Iowa’s prep baseball players begin the road to the state tournament tonight. District play gets underway for the smallest schools — Class 1A and 2A — tonight. Districts for class 3A begin Saturday. The large schools also get into action Saturday with the substate games for class 4A. The teams will play for berths in the championship tournament at the end of the month with class 4A and 2A teams in Marshalltown and 1A and 3A in Carroll. Mason City Newman won the championship in class 1A last season and is ranked number in the latest poll in class 2A. Eagle Grove won last year’s 2A title. Knoxville won the 2002 3A title and is ranked second in the latest 3A poll. Marshmallow won the large school title, but is not ranked heading into the last week of the regular season.
