Members of the ISU men’s golf team won’t be anywhere tropical for Spring Break, but they will be in warm Arizona to compete in the Desert Shootout on March 17 to 19.

The Cyclones will head out of a cold and wet Iowa and head to Phoenix on March 11, which will give them a couple days to enjoy the weather and get used to playing on the grass rather than the practice mats they’ve been using at the practice facilities these past two weeks.

“It’s going to be a good trip for us,” said assistant coach Patrick Datz. “We’ve got a chance to get out there on the grass and practice and get our competitive juices going again after this layoff.”

The Cyclones will be going through the tough transition to outdoors, and this will be the first time since the fall season that they will have a chance to get outside and practice on an actual course, rather than only playing outside at their two meets this spring season.

“Now that we’ll be in Arizona, we can try to transfer what we’ve been working on at Veenker and the Bergstrom to the golf course,” said coach Andrew Tank.

The team will be in Arizona almost all of its Spring Break. Enjoying the Arizona weather, soaking up the sun and possibly going to a spring training baseball game could seem like it takes away from the Cyclones’ focus, but they know what’s at stake.

“We’re going to go in there confident,” said junior Nate McCoy. “We just have to go in there with the mind set that we can win, and go from there.”

Every meet is a chance to improve Iowa State’s ranking. Right now the team sits at No. 88, according to golfweek.com. The coaches said in order to get to the postseason, the Cyclones will need to get that number down to about 65.

“The opportunity is there,” Tank said. “We have the opportunity to improve our ranking and get to the point where we can get in the mix for Regionals.”