboyantly throughout the game, winning 5-4 against the Portland Thorns who put up a good fight but ultimately could not take the heat of a team playing in their new, custom-built home.
As LaBonta describes, it was major “the future is female” energy and everyone in the space felt it. “This is going to be the reality for all young girls if they want to go pro,” LaBonta says. “This should be the standard and it will be. We’re still fighting for equal pay, but just for them to see that this is a possibility. [I want them to] keep working for it because it’s going to be even better by the time they get there and that’s what we’re fighting for. And I want them to reap all the benefits of our hard work.”
LaBonta, now 30 and in her 10th year of playing professionally, has been an unwavering advocate for equal pay in the National Women’s Soccer League. She’s also an athleisure queen (an ambassador for Fabletics) and well known in these streets for her vibrant, viral post-goal celebrations that earned her the nickname Celly Queen.
“You see me put in hard tackles when I play. My eyebrows are always down. But in the joyful moments, I also have the biggest smile,” she says. “I want to dance, I want to shake my little booty. That’s just who I am also off the field.”
My (and everyone else in the free world’s) favorite Celly Queen moment involves a gently faked injury and surprise twerk that enamored the masses so hard in 2022 that male athletes all over simply had to do their versions. As a woman who has imitated cute touchdown dances for years, witnessing male athletes pay homage to a well-executed mini-twerk makes me feel warm and fierce inside.
These days, LaBonta is celebrating more than just a winning streak. She started her professional career with a salary under $10,000 (per 7-month season) because that was the standard. She was expected to eat right, live healthy and be at the very top of her game for pennies.
This type of exploitation was just another symptom of the vast disparity in compensation and treatment between men and women soccer players, which finally became a bigger conversation in 2019 when members of the U.S. Women’s soccer team sued the U.S. Soccer Federation over discrimination — and ultimately settled in 2022 for $24 million.
LaBonta is now seeing the game quite literally change in front of her eyes, playing at a stadium built with women athletes in mind. And now, when she negotiates, she enters the room informed and ready to raise the bar for the next woman. “Some people like to save information for themselves because they don’t want people to get better deals than they do but I don’t care,” she says. “Everybody knows, I will always share information. I will share information that will help anyone.”
LaBonta’s commitment to lifting as she climbs is a victory dance in itself. “Never leave the locker room the way you entered it,” she says. “You should always leave it better than the way you entered it.” Perhaps the future is now — because the present feels female as hell.
