Denver Summit FC Stadium Breaks Ground as NWSL Playoff Hopes Narrow

Photo courtesy of Victorgraphy_20

Denver Summit FC broke ground Thursday on its permanent stadium at Santa Fe Yards, with completion targeted for the end of 2028. Lindsey Heaps, club president Jen Millet and the project's construction lead talked about what the site means. Meanwhile, the Summit sit five points out of a playoff spot after a 4-1 loss at Kansas City.

DENVER — For years the land at South Broadway and Interstate 25 held a broken-down warehouse, and then not much of anything. On Thursday morning, Denver Summit FC officially started building on it.

The club broke ground on its permanent stadium at Santa Fe Yards, a 14-acre site it plans to finish by the end of 2028. The groundbreaking came as the club's first-season playoff push is slipping. Saturday's 4-1 loss at the Kansas City Current dropped Denver to 10th in the NWSL at 9-9-8 with 35 points. The eighth and final playoff spot sits at 40, with four matches left.

Smaller than first planned

The stadium will have 12,500 seats. Safe-standing areas push total capacity to 13,000.

That's down from the 14,500-seat venue the Denver City Council approved in December. The Colorado Sun reported the club cut capacity to put more weight on atmosphere, accessibility and fan experience. Per the club, the redesign frees up space for open-air social areas, larger terraces and local food and drink, along with a wider spread of ticket prices. Populous is the architect.

The move-in date isn't until the end of 2028, so the Summit expect to play most of their 2028 home matches at Centennial Stadium, where they play now.

No stadium yet, just pipes

Nobody is pouring stadium concrete yet. Thursday's work is utilities and site prep, said Elizabeth, the project executive running construction. The building itself starts in earnest next summer.

The site is tight. Elizabeth said it is basically surrounded by roads. Crews have to shore up along I-25, work around CDOT storm lines and deal with water from the South Platte River next door. Some of the lot will be used for construction laydown and parking so the work doesn't spill into the neighborhood.

Don't expect a big parking lot when it opens, either. Elizabeth said the plan pushes fans toward public transit. The Colorado Sun reported the project includes a new pedestrian bridge to the I-25 and Broadway light-rail station.

From the highway, the stadium should be hard to miss. The outside will be wrapped in a veil that lights up and carries signage. A City of Denver park will lead up to it.

Asked by The 5280 Pitch what it means to turn a lot that sat empty for years into something, Elizabeth said she grew up here, played soccer here and has a daughter who plays now. In her view, the neighborhood has been cut up for a long time, and the stadium is a chance to tie its two sides back together.

"It's like a goosebumps day, to be honest," she said.

'Do you need a center back?'

Lindsey Heaps, formerly Lindsey Horan, grew up in Colorado and came through Colorado Rush. She is now the Summit's captain and the U.S. women's national team captain.

"Growing up I don't know if I ever believed this was going to happen," she said.

As a kid, she said, she watched Lionel Messi and European soccer because there was no professional women's team here to follow. At nine or 10, she said, walking into a stadium like this one would have been inspiring. Now she looks up and sees girls and boys in the stands.

She said she has heard from players all over the league, and they keep asking her the same thing: "Do you need a center back?"

"People want to be here," Heaps said.

What she's waiting for is simple. She wants to drive down I-25, see the lights on and see Denver Summit up there.

Free agency, and a bet on home

This is the first NWSL season with full free agency, with no college draft and no expansion draft. Players pick where they sign.

Club president Jen Millet said that being the first expansion team to build that way "can be terrifying." The club's pitch was that if it did things right, Colorado players would want to come home. She listed the performance center, the temporary stadium in Centennial and now Santa Fe Yards.

"For a professional athlete that grew up here, I can't imagine anything better than being able to play in front of your friends, your family, and a place that you love," Millet said.

Millet said she drove past the lot for years wondering what would go there. When the club asked neighbors what they wanted from it, the top answer was reconnecting Denver's east and west sides.

"We're not building on the outskirts," she said. "The neighborhood's here."

Up 1-0 in Kansas City, then four straight

Denver played Saturday's 10:30 a.m. Mountain kickoff without Ally Brazier and Carson Pickett, who were both excused, according to Burgundy Wave. Tash Flint started up top as a false nine, with Heaps and Yazmeen Ryan behind her.

The Summit scored first. In the 13th minute, Delanie Sheehan played a pass, made a run and got the ball back into the box. When it broke loose, Heaps finished it. It was her third goal of the season. She has three goals and three assists since rejoining the NWSL in mid-July, and her three in September were the second-most in the league for the month, per the club.

In the 35th minute, Ayo Oke and Temwa Chawinga raced to the end line, and Oke was called for a foul. Abby Smith stopped Debinha's penalty in the bottom right corner. The club said it was Smith's first penalty save of the season and Debinha's first miss since 2019.

Minutes later, Michelle Cooper found Haley Hopkins in the box and it was 1-1 at halftime.

The second half fell apart fast. Two minutes in, Smith came off her line for a through ball and didn't get there, and Hopkins chipped it into the net. Janine Sonis called it a miscommunication. In the 57th minute, with Eva Gaetino caught upfield, Chawinga broke away and gave Hopkins a tap-in for her hat trick. Chawinga scored the fourth herself in the 76th off a backheel from Vanessa DiBernardo.

Kansas City outshot Denver 22-7. Smith made six saves. It was Hopkins' first hat trick in the NWSL and the second regular-season hat trick in Current history.

"We played the game plan in patches," Nick Cushing said postgame. "It might look super open but they're preventable."

A lead the Summit couldn't keep

This team had been close to unbeatable when it scored first. Denver had gone nine straight matches without losing after taking the lead, according to the club. Saturday was its first loss after scoring first since May 3 at Boston, and it ended a six-match unbeaten run.

It had been getting harder to hold those leads, though. Denver scored first in each of its last four matches and won only one of them. That run includes a draw with Bay FC in which the Summit were up 2-0.

Kansas City was the wrong team to try it against. The Current are now unbeaten in 30 straight home matches. They've trailed in eight of 13 home matches this season and haven't lost any of them, which the Summit's match notes call an NWSL record.

The attack is still producing. Denver has scored in six straight matches, and it has 42 goals on the season. Kaleigh Kurtz played the full 90 in her 140th consecutive start.

Chicago, then three more

Denver sits five points below the line. The remaining schedule pairs the NWSL's bottom two teams, Chicago and Racing Louisville, with two clubs above the Summit, Angel City and North Carolina. Burgundy Wave projected that three wins, for 44 points, might be enough, while Cushing said the team probably needs all four. Whoever takes eighth will likely open the playoffs against Gotham FC, a team Denver has already handed two of its four losses this season.

"There's no room for error now," Sonis said postgame. "You don't want to be in a position where you're relying on other team's results."

The run-in starts Sunday, Oct. 4, at the Chicago Stars at 2 p.m. Mountain on CBS Sports Network. Chicago is last at 17 points (5-19-2), already eliminated from playoff contention and on track for a second straight last-place finish. The Stars fired head coach Martin Sjögren on Aug. 12 and named assistant Karina Báez interim coach. On Sept. 17 they hired former USWNT and Kansas City coach Vlatko Andonovski as chief soccer officer to lead the rebuild. Denver beat Chicago 6-1 at Centennial on Aug. 29.

The Summit then host Angel City on Saturday, Oct. 17 at Centennial. Angel City moved into fourth place with a 1-0 win over the Washington Spirit the same day Denver lost in Kansas City. Denver faces Racing Louisville on Oct. 24 and closes the regular season at North Carolina on Sunday, Nov. 1.

Six Summit players will spend the 13-day break between Chicago and Angel City with their national teams. Heaps joins the USWNT for two friendlies against Spain on Oct. 10 and 13. Sonis and Emma Regan join Canada against Denmark on Oct. 9 and 12. Yuzuki Yamamoto plays for Japan against Haiti on Oct. 9 and Germany on Oct. 13. Melissa Kössler joins Germany against Australia on Oct. 9 and Japan on Oct. 13, setting up a possible meeting between Summit teammates. Oke is with the U.S. U-23 team at a domestic camp in Fayetteville, Georgia, from Oct. 5 to 13.

The full breakdown of Saturday's loss and the playoff math is on this week's episode of The 5280 Pitch, available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.