When former Iowa State softball coach Jamie Trachsel was named Minnesota’s new head coach this week, the news was a surprise for a lot of people.

Trachsel had just wrapped up her first season as Iowa State’s head coach after spending 14 years at North Dakota State. In her first and only season with the Cyclones, Trachsel led Iowa State to its best finish in the conference since 1994, winning as many Big 12 games (six) in 2017 as the team had won in the past three years combined.

“While the decision to leave Iowa State was challenging, the opportunity that lies ahead at Minnesota to continue building a national powerhouse while returning to my home state is one that I could not pass up,” Trachsel said in a press release from the University of Minnesota.

Still, this puts Iowa State in a tough position. Trachsel was hired last year with the tough task of turning the program around. She appeared to be on track to make a difference at Iowa State given her first season’s success, but now Iowa State is back in the same position as last year.

Players are currently back home for the summer, so Trachsel didn’t have the opportunity to meet with them in person. According to players on the team, Trachsel sent out a group text message to the entire team Monday and explained that she was leaving, along with an explanation about the move.

Emma Hylen, a junior pitcher for the Cyclones, said she didn’t see this move coming.

“This was really out of the blue,” Hylen said. “I was actually down at school working out there a couple weeks ago and I was up there in her office. We were talking about the fall, we were excited about coming back.”

Hylen and the rest of the junior class, including fellow pitcher Savannah Sanders, will now be with their third head coach in three seasons. It can be hard for a program to function without stability, and there hasn’t been much stability in recent years.

“It’s definitely surprising,” Sanders said. “You sign your NLI [National Letter of Intent] thinking you’re gonna stay with the same coach for four years and finish out your career, but it’s a business.”

Sanders and Hylen both signed with Iowa State when the program was coached by Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler. Gemeinhardt-Cesler was replaced by Trachsel in June 2016, and just over a year later, the position is open once again. According to a press release from Iowa State, the university will now “begin an extensive, national search for its next head softball coach.”

That means the players are going to be working again on building new relationships with a new coaching staff. Only the seniors have ever had the same coach for two years in a row.

“You have to be aware that it can happen,” Sanders said. “But yeah, it’s a little crazy [to have] three coaches in three years.”

When Iowa State finds a new coach, he or she will not be taking over with an empty cupboard. The roster for the 2018 season, as of now, has some experience. The team has some positive momentum after winning six of its final seven Big 12 games last year, and some of the best players — including Sanders, Hylen, and sophomore-to-be Sami Williams — should be returning.

“I think it was just one of those offers that was her dream job and she couldn’t turn that down,” Hylen said. “I know she didn’t want to leave us, she wasn’t looking to leave. She wanted to keep building on what we already did, but she couldn’t say no to that.”