LAWRENCE — Kansas football’s Friday night practice at Children’s Mercy Park provided the Jayhawks with a valuable opportunity.

KU, which is going to play its home games away from Lawrence this year due to ongoing renovations, had the chance to see what it would be like to play inside this venue in Kansas City, Kansas. It had the chance to work on things as specific as knowing where the play clock would be, and how to track the ball in the evening in that stadium. For only the fourth practice of fall camp, there was a lot that could be gleaned from the experience.

So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that head coach Lance Leipold’s appreciation in the moment shone through. He volunteered he thought it was better than the players anticipated. And there was one thing that caught his attention early on.

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“I’ve been here one other time for a walkthrough with Michael Painter and some of our other personnel, Michael’s our director of football operations,” Leipold said Friday. “I wondered about the sound system and how … the noise could stay in the stadium, how it creates the environment that I’ve heard so much about. And the intimacy of it, I think that really stuck out to a lot of us pretty quickly.”

Kansas won’t play all of its six home games at Children’s Mercy Park. Four of the Jayhawks’ home games, all Big 12 Conference matchups, will be played at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. But the two non-conference games KU will play at Children’s Mercy Park, Aug. 29 against Lindenwood and Sept. 13 against UNLV, are opportunities to garner some momentum as the initial weeks of the season unfold.

Kansas is entering this season as a team with a chance to compete for a Big 12 championship, and therefore a spot in the College Football Playoff. It has a returning quarterback in Jalon Daniels, a redshirt junior, who has the talent to take the team there if he’s able to stay healthy. It has a defense led by a duo of senior cornerbacks in Cobee Bryant and Mello Dotson.

It shouldn’t be lost, either, that there have been some changes to the coaching staff. Assistant head coach/offensive coordinator Jeff Grimes, co-defensive coordinator/cornerbacks coach D.K. McDonald and offensive line coach Daryl Agpalsa are all new. So, these games early in the season aren’t opportunities that can be wasted as chemistry continues to be built.

“I think that’s priceless, I think it is, to go there and kind of see the atmosphere,” McDonald said Sunday. “I think you don’t want to go in to a situation for the first time and be caught up in the lights and the oohs and aahs. You want to get that all out of the way, and so I think that was very good. Just a change of stimulus is always good for guys.”

McDonald also alluded to not being satisfied with how the team performed during the practice. He said they didn’t respond the way they should have. But he also called that a lesson learned, and mentioned when they play a game there they will be able to put their best foot forward.

This was Kansas’ lone opportunity during fall camp to be able to practice at Children’s Mercy Park. The next time the Jayhawks are there, it’ll be the opening of their 2024 season. And that’s something freshman cornerback Jalen Todd seems to be looking forward toward.

“It was really good,” Todd said. “I liked the field. I liked the stadium. It’s going to feel like it’s going to be real loud when I get in there, packed in. So, I just got to get used to it.”

Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas football holds 2024 fall camp practice at Children’s Mercy Park