The 2018 high school soccer season is upon us. Laramie High School’s teams start Tuesday against Kelly Walsh.

The Lady Plainsmen will be at home against the Trojans from Deti Stadium at 6 p.m. The Plainsmen are set to travel north to Casper for a 6:30 p.m. start.

Both teams have been practicing since March 5, but weather and spring break have interrupted parts of it.

Despite that, Lady Plainsmen head coach Kim Whisenant feels good going into this opener.

“Obviously in the spring in Laramie the weather is a bit dodgy, but we make do and make the best of it as we can. We’ve gotten in some good training sessions, I’ll say that.”

She said this match is basically a “see where we’re at kind of thing.”

Neither team will be a full strength, due to various reasons, but most notably, some players don’t have the required number of practices needed to compete yet, and that goes back to spring break.

Whisenant said, “It’s about adjustments within our team. There’s a lot of new faces; a lot of younger kids; seeing where people fit into the system; personality and players; and just go from there.”

In a similar situation, the Plainsmen won’t be at full power for their match at KWHS.

Laramie head coach Dan Benford said I think we’re somewhere around 70 percent ready.

“We’ve gotten to put together what we wanted to put together. Of course, we haven’t had everyone there, spring break gets in the way of us trying to put everything together, so it’s going to be a learning experience as we go through this week with four games.”

Benford admitted he’s excited about the team this season because they have a lot of varsity players returning with a lot of experience, though there will be three freshmen that play up. Benford said those freshmen will see time this week with the team being short-handed.

As for the match against the Trojans, Benford likes this early challenge.

“They’re definitely a well-coached team. They always bring back talent, so it’s never like they are having a down year. They finished third last year at the state tournament, so even with a win over them they were ahead of us at the end.”

Benford feels they’ll get a good gauge of where they are at, but he’s also realistic that’s very early in their season and a lot can change as the season progresses.

Both teams will open 4A East Conference matches Friday and Saturday before facing Natrona County in a non-conference match next Tuesday.

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