The ISU tennis team will travel to Minneapolis on Friday to take on Minnesota. The meet signifies the start of the non-conference schedule for both teams.

The Gophers are coming off of a 7-15 season while the Cyclones are vying to have a better record than their 10-16 finish last year.

“We are really excited about playing Minnesota, they’re always a really tough competitive team so it’s always great to play better teams and get good competition before we start conference matches,” said senior Tessa Lang.

The Cyclones may have a bit less rust on them than the Gophers, who have not played since November.

Iowa State played in the Florida Gulf Coast Invitational Jan. 14-16 and had four players place. Marie-Christine Chartier placed first in her flight while Emma Waites, Jenna Langhorst and Simona Cacciuttolo all finished third in their flights.

Iowa State will aim to avenge a close loss to the Gophers two years ago where they were beaten 4-3.

“This time I think we have a pretty strong chance,” said senior Maria Macedo. “Everyone is playing really well; definitely we can do a really good job against them.”

The Cyclones also think that they can do better this year because they are more experienced.

“With having four seniors and three juniors hopefully we’re mature enough to kind of know what we’re trying to achieve, and hopefully it’ll teach the younger kids what we’re all about,” said coach Armando Espinosa.

The team has been working on some new doubles formations to try and keep the opponent on their toes.

“We started doing a little more doubles and different variation of doubles,” Espinosa said. “Usually we play the traditional formation, but now we’re trying the I-formation to keep our opponents guessing a little bit. Hopefully this formation will make the opponent start thinking a little bit more.”

The Cyclones have been working more on the I-formation, which involves two players standing on the same side of the court in doubles.

“Minnesota is an active doubles team at the net so we’re just trying new strategies and we’re starting to work on a lot of point construction and singles play as well,” Lang said.

The meet was originally scheduled for Saturday but will instead be played on Friday.