Sidelines: Current affairs — Naperville’s Sharples takes a leadership position in Kansas City
At Northwestern University, Kayla Sharples was a soccer star and a communications major with minors in marketing and business.
She uses all of that background as a center back for the Kansas City Current of the National Women’s Soccer League.
“I just think my time at Northwestern really shaped me into the person but also the player that I am today,” said Sharples, a Naperville North High School graduate.
“I know I wouldn’t be here without my experience, because my coaches, they believed in me so much, more than I even believed in myself,” she said.
Their belief paid off. Initially a 2019 draft pick by the Chicago Red Stars (now the Stars), last season Sharples was voted by fans, coaches and players to the NWSL Best XI First Team and was a finalist for the league’s top defender.
Acquired in a trade with San Francisco-based Bay FC late in the 2024 season, in her first full season with Kansas City in 2025 she helped the Current win the NWSL Shield (first place) in the regular season.
The club set league records with 21 victories and 65 points. With Sharples on defense, the Current added NWSL records with nine straight shutouts and 16 overall shutouts.
Now 7-5-0 and in sixth place in the NWSL entering Friday’s game in Denver, Kansas City owns a 23-game home unbeaten streak dating to the 2024 season, another league record.
“The environment we have is highly, highly competitive,” Sharples said. “It makes us show up and be the best versions of ourselves every single day, and that’s the kind of environment I wanted to be in. I wanted to be in a challenging environment where I would be continuing to grow and develop and to not plateau at all in my career.”
Sharples excelled in basketball at Naperville North, a four-year starter named team MVP as a junior and senior. In soccer she mainly played for the club program, Eclipse Select, winning several national and regional titles.
In the sole soccer season she played for the Huskies, as a freshman, Naperville North won the 2012 Class 3A title under coach Steve Goletz.
“They breed athletes, you know,” Sharples said of the city, “and that was really special to be in that type of community, a community that loves competition, that’s striving for excellence, pushing one another no matter what sport you’re in.”
Her older brother, Connor, pushed — or pulled — his sister in the sport. Also a Northwestern student, his support there was “something that I definitely never took for granted,” Sharples said.
Parents Matt and Michele Sharples attended every game their daughter played for the Wildcats. No small task; she started all 86 of Northwestern’s games from 2015-18.
A three-time all-Big Ten selection who helped Northwestern reach four NCAA Tournaments, as a sophomore Sharples’ overtime goal against Illinois delivered the program’s first regular-season conference title.
“Still to this day (that) is one of my biggest achievements, I would say, bringing that to Northwestern and the soccer team. It meant a lot,” she said.
Like she said, Sharples hates to plateau. The things she learned off the field have impacted her Kansas City teammates and even players league-wide.
She’s on the advisory board and is the sole female investor in Caddix, a cleat company whose shoes reduce rotational force when players make a cut on the field.
“It’s something that I truly believe is game-changing,” said Sharples, who would have loved to have had those cleats before she tore an ACL one season with the Red Stars.
She’s also one of two Kansas City player representatives, part of the players union that negotiates agreements with the league.
“In my first three or four years in the league I had two other jobs just to supplement my income in the NWSL because we weren’t making a lot of money at all,” she said.
Players are now “absolutely” better off financially, said Sharples, who did credit the NWSL for “helping us along the way.”
A future goal is a “more livable” minimum salary for young players new to the league.
“I would love to be a part of it, too, when we’re negotiating the next collective bargaining agreement, because I believe we can fight for even more things that I believe that these women deserve,” Sharples said.
“That is absolutely the goal, just wanting to leave the league better than how I found it, how I stumbled upon it in 2019. It’s one of my goals, to hopefully help the younger generation have a better way forward if they want to pursue soccer professionally.”
doberhelman@dailyherald.com