Iowa State’s trip to Hawaii was successful with a 4-1 record to start the season, which is its best mark to begin the season since 2016.  

The Cyclones were glad to get back on the softball dirt and not on the artificial turf that they had been practicing on.

Head Coach Jamie Pinkerton was happy with the team’s performance during the tournament, highlighting the hitting, pitching, the underclassman performance and his coaching staff decisions for the reasons behind the successful start to the season.

Pinkerton also said the Cyclones have plenty of stuff to improve on, such as base running, not making throwing errors and fielding ground balls. Just simple stuff they can easily clean up, but Pinkerton was still impressed with his young team.

Even though there are veteran players on the team, there’s a lot of underclassmen that played in the tournament last weekend. 

Sami Williams was named the Paradise Classic’s Most Valuable Player. Williams led the Big 12 in home runs (4), RBIs (13), total bases (20) and slugging percentage (1.111) over opening weekend.

Williams loved the team’s effort and the execution, while also mentioning that the team is still getting used to the softball dirt as they had become accustomed to the artificial turf. Williams agrees with a lot of the same things Pinkerton said, with some mental errors that she said could easily be fixed.

Williams also said  how she thought the freshman did in Hawaii. She said they did a great job in Hawaii with effect and competing hard in the five games.     

One of those freshmen was pitcher Ellie Spelhaug, who made her first collegiate softball start. 

Spelhaug said she was pretty nervous and had some butterflies in her stomach, but after the first three innings, she was locked-in and making sure she set the tone against her opponents.

Spelhaug also said she thought they did a great job in Hawaii with effort and competing hard in the five games.

Now heading into the is weekend Knight’s Classic Tournament in Orlando, Florida, Iowa State looks to carry the success over to Friday’s games against Villanova and Central Florida, Saturday’s games against Penn State and Central Florida and Sunday’s game against Florida Atlantic.