The battle for state supremacy is heating up again for Iowa State -this time for the softball team.

The Cyclones are preparing for a preseason exhibition tournament in which they will play in-state rivals Iowa, Northern Iowa twice, and Drake.

Although these games will not count for anything in the team’s standings, everyone is taking it seriously.

“It is going to be competitive. We are going to play it just like it’s a regular game,” said freshman outfielder Carleigh Berry.

Sophomore first baseman Sydni Jones expects all the teams at the tournament to take a similar view.

“I think every team is going in there thinking, ‘We want to win it,'” Jones said. “All the teams are from Iowa, so we want to be known as the best.”

So far this fall, the Cyclones have rolled through community colleges Kirkwood and Iowa Central by a combined score of 36-3. This weekend will give the Cyclones some stiffer competition across the board.

“I think all three teams [we will face] in this tournament are significantly better then anything we have faced so far this year,” said coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler.

This tournament is not going to be exclusively about the in-state rivalry, however. The Cyclones are viewing this tournament as a measuring stick.

“The teams we are going to be playing are better, so I think it will be a good measure of how we are going to do throughout the year in the Big 12,” Berry said. “We are going to be facing good hitters so we can see what our pitchers can do, and we are going to be facing good pitchers so we can see what our hitting can do.”

The team, however, is full of young players. There are only three seniors on the team and two juniors, compared to the five freshmen and six sophomores on the team.

The team is still trying to gel and find out who is going to play in the upcoming spring season. Therefore, wins and losses won’t be everything in this tournament.

“I think we want to win obviously, but playing well and not making mistakes is more important at this point,” Gemeinhardt-Cesler said.