Last weekend was the unofficial start to the season for the ISU men’s golf team, as it traveled to Arizona to play three other Iowa schools in the first of many tournaments in 2012.

The NCAA golf season officially lasts from February to June, but that doesn’t mean that the clubs will stop swinging after the NCAA tournament is over.

“We play most of the year. We don’t have tournaments every weekend, but we have at least a couple every month from February to, I’d say, about November,” said senior Nate McCoy. “Once we get started, we never really stop.”

Much of the spring semester will be spent competing for Iowa State, as the NCAA and Big 12 golf seasons start next week, when the team will travel to Texas on Monday for the Texas-San Antonio Invitational.

From there, the Cyclones will travel on for seven more weekends with a possible eighth weekend of travel depending on how the team does at NCAA Regionals.

“You have the spring tournaments and then a lot of them play tournaments in the summer and then you have the fall season,” said coach Andrew Tank. “For most of the guys, they are playing competitive golf from Feb. 1 to Nov. 1.”

A lot of the players will keep playing tournaments in the summer to stay in shape when they are away from the school trainers.

“We usually have set training schedules throughout the summer,” said freshman Scott Fernandez. “I think a good way to stay in shape is playing in tournaments, it keeps the mind and body focused so when school comes around we are ready for the fall season.”

Even though the fall season isn’t a part of the NCAA golf season, McCoy said it is still an important part of the season for the golfers.

“If we didn’t have the fall tournaments then our spring tournaments wouldn’t go as well as they do,” McCoy said. “[The fall] is really a time to keep on top of our game and see where the other teams are at.”

With three months separating the fall season from the official NCAA season, Tank said it is the perfect time to increase the number of workouts to stay sharp over the break.

“The nice thing about our workouts, our guys were working out five days a week in November and December, and then now that we got back this semester they are working out four days a week,” Tank said. “That’s good for just the team building, pushing each other in the weight room.”

Now that the break is over though the team seems to be ready to face the long tournament season that is a head of them.

“It’s a long season, but we couldn’t be more excited to move on to the next [tournament],” said freshman Sam Daley. “Our break is over, and now it’s time to put what we’ve been working on the last three months to the test.”