Jamie Trachsel never planned to leave North Dakota State unless she had the perfect opportunity.

Trachsel, the former co-head coach of the NDSU softball team, spent 14 years creating a championship Division II program and helped guide the team through a transition to Division I.

Leaving was a tough decision, but Trachsel knew it was an opportunity she could not pass up — being the head coach of the Cyclones. 

“I think you only leave a place like I left to come and build a top-20 program,” Trachsel said.

Trachsel knew she wanted to be a coach ever since she was a child. She sat alongside her father, who was a high school hockey coach. She was a multi-sport athlete, playing sports like basketball, tennis, soccer, racquetball and softball.

She spent her collegiate career playing softball at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota from 1998-2000. Her team made three NCAA Division II tournament appearances and won one conference title.

Trachsel started as a graduate assistant with the Bison softball team, eventually moving to assistant coach, and then onto associate head coach. Trachsel spent her last six years as a co-head coach.

“Being somewhere for a long time, I think it’s more natural that it happens,” Trachsel said on becoming a co-head coach.

It was a natural fit for Darren Mueller, the other Bison co-head softball coach, as well.

“She had opportunities, and we wanted to keep her around,” Mueller said. “She’s a great coach. I learned a lot from her.”

Trachsel was integral in helping the program move from Division II to Division I.

“[Jamie] put in just as much work as I did,” Mueller said about the transition to Division I. “I thought, we did it together, so we deserve to be head coaches together.”

Trachsel described the change from Division II to Division I as a challenge, saying the program had to go from a successful team to back to the bottom trying to prove itself again.

But the team didn’t stay at the bottom for very long. In the program’s first season in a Division I conference, it won a regional tournament. The Bisons went on to win the regional tournament five more times over the next seven seasons.

“I think because how hard [Mueller] and I worked in that five-year transition period, I can say I really feel like that was the backbone and foundation of the success we’ve had the last eight years at NDSU,” Trachsel said.

Leaving NDSU was a big adjustment for Trachsel.

“It should be devastating when you’re done, because that means you gave everything you had and more to something bigger than yourself,” Trachsel said.

Even with the hardship of leaving her coaching past, Trachsel is looking forward to the change in the upcoming season with the Cyclones, as are the players.

Trachsel took over the program from Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler, who was let go in the summer. 

“I think [the new coaching staff] came in and really hammered team and family harder than it was in the past,” sophomore pitcher Savannah Sanders said. “We’ve gone through a lot of stuff together and it’s been really challenging this fall, but all of those challenges that Jamie input throughout the fall were just so we would be stronger at this point.

“Now that we’re here, we know that we did all of that for a reason and we became a better team for it.”

Sanders described the change as a positive transformation in the program, with a stronger sense of urgency implemented throughout the team.

Although Trachsel had received offers in the past from schools like Boise State and Syracuse, she chose Iowa State because she felt she could transform the program into a national contender.

But that is not her only goal.

“My goal and hope is that every player that I get to coach throughout their career can say with absolute certainty that it was the time of their life, and that they have no excuses and there’s no regrets,” Trachsel said.