The Challenge Cup has finally arrived! The tournament opens tonight at 7:30 PM at Lynn Family Stadium as Racing Louisville hosts the Kansas City Current.
Both Louisville and Kansas City were expansion teams in 2021 and ended the season at the bottom of the standings. As a result, both have made some serious off-season moves to become more competitive. Major players have left, major players have been added, and both will look very different than they did last year. So it’s anybody’s guess as to how this match will go!
Here’s a deeper dive into both teams and what fans can expect when the Current and Racing meet for the first time in 2022.
A Rough Entrance
When the 2021 regular season came to a close, Racing and the Current found themselves in ninth and tenth place respectively. It’s not uncommon for expansion teams to have a rough entrance to the league, so this was no real surprise. In fact, the biggest surprise may have been that it was Racing in ninth. After all, Racing was a completely new franchise. Kansas City, on the other hand, was essentially the Utah Royals picked up and moved to a new city. Some Kansas City players had played together for years whereas most of Louisville’s players hadn’t even met before preseason.
And yet it was Racing in ninth place with 22 points and the Current in last place with 16. Those 22 points earned by Racing also won them the honor of most points earned by an expansion team in their inaugural year. While a shorter season in 2016 earned Orlando a slightly higher winning percentage with their 18 points, Racing still won the total points accolades.
As nice as that is, no one wants to stay in second-to-last or last place. So both teams spent the offseason making major changes. They both saw major turnover with only 13 of Racing’s 2021 players returning for 2022. Kansas City went even further and only 11 of their previous season players are returning this year. What’s really interesting, though, is that once…
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