Former Leopard soccer players will be coming back to play one more game. Men and women alumni are going to play the current men and women varsity teams in a alumni match on January 3 at Leopard Stadium.

“I did an alumni game in other schools where I coached that had long histories,” girls head soccer coach Jeff Kear said. “It was always a great event because you had kids who went off and played in college and they could come back.”

The students that will be competing have mixed emotions about how competitive the game will be.

“I think that it will be a pretty close game,” sophomore Rachel Willman said. “I really don’t know who will win. I think it’s gonna be both competitive and fun, because some of the alumni play college soccer and some don’t. I’m looking forward to it!”

Not only is the game expected to be a fun experience, but there’s the hope it will also bring competition and experience to the whole program.

“In an alumni game you can actually give pretty good competition, because you’ve got your college kids coming back and playing,” Kear said.  “But it is also good fun.”

The current varsity teams have not played any games this year, but they will be returning many players. The men’s team is returning 10 players, while the Lady Leopards are returning seven players.

“It will be fun, because we were a really close team and we know each other really well,” class of 2013 player Morgan Hanza said. “But there are still good players, so it should be competitive too.”

The alumni game is something new to the program. There hasn’t been an alumni game in the past because the school has been open for a relatively short amount of time. That has limited the number of alumni available to put a complete team together. Now that the school has developed some history, the game will be a recurring event.

“This is the first time we’ve done it here, because its the first time we’ve had a critical mass of alumni who could come back and we could build a team of them,” Kear said.

The players and coaches are excited for the new experience.

“I expect it to be pretty fun, because it will be against all the previous seniors,” junior Kody Fagin said. “It should be exciting!”