Published for Sporting KC II fans — October 2026
By Toxlay Sports Editorial Team · Last updated October 23, 2026
⚽ Sporting KC II Fans — Your Next Generation Is Already Here!
A 15-year-old scored on Decision Day, a 16-year-old won in goal, and the kids in sky blue signed off 2026 by beating a playoff team in its own building. This club is a production line — wear the shirt of the players Kansas City will be cheering next.
The Club
Sporting Kansas City II — SKC II to everyone in Kansas City — is the reserve team of MLS club Sporting Kansas City, owned and operated by Sporting Club and based alongside the first team at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kansas. The club was founded on October 22, 2015, as Swope Park Rangers, Sporting KC’s USL affiliate, and took its current name ahead of the 2020 season. When MLS NEXT Pro launched in 2022, SKC II was there from day one, and it now plays in the league’s Western Conference, Frontier Division.
Home is Swope Soccer Village in Kansas City, Missouri, where matches are played at Victory Field — a small, intimate ground where you are close enough to hear every call on the pitch. In 2026 the venue had a second life, too: Swope Soccer Village served as a FIFA World Cup Team Base Camp, hosting England during the summer’s tournament — one SKC II home fixture even had to be pulled forward to March because of it.
The man in charge is Lee Tschantret, hired on February 3, 2026, as the sixth permanent head coach in club history, and he led the side through the final match of the season on September 20. His assistants are Luis Pacheco and goalkeeper coach Carlos Ortiz. Tschantret inherited a young squad and a simple brief: this team exists to build Sporting Kansas City’s future, and in 2026 the teenagers on the roster made sure everybody noticed.
And then there is the shirt. Ask anyone searching for the Sporting KC II jersey in 2026 and they will describe the same thing: SKC II’s own adidas shirt — not the first team’s design — in sky Sporting Blue with thin white vertical pinstripes down the front, a white crew neck, the navy Sporting KC shield with its little “II” marker on the left chest, and the Central Bank sponsor in white across the middle. It is one of the cleanest looks in MLS NEXT Pro, and it belongs to this team alone.
⭐ FAN FAVORITE
#37 Ikoba — Sporting KC II Style Jersey
$59.99
The top scorer in sky blue — white pinstripes, the Central Bank sponsor and 37 on the back. Fan-inspired apparel made for SKC II fans.
Last Season (2025): Bottom of the Pile
Honesty first: 2025 was the worst season in this club’s MLS NEXT Pro life. Sporting KC II finished 14th in the Western Conference — 29th overall — with just 3 wins, 6 draws and 19 defeats, 30 goals scored and 67 conceded for 17 points. They did not come close to the playoffs, and local coverage handed them the league’s wooden spoon.
The coaching story tells you how it went. István Urbányi was hired on January 30, 2025, and dismissed on August 12 with the season already gone. Club legend Ike Opara — a former Sporting KC defender who knows exactly what this pathway is supposed to look like — stepped in as interim head coach and minded the shop until February 2026. The one bright light was Medgy Alexandre, the team’s top scorer with 8 goals, and an early first-round exit from the U.S. Open Cup summed up a year everyone at Swope wanted to forget. The only way was up.
Best Players Right Now
Tega Ikoba — #37, centre-forward. The star of this side. The 22-year-old finished as SKC II’s top scorer in 2026 with 9 goals — and he saved the best for last, tapping in the 87th-minute winner at Houston on Decision Day to end the season on a high. When this young team needed a finisher, the ball kept finding No. 37.
Missael Rodríguez — #96, left winger. Arguably the most productive player on the roster: 8 goals and a team-best 11 goal contributions across the season, per the club’s season-ending release, and FotMob’s standout performer for the side with a 7.18 average rating. He scored and assisted in the Decision Day win at Houston — the complete winger’s afternoon.
Kashan Hines — #77, striker. The future, right now. The 17-year-old Academy forward scored 7 goals in 2026, third-best on the team, and he is exactly the kind of homegrown name this club exists to produce. Remember the name — Kansas City will be saying it for years.
Pierre Lurot — #41, centre-back. The iron man. The French defender played every single minute of the 2026 season — all 2,520 of them — one of only two players in the entire 30-team league to do it, anchoring a young back line from the first whistle of March to the last of September.
Blaine Mabie — #48, central midfielder. The co-captain and the team’s most consistent starter: 19 starts in 22 appearances, 1,642 minutes and a goal of his own. He wore the armband on Decision Day and set the standard in the middle of the park all season.
Shane Donovan — #88, central midfielder. The chief creator, with 4 goals and a team-leading assists tally — including the pass that set up Rodríguez’s Decision Day goal in Houston. When SKC II played, Donovan was usually the reason the attack moved.
Star Spotlight
September 20, 2026 — Decision Day, done right. Bottom-of-the-West SKC II went to Houston and beat playoff-bound Dynamo Dos 3–2 — their second straight win over Houston in 2026. The goals told the whole story of this club: 15-year-old Zamir Loyo Reynaga opened the scoring on 10 minutes, Rodríguez made it 2–1, Houston kept equalizing through Austin Brummett, and then Ikoba tapped in the 87th-minute winner — all behind 16-year-old goalkeeper Brady Krysiewicz, earning his first professional win in just his second career start. If one game sells this team’s future, it is that one.
Every minute of the season. In a league built on rotation and development, Pierre Lurot simply never came off. All 2,520 minutes, start to finish — a feat only one other player in MLS NEXT Pro matched in 2026. Young defenders around him came and went; No. 41 was the constant.
The kids are the story. SKC II’s 2026 scoresheet read like a youth movement: Loyo Reynaga scored twice at 15; 17-year-olds Kashan Hines (7 goals) and Ty Haas (2 goals and 2 assists after an April pro debut) broke through; El Salvador U-20 international Johann Ortiz added his own flair in midfield; and a 16-year-old won a professional match in goal. The results lagged — the pipeline this club is judged on visibly worked.
🔥 More Fan Favorites
More SKC II stars, same sky blue.
This Season (2026): Painful, Honest, Pointing Up
The table does not flatter anyone. Sporting KC II finished 13th in the Western Conference (27th overall): 28 played, 6 wins, 4 draws, 18 losses, 36 goals scored and 75 conceded — the most goals shipped by any team in MLS NEXT Pro in 2026 — for 23 points. No playoffs, for the second straight year. Nobody at Swope will dress that up.
But context matters, and the context is the youngest scoresheet in the league. This was a season of first professional goals for teenagers, an iron-man defender playing every minute behind them, and a first-year head coach building from the academy up. The finish told you where it is heading: after four straight defeats in the late-summer slide — 4–0 at Tacoma, 5–1 at Whitecaps FC 2, home losses to St. Louis CITY2 and LAFC 2 — SKC II walked into Houston on Decision Day and beat a playoff team 3–2 with kids all over the scoresheet. The club returns to the pitch in February 2027 for the MLS NEXT Pro Sprint Season — and on the evidence of that final afternoon, it cannot come soon enough.
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Mark Your Calendar
Sporting KC II’s own season is over — so the dates that matter now are the ones that decide the league they will chase next year. Every MLS NEXT Pro playoff match streams live on OneFootball.com and MLSNEXTPro.com.
Sunday, October 25, 2026 — Conference Semifinals. All four semifinals land on one day: Chattanooga FC vs. CT United FC at Finley Stadium (5 p.m. ET), Crown Legacy FC vs. Columbus Crew 2 at the Sportsplex at Matthews (7 p.m. ET), Austin FC II vs. Los Angeles FC 2 at Parmer Field (8:30 p.m. ET), and Portland Timbers2 vs. Ventura County FC at Providence Park (10 p.m. ET).
October 30 – November 1, 2026 — Conference Finals. One match in each conference, hosted by the higher remaining seed, to settle the two finalists.
November 6–8, 2026 — MLS NEXT Pro Cup. The championship match, hosted by the finalist with the highest regular-season points total. This is the trophy SKC II’s kids will be measured against in 2027 — watch who lifts it.
Biggest Rivalries — The Wars
1. St. Louis CITY2 — the I-70 war. The reserve-team echo of the fiercest rivalry in the region: same state-line grudge, same blue-versus-red edge. St. Louis took the 2026 bragging rights — they won the season opener in February, in Lee Tschantret’s first match in charge, and won again at Swope on September 5, 2–1, in the home stretch. The middle meeting even had to be rescheduled because Swope was busy hosting England’s World Cup base camp. This is the fixture SKC II circles first when the 2027 schedule drops.
2. Houston Dynamo 2 — beaten twice. The Texans made the playoffs; SKC II still swept them in 2026. First came a home win on July 31, then the sweetest result of the season: the 3–2 Decision Day win in Houston on September 20, sealed by Ikoba’s 87th-minute tap-in after Houston twice fought back. Two meetings, two wins, zero apologies.
3. Real Monarchs — the home-opener humbling. Utah’s Monarchs own the most lopsided scoreline of SKC II’s season: a 5–0 win at Swope on March 8, 2026, in the home opener, a wound that lingered all spring. Add Frontier Division regulars MNUFC2 and North Texas SC — three meetings each in the divisional slate — and the wars write themselves for 2027.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does Sporting KC II play?
At Swope Soccer Village in Kansas City, Missouri, where the match venue is billed as Victory Field at Swope Soccer Village (also listed as Children’s Mercy Victory Field). It is a small, intimate ground — and in 2026 it doubled as England’s FIFA World Cup Team Base Camp.
Who is Sporting KC II’s best player?
Forward Tega Ikoba (No. 37) finished as the team’s top scorer with 9 goals, including the 87th-minute winner at Houston on Decision Day. Winger Missael Rodríguez (No. 96) was arguably the most productive player overall — 8 goals and a team-best 11 goal contributions — while French defender Pierre Lurot (No. 41) played every single minute of the season.
What trophies has Sporting KC II won?
None under its current name — honestly. The club’s glory years came as Swope Park Rangers, when it won the USL Western Conference playoff title and reached the USL Cup Final in both 2016 and 2017, losing both finals. In MLS NEXT Pro the side has reached the playoffs once (2023) and missed out in 2025 and 2026; today it is judged as much on the teenagers it produces — a 15-year-old scored on Decision Day 2026 — as on results.
How can I get tickets or watch Sporting KC II?
Tickets are sold through the club at sportingkc.com. MLS NEXT Pro matches stream live on MLSNEXTPro.com and OneFootball — the league confirmed all 2026 playoff matches, including MLS NEXT Pro Cup (November 6–8), air on those two platforms. SKC II return to action in February 2027 in the league’s Sprint Season.
⚽ Sporting KC II Fan Shop
The full SKC II trio — Ikoba, Rodríguez and Hines in sky blue.
Sources & official links: Sporting KC II official site · MLS NEXT Pro official site · Sporting KC tickets
Sky blue shirts, Swope nights, the next generation loading — once a Ranger, always Sporting.
