The inaugural season of the Tony Minatta era of ISU soccer officially begins this weekend with a two-game road trip to Mississippi.

The Cyclones kicked off the season Aug. 22 against Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss. They then will swing over to Oxford, Miss., on Aug. 24 for a matchup against Ole Miss.

With the beginning of the season, ISU coach Tony Minatta recognizes his team’s excitement but also knows there are some early season nerves the team will have to play through.

“As you’re trying to work through the jitters and get cohesive as a team, you’re going to make mistakes, but hopefully those mistakes don’t cost us,” Minatta said. “I expect to see times when we’re really sharp … but I also [expect to] see times when potentially it’s going to look disjointed as well.”

The players had a chance to work through some of those jitters last week as the Cyclones played an exhibition match against Nebraska-Omaha. Though Iowa State lost 2-1, the team still took some positives away from the match.

Freshman Maribell Morales scored the lone goal for the Cyclones in the exhibition game, which may help calm the freshman’s nerves going into the beginning of the season.

“It definitely helped me,” Morales said of the exhibition goal. “It makes me realize that I can do more than I expected to do, and I can be a big asset to the team.”

Though the team dropped its lone preseason game, the exhibition helped the players learn some “hard lessons” that they hopefully have gotten out of the way and won’t have to worry about in the regular season, Minatta said. 

“It doesn’t matter the opponent, it doesn’t matter the environment or the situation,” Minatta said. “We have to consistently play the right way and we’re getting there.”

The Cyclones are coming off a season in which they finished 9-9-2 and made the Big 12 tournament for the first time since 2007 en route to a fourth place conference finish.

Last season, Mississippi State finished 3-15 and went winless in SEC play. Ole Miss will be different story, however, as the team went 16-6-2 overall last season.

The rest of the nonconference schedule includes St. Louis and Denver, who both received top-25 votes in the preseason coaches rankings, as well as North Dakota State, University of Southern California, Iowa, Northern Colorado and Drake. 

“I think it prepares us enormously,” sophomore forward Koree Willer said of this season’s nonconference schedule. “I think we couldn’t be prepared better for when we get to Big 12 play.”