Jo Stueve — Children’s Mercy Co-Chief Operating Officer
“Children’s Mercy and Sporting Kansas City have entered into a very special partnership. Starting on January 1, 2016, and for at least the next 10 years, Children’s Mercy will be the official health care and sports medicine partner for Sporting Kansas City. This includes a renaming of the fabulous stadium known as Sporting Park. It will now be called Children’s Mercy Park.
“We have a comprehensive partnership that’s committed to improving access to pediatric sports medicine. That will partly be done through our new sports medicine facility that will be built in the National Training Center, which is under design right now. We will also do it by strengthening our community through the Victory Project, through Sporting Moves and through player engagement with our patients. We will protect and train youth athletes and educate not only the athletes, but also their parents, coaches and referees.”
Randall O’Donnell — Children’s Mercy President and CEO
“What a wonderful fit. The focus at Children’s Mercy — even though what most people see is our treatment acute illness — we’re really all about wellness. We’re all about keeping children healthy. We have a particular philosophy that the way we pay for health care in this country is totally backwards. There is a (disinterest) in keeping people well from a revenue standpoint because you only get paid when you take care of someone who is sick. We need to change all of that and we will with our friends in the industry.
“What a statement this makes to our community and what a benefit this is to our children and for a family-centered organization like Sporting KC. If I’ve heard it from one person, I’ve heard it from a thousand: when they go to a game, that’s a family-oriented environment. Children’s Mercy Hospital, the heart of America, the heart of family-centric care, has a method of approaching the care of our children. It is so important to all children — especially to those who have complex medical conditions to be managed on a day-to-day basis — that they get physical activity. All kids need physical activity, and what better sport than soccer?
Cliff Illig — Cerner Co-Founder and Sporting KC Co-Owner
“This is an important day for Kansas City — for Children’s Mercy, for Sporting Kansas City, for our region’s sports culture, for Sporting’s very energetic fan base, and especially for the young athletes in our community. Sporting Kansas City and Children’s Mercy share a common mission — the mission to positively impact youth health and fitness in Kansas City and throughout our region. For over 100 years Children’s Mercy has been a treasured asset that has touched so many of our young people and their families. It is clear to everyone in our community and across the nation that Children’s Mercy demonstrates the highest possible values, standards, effectiveness, leadership and commitment while delivering on a world-class vision for research, education, and pediatric clinical care. Healthy children do lead to healthy communities.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled that our soccer stadium will carry Children’s Mercy’s name going forward. It’s a fitting partnership as we both work toward preventing pediatric sports injuries. Our close ties with Children’s Mercy will manifest themselves in a variety of ways, each of which will greatly benefit youth athletes who are participating in all sports, not just soccer.
“The new National Training Center in Village West in Kansas City, Kansas, will welcome a Children’s Mercy sports medicine and rehabilitation center. This world-class facility will have the most advanced medical, physical fitness and sports performance technologies available, all with the intent of giving kids across the region access to the very best pediatric-trained sports medicine experts.
“More than ever before, this partnership will see athletes, parents and coaches become more educated about the important tenets of managing kids’ health, fitness and training. Nutrition, rehabilitation and injury prevention are essential to performance. Children’s Mercy will provide a full health, fitness and sports performance curriculum for the entire Sporting Club Network. That’s roughly 200,000 players, parents and coaches across the region who will directly benefit from this initiative.
“The profound impacts of this partnership will expand even beyond the Sporting Club Network. The entire community will be strengthened. The Sporting Moves program at local elementary schools will encourage children to stay active and develop healthy habits very early in their lives. Sporting Kansas City’s well-established Victory Project now has an invaluable resource to amplify its goal of helping children fight significant illnesses. As the Victory Project has shown over the past few years, Sporting Kansas City’s players love engaging with their patients. Now they can visit Children’s Mercy patients throughout the year as well.
“It is with great pleasure that we join Children’s Mercy in this important initiative to encourage youth health and the best pediatric sports medicine available anywhere. We believe this is the beginning of a truly special relationship, one that will do wonders for the health and wellness of children and their families in the Kansas City community over the years.”
Peter Vermes — Sporting Kansas City Manager
“The game of soccer is an incredible passion for me, but a lot of people don’t know that I spent the good, early part of my coaching career in the youth game. One of the things that struck me when I was brought up to speed about this partnership is that youth sports are an incredible aspect of children’s lives in so many ways. It’s incredibly positive, whether it’s them having the chance some day to continue playing the sport, and the exercise of it all gives them a good, healthy lifestyle. But more importantly they get the sense of team and all the aspects that go along with it.
“I think an area that has been underdeveloped over the years is you’re seeing more and more injuries with young athletes across the board. What’s exciting about this is that coaches, especially at the younger ages, have an incredible impact on the development of a young person. We’ve already started areas of sports psychology in the younger athletes, and we’re trying to educate the coaches on how they can work with those players. What’s exciting to me is this relationship gives us a chance to improve an area in Sporting Kansas City that we’ve put a tremendous investment in, and that’s our Sporting KC Academy. We have players at the U-12, U-13, U-14, U-16 and U-18 levels. I think it’s going to be a great area where we can almost use this as a laboratory where there are so many things we are going to be educated about.
“The additional opportunity here is the National Training Center. We’re still in the working stages in terms of designs and amenities of the facility. But with the partnership Sporting Kansas City has with U.S. Soccer and Children’s Mercy, the fantastic thing is this is an opportunity for the world to come and use this facility not only as a place where they can steal our ideas—it would be hard for them to come and outdo what we’re going to do at this facility—but more importantly it’s an educational opportunity for people around the world to come and understand the areas of concussions, rehab and how players regenerate from game to game. We’re going to learn every aspect of an athlete, not only professional but all the way down throughout the youth.
“From a coach’s perspective, and from someone who is incredibly vested in the sport and the youth side of this game, I am extremely excited about this partnership. I look forward to an incredible relationship, and the final piece is I look forward to our team having a place to play in. Children’s Mercy Park will be a tremendous environment. It’s an incredible place for families to come out, feel the atmosphere and help us win.”
Kevin Latz, MD — Children’s Mercy Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery
“While we appreciate the transformative power of sports, we’re also aware that injuries are at an all-time high amongst youth and adolescent athletes… Some of these injuries have life-long implications, and we know as professionals that adolescents are not adults. They have unique physical and psychological needs that are ideally treated by sports medicine physicians and orthopedic surgeons with specific training in pediatric medicine.
“A major part of this partnership is our new 25,000 square-foot sports medicine and rehabilitation center at the National Training Center near Children’s Mercy Park. This facility will break ground next spring and provide world-class care to our young athletes. [We will] identify when athletes can return to sports after injuries, and more importantly we can identify the at-risk athlete… Preventing these injuries before they happen — that’s our passion. We’ll have the most advanced equipment for managing concussions, including balance testing, exercise testing and computerized neuroscience testing.
“The facility will allow, very uniquely, interaction between adolescent athletes and Sporting KC players. From a motivational point of view on both sides, I think that will be huge. It will serve not only our soccer athletes, but athletes in all sports… It will serve as our new flagship, supporting our current facilities in Blue Valley, Children’s Mercy Kansas, the Northland and Adele Hall Campus. We’ll develop sports-specific curriculum, nutrition and psychology support for the Sporting Club Network…and apply those aspects to Sporting KC Academy teams.
“In closing, this is a new and unbelievably exciting chapter for both organizations with nearly unlimited potential to serve the youth in our community. I’m grateful to be a part of it.”
