With the second week of practice now tucked away, winter sports teams are now gearing up for their first contests of the 2025-26 seasons this weekend. For the Lady Braves, they will be heading to Evanston where they will play a trio of games in tournament play. On Thursday, Star Valley will face Rock Springs before facing off against Green River on Friday. Saturday’s game will be against Cheyenne East.
The Lady Braves will have some familiar faces from last year’s state qualifying squad.
“We are pretty fortunate as we have three of our starters back from last year,” said head coach Kade Erickson, now in his seventh season. “Ambrey Nelson is back running the point for us. Cam Mackey came in and started a few games for us last year and she’s back. Ruby Hill started on the inside and she’s back as well. Their experience is really important.”
In addition, other players who logged consistent minutes will be back in the lineup.
“Liv Kleeman is coming back on the inside. Morgan Magee and Avery England were big additions for us last year. Kiera Allred an Hudsyn Kleeman will help us. We have a new girl, Ari Foster, who played a lot for Dubois and she will help us. We will see after that if we have any other players who will be able to help us and contribute.”
England is expected to be out of the lineup for early season tournament play. Erickson feels the energy so far has been positive.
“I feel great about the girls who are coming back,” he added. “We’ve had great practices with lots of energy and it’s been very productive.”
Playing on Saturday
The Lady Braves as a program has enjoyed consistent success, qualifying for the Wyoming state tournament 15 times in the last 16 seasons. However, wins at the tournament have been hard to come back in recent seasons and pushing past just qualifying for the last weekend of the season is one of the team goals.
“Our girls talk about building a program,” Erickson said. “One thing that stuck out is playing two on Saturday. When we get to state we want to play on Saturday. We want to get past those first two days and that’s one of our goals this year.”
Erickson also feels the blend of returning players and new talent is already helping the program.
“We’ve been able to add a handful of new things without going over old things,” he stated. “We still need to do that, but we’ve also been working on some new things as well and I feel like that experience at the start of the year is there already. I’m excited to see what these girls can do. If we can stay healthy and get our players back we should be a pretty solid team.”
Weekend Schedule
The Lady Braves will be playing in Evanston against Rock Springs on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. They will play Green River on Friday evening at 7 p.m. These games will be streamed via The Radio Network on Swift 98 with video links at SVInews.com. Star Valley’s game with Cheyenne East will be streamed at svinews.com via the NFHS feed with a start time of 10 a.m.
