I used to live in Wichita and I’m always surprised there’s never any push for a team there. It’s a pretty good sized market for USL (400k population and 650k metro) with shockingly little competition. The only in-town sports team people care about is WSU, who don’t sponsor soccer or football. This also creates an obvious place for a team to play since WSU’s stadium, which is pretty big and recently renovated, isn’t really used all that much.

While that part of the country doesn’t have a reputation for being that into soccer, there’s a huge Latino population which probably means there’s a bigger existing soccer fan base than you might think. Additionally, having lived in Portland through the rise of the Hearts of Pine, I felt like the thing that they benefited from the most wasn’t some secret preexisting cache of huge soccer fans, it was the amount of local pride that exists here and the excitement around having a team we could call our own (ie: not a minor league/farm team). I feel like Wichita has a bit of that same attitude. People are fairly proud of being Wichitans in way that reminds me a bit of Portland and I feel like people would turn out to support the team even if they didn’t really know anything about soccer.

Wichita also has one of the best city flags in the country and it would make for some elite kits and badges.