NATCHEZ — Being one of the few Class 1A teams in southwest Mississippi, the Cathedral Green Wave are used to taking long road trips.

However, they don’t often take those long road trips to neutral sites during the regular season.

But that’s exactly what they will be doing today as the Green Wave travel to Hammond, La., to play St. Stanislaus, the No. 1 ranked team in Class 4A.

The game will be played at Alumni Field on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana University.

The game serves a purpose for each school. For St. Stanislaus, it gives the coaches at Southeast Louisiana the chance to look at a couple of prospects.

And it gives the Green Wave a chance to face some strong competition before the Class 1A playoffs begin on April 30.

“We’re excited to play a team of this caliber and get ready for the playoffs,” Cathedral pitcher Dylan White said. “We’re going to face the best pitching we’ve seen this year and the defense will get a workout too.”

Cathedral (15-3) originally had an extra open date on the schedule they needed to fill, so coach Craig Beesley put out a feeler on the Mississippi High School Activities Association Web site to see if he could get a game scheduled.

The trip to Hammond is what came of it.

“St. Stanislaus has a couple of kids being recruited by Southeast Louisiana,” Beesley said. “They’re trying to get some top-notch Division I prospects on campus to see if they can commit.”

And while Cathedral won’t be expected to win against the No. 1 ranked team in Class 4A, Beesley said he wants to see how his team performs against the strongest test they’ve had this season.

“We want to show up and compete,” Beesley said. “They’ve got three pitchers that throw 85 (miles per hour) and one that’s at 92. We know whoever they throw will have good pop. Hopefully late in the game it will be close and we can scratch a run across here or there.”

Cathedral only has one regular season game left after today — Saturday at Natchez High — so the chances to fine tune things before the playoffs begin are running out. That’s why today’s game is important, Beesley said.

“This will give us a good edia of whether we’re at the point we want to be this time of year,” Beesley said. “We want to be playing our best ball. St. Stanislaus will force us to play our best game or it will be over quick.”