We all know that John Sherman owns the Royals. We know that Clark Hunt owns the Chiefs. We also know that a group led by Brittany and Patrick Mahomes owns the NWSL’s Kansas City Current. Or do they?
Granted, those rich folks write the checks. But the real owners of a team don’t sit in an office or luxury box. Spiritually, at least, sports teams belong to their city. They belong to the fans. Owners and players may come and go, after all, but fandoms are forever.
Carrie Epperson gets that. She’s the leader and founder of Surface Tension, a superfan drumline group that’s part of the Current’s Kansas City Blue Crew booster squad. In a long, surprisingly emotional interview at a coffee shop in the Northland, the cherubic and charming band director for the North Kansas City School District spoke with Kansas City magazine about how her group started, how they’ve grown and how they’ve become an integral part of KC sports culture.
Weirdly, until a few years ago, Epperson barely followed soccer. That changed in 2019, when the Women’s World Cup sparked a new love for the game. The next year, in December 2020, Kansas City was awarded an NWSL franchise. Epperson and her wife, Laura, decided to embrace the new club. Getting in on the ground floor appealed to them.
“Most things around here are already sort of established,” Epperson says in reference to the Chiefs and Royals. “So it’s hard to get in and feel like you’re really a part of something. They just seem so big. You kind of become a little part of it. So it was neat to know that there was going to be a new team and we could cheer from the beginning.”
She and Laura joined the Blue Crew at a painting party for tifo—the huge banners raised by soccer fans in the stands. It was fun, but she still felt something was missing.
“As the season went along, we kind of realized that we didn’t really feel a part of it,” Epperson says. “But I noticed a place where I felt like I could be helpful: keeping the beat.”
She took notice of European soccer matches—how the chants, cheers and songs always seemed so well-organized. Epperson wanted to bring the same kind of raucous but focused energy to KC. The challenge was getting everyone organized, of course, but that’s right up her alley, being an educator and all.
“That’s sort of what I’m used to doing in my job,” she says. “It’s a natural thing for me to want to organize and put people together.”
Epperson reached out to Kirsten Ross, a Blue Crew founder, and offered to bring the noise—literally. “Maybe I could help drum at some point,” Epperson suggested.
The answer was yes, but Epperson soon found that the Blue Crew’s percussion gear was shoddy at best. “They had old drums and makeshift drumsticks, usually dowel rods with tennis balls on the end,” she says.
She dug out some equipment from a storeroom at North Kansas City High School, her workplace at the time. Before long, she was teaching simple beats in the stands. The rest is Current history.
“We’re like the main superfans,” Epperson says. “It’s weird to call us superfans, though, because it’s such a big group of people. But it’s like a weird team within the team.”
From that inaugural season at Legends Field to Children’s Mercy Park and, eventually, CPKC Stadium, the team and their fandom have only grown. Epperson marvels at how big Surface Tension has become. She even got a little misty at the thought.
“We used to be in a baseball stadium with these really cruddy drums and bed sheets to make tifos,” she says. Now, Surface Tension is cheering for the league’s best team—and one of the hottest tickets in town—at the only stadium on earth built specifically for women’s sports. The drumline is a big part of the team’s success, too. Ask any casual fan what they love about seeing the Current. The atmosphere will almost certainly be at the top of their list.
That matters. Players feed off fan energy, after all. Despite her modesty, Epperson knows she’s played a role in creating a winning culture at CPKC. “I can’t tell you how many times I felt like I was a part of the tempo of the game, part of the energy of the crowd,” she says. “It just feels so good to be a part of that.”
Deflecting praise, she credits the people of KC. “There’s just something about Kansas City. We build organically really, really well.”
Over and over, she emphasizes the communal nature of the experience. That’s one of the most magical things about sports, after all—how rooting for a team can bring people together in support of a common goal.
“These are people in a stadium I’ve never met before, but I’m connecting with them, and I get to use music to do that,” she says. “That’s really cool.”
Despite her love of Surface Tension, Epperson thinks she’s going to step down and be just a fan for a while. She wants others to take on the superfan role. “I don’t want it to get stuck with me,” she says. “We’ve built it to a point where it kind of runs on its own, and I’m hoping to take a step back. I’m hoping to see more people step forward and take leadership. See if we can keep that culture going with other people.”
That would be the beauty of it. Owners come and go. Players come and go. Even superfans like Epperson may eventually move on, but the spirit of a fandom lives on.
