Reusse:Albert Lea grad and new Gophers softball coach Gretta Melsted ready for new challenge in Big Ten

May 28—Joel Maturi was a Gophers athletic director who felt an obligation to provide an opportunity for success to all athletes, male or female, those in major sports or at a lower level. If all his hires had worked out as well as Jessica Allister in softball, they would be naming whole buildings after Maturi, who retired in 2012, not just some cozy place behind a big wall. The Gophers had missed the NCAA tournament for seven consecutive years when Maturi hired Allister, a hitting coach and recruiting coordinator at Oregon, before the 2011 season. After a period of adjustment, Allister took the Gophers to five consecutive NCAA tournaments from 2013-17. I wouldn’t suggest my round frame was a frequent presence at Jane Sage Cowles Stadium, the boutique ballpark hidden behind numerous buildings and next to railroad tracks, but Allister’s Gophers were hard to ignore. And then came 2017: The Gophers won the Big Ten at 22-1, went 3-0 to win the Big Ten tournament and were 54-3 and ranked No. 2 in the country by the National Fastpitch Coaches Association ahead of the NCAA selection show. Those bozos sent the Gophers to Alabama. It was the greatest thievery performed against a University of Minnesota athletic team since a collection of referees — who might as well have been wearing Wisconsin jerseys — handed the Badgers a 14-9 victory in Madison on Nov. 24, 1962, costing Bobby Bell and the Gophers a third straight trip to the Rose Bowl. Allister’s team went 2-2 in Alabama, losing 1-0 twice to be eliminated by the hosts. She was then lured back to Stanford, her alma mater, where she has been a successful coach for nearly a decade. Jamie Trachsel came in next, leaving Iowa State after one season. The Gophers received justice from the selection committee in her second year. They played a regional at home and went to the Women’s College World Series in 2019 in Oklahoma City. The Gophers faced UCLA and the fabulous Rachel Garcia in the first round and lost 7-2, then were eliminated by Washington 5-3. Those are now two Big Ten teams. Trachsel left for Ole Miss in 2021 and is currently getting some heat in her sixth season with the Rebels. Her replacement as the coach here, Piper Ritter, was relieved of her duties after a dreary 2026 season. On Tuesday, Ritter’s replacement — Gretta Melsted, an Albert Lea High School graduate, Carleton College athlete and head coach for two decades at Augustana in Sioux Falls, S.D. — was spending her first day on campus as the new Gophers softball boss. We were talking in the press box at The Jane late in the afternoon. To validate my credentials, I said proudly: “I was in Oklahoma City with the Gophers for the World Series in 2019.” To which Melsted replied: “The Gophers were in Oklahoma City. And we were in Denver. That’s where and when we won the DII national championship.” Melsted’s Vikings won it in plucky fashion: In the best-of-three for the two surviving teams, Augustana lost 7-2 to Texas A&M-Kingsville in Game 1, then won a pair of 6-4 games. Mark Coyle, who has been the Gophers’ AD for 10 years, is now in the world where he spends large on football and fully on basketball and men’s hockey. Sports such as baseball and softball have to settle for what they can get. Ty McDevitt is trying to compete in baseball with 11.7 scholarships, while many of the baseball powers are now at a full-roster 34. In softball, the former limit was 12 scholarships, and now it’s a full-roster 25. Assuming what Coyle would have to offer a new coach, my immediate guess was he would go regional. I looked at the track records for coaches in the DII Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference. There were several coaches with excellent records, with Melsted as the standout. The Vikings were in the national tournament 14 times in her 20 years with the program. They won the conference from 2021 to 2025 and were NSIC tournament champions this season. Her overall record at Augustana was 813-313 — 500 games over .500. And there were 61 wins in that national title season in 2019. One problem: This was Augustana. My view of that ambitious school is that its people are extra loyal. Was this view wrong, or was leaving Augie — even for the Big Ten — a grueling decision? “Absolutely; it’s very difficult when you’ve been somewhere for 20 years,” Melsted said Tuesday. “That program is my baby. And we are rooted in the community; my husband, our two boys — they’re 13 and 9 … their schools are fantastic. We love our church. We love Augustana. “To leave, this had to be the right fit for me, to look at it and to make the jump.” Melsted looked down at the ballpark. “I’m seeing this for the first time,” Melsted said. “This ballpark. The Big Ten. I’m excited to be here.” And there’s also this: “Both our boys are hockey players,” Melsted said. “If you live in South Dakota, you have to travel all over the place to play a hockey game. It’s not like here, where you can just go from town to town.”