The Cyclones will ditch the west coast and travel to South Carolina to begin the Colleton River Collegiate.

The 54-hole tournament will be played Monday and Tuesday in Bluffton, South Carolina, and will welcome Iowa State as the reigning champions of the event.

In the 2017-18 season, the Cyclones won the event by 13 shots over Miami of Ohio and had four of the team’s five competing golfers place in the top-15 on the individual leaderboard.

Coach Andrew Tank said he believes winning last year’s event has no impact on the outcome of this year. He said the team that won the event a year ago is completely different than what he has now.

“Last year is last year, everyone is starting at zero going into this,” Tank said.

Sophomore Lachlan Barker was a key member of that first-place team last year, placing the highest of all of the Cyclones at the event by tying for fourth place.

“[Colleton] was the start of big things last year,” Barker said. “After we won, that was the first time we all looked around and could say we all played well that week.”

Barker agreed with Tank, saying that it would be “too easy” to head into this year thinking the Cyclones can just waltz into the tournament and win again.

Barker said he doesn’t see the Cyclones coming in as defending champions as pressure, but rather a confidence booster — something the whole roster has been wanting to find over the last two tournaments.

“I wouldn’t say it is pressured going into this year but instead I think we will have confidence when we go in there,” Barker said. “I think we can go out there and do it again.”

Junior Tripp Kinney played his part in the Colleton River victory last year as well, tying for 15th place.

Kinney said he thinks everyone on the team is confident with where their games are right now and wants to use the confidence from last year to hopefully propel them toward back-to-back victories.

The outside noise and expectations for the Cyclones coming into the River Collegiate won’t distract Kinney and his teammates, he said.

“There might be other extra expectations people have for us but we want to win every tournament that we tee it up in so being the defending champion doesn’t change that,” Kinney said.