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For MarshfieldAreaSports.com
Two area high school soccer players will look to represent Central Wisconsin on U.S. Soccer’s regional stage at the end of January.
Kaito Lor, a sophomore at Wausau West, and Keegan Fredrick, a senior at Marshfield High School, were named to the Olympic Development Program (ODP) Midwest Regional rosters in August, following a series of tryouts over the past year.
Players throughout the United States have been narrowed down within their age groups from training pools to state teams participating in a subregional event to regional identification camps, and finally to regional teams for the Interregional Event to take place in Orlando, Fla., on Jan. 30-Feb. 3. From the Interregional Event, the pool will be narrowed down even further to a single 18-player National Roster per age group.
While Lor and Fredrick will be teammates this spring as part of the Marathon County United Elite – a U.S. Youth Soccer U19 State League team – they will represent two different teams at the ODP Interregional Event. Lor joins three other Wisconsin players on the 2008 Midwest Boys team, while Fredrick is one of four Wisconsinites filling out the 2007 squad. Both represented their respective Wisconsin State ODP teams in Ohio in June, and were invited to the Midwest ID Camp in Rockford, Ill., in July.
The pair are coming off of successful fall high school seasons, each landing in the top five of the Wisconsin Valley Conference’s scoring leaderboard and earning all-conference honors. Lor, a forward for the Warriors, earned a spot as the sole sophomore on the WVC’s All-Conference second team after leading the conference in assists and scoring 10 goals in West’s second-place conference finish on the season. Meanwhile, Fredrick, a central midfielder and recent University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point commit, was a unanimous first-team pick for the second year in a row, was selected as the Wisconsin Valley Conference Player of the Year, and was named to the 2024 all-state team after helping lead the Tigers to a WIAA Division 2 regional championship.
The duo looks to carry over the success from their fall seasons to the experience in Florida. If selected to continue onto the National ODP level, they would join the company of fellow area athlete, Jenna Baumann, who also navigated the ODP soccer pathway and achieved that accomplishment in recent years. Baumann was a 2024 D.C. Everest graduate and is now a member of the University of Wisconsin women’s soccer program.