Iowa State announced it will not be holding the annual spring football game this year, according to a press release from the Iowa State athletics department. 

“Coach Campbell and I mutually decided to cancel the spring game due to the anticipated weather for Saturday,” Athletics Director Jamie Pollard said in the press release. “We know this will be disappointing for our fans and players. The football team will use Saturday as their final practice in a closed practice similar to this spring.”

The game, originally scheduled for 1 p.m. this Saturday, is being canceled due to weather concerns. Additionally, Cyclone Carnival and other related activities around the game will be canceled. This event will not be rescheduled. 

“It wasn’t tough at all [to cancel the spring game],” said Iowa State football coach Matt Campbell. “The only thing that you feel bad for is our fanbase.

“Our fans have been so awesome to us the last two years, in terms of showing up and [they’ve] been such a huge, huge piece of why [the spring games has] been such a positive event.”

Weather in Ames on Saturday is supposed to be in the mid-40s and rainy. The full forecast can be seen here.

Iowa State also planned to host several former players who eventually made the NFL, such as Ellis Hobbs and Ahtyba Rubin. The team will now have off-season workouts but will not be in official practices until fall camp begins in late July.

“The reality is, all the other activities in terms of our former players coming back, in terms of our players’ parents being allowed to come, those things we’ll still do,” Campbell said.

This was going to be the first Cyclone Carnival and George Micalone, director of student activities, said it’s “terrible” to have to cancel the event.

“Students put in a lot of time and work into making this happen,” Micalone said. “It’s disappointing whenever something you worked so hard on can’t happen.”

Micalone said with all of the moving parts, rescheduling the event wasn’t an option. He said there were “70-plus” contacts for the event.

Cody Smith, student government vice president, was involved in much of the planning. He said that he is feeling “very disappointed and disheartened” that the Cyclone Carnival can’t happen this year.

“I feel like we’re letting people down,” Smith said. “I wish it could’ve happened, but the decision had to be made for the sake of safety.”

Both Smith and Micalone said that ultimately, the cancellation of the spring game was a big part of the decision to cancel the carnival also. They hoped that it would bring in a lot of traffic and without it they worried about a low turnout.

The work done won’t go to waste though. Micalone said with all the work students put in, a groundwork has been laid to make the Cyclone Carnival happen next year.

“The students did a great job with planning, the infrastructure has been laid,” Micalone said. “You can look forward to it next year.”

Although the game was canceled, former player Kyle Starcevich found some humor in the announcement.