Prairie may have some holes to fill after last year, but the girls on the soccer team are confident they can do just that.

The graduation of last year's class leaves the Hawks considerably younger than they were a season ago.

“The leadership is something we are going to miss from last year's seniors,” said senior keeper Emily Musil. “We had them for a long time so we got to know them really well.”

Coach Cara Solness thinks that with the roster turnover the Hawks are experiencing, they have a lot of work to do if they want to field a competitive team. “Our strength is going to have to come from our work ethic since we are rebuilding,” she said.

But with eight players returning from the varsity team last year, the Hawks are far from having to start from scratch.

“The players left over from last year's team have played together for years in club and high school,” said senior midfielder Elissa Musil. “So we have that knowledge of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We expect what they can give us.”

With that familiarity and experience, the Hawks feel they will have a strong starting lineup this year. Solness points out that with the level of competition that Prairie will face, they will have to find a way to fill out the bench as well.

“We are going to be a little skinny off the bench,” she said before the start of practice. “We should be able to field a strong 11 but we will need bench players.”

The team feels like they have found some players through the first week of practice that will do just that. Some freshmen and players going out for the team for the first time have shown a lot of promise in practice early on, which bodes well both for this year and for future years.

“I think a lot of girls have stepped up this year, especially the underclassmen,” Emily Musil said. “We don’t have a lot of seniors this year, so they are really stepping up into the roles that they will have next year already.”