By Pat Harty

IOWA CITY, Iowa – From 1988 to 2010, the Iowa softball team made four College World Series appearances, played in 16 NCAA Tournaments, won five Big Ten regular-season championships and two Big Ten Tournament titles – and did so with just one head coach – Gayle Blevins.

From December 2024 to the present, the Iowa softball team has had four different head coaches, including two interim head coaches.

Iowa also hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2009, or the College World Series since 2001.

The Hawkeyes are also coming off a highly emotional 2025 season that started when former head coach Renee Gillispie took a leave of absence in Dec. 2024 due to health reasons. She would never coach for Iowa again.

Brian Levin was then promoted from assistant coach to interim head coach, but his time in charge didn’t last long, though, as he resigned apparently in protest of some Iowa players that chose to kneel during the National Anthem before the start of games.

Karl Gollan was then promoted from pitching coach to interim head coach and he would go on to lead Iowa to a sixth-place finish in the Big Ten after Iowa had finished last in the conference the year before.

There was speculation that Gollan would be hired as the permanent head coach, and he certainly had the support of the Iowa players.

But Iowa Athletic Director Beth Goetz instead chose a different direction, hiring former Hawkeye Stacy May-Johnson, who played for Iowa from 2003-06, where she was a three-time All-Big Ten selection and the 2003 Big Ten Freshman of the Year.

May-Johnson also had made a name for herself as a head with successful stints at Fresno State (2022-25) and Utah Valley (2020-21). She was associate head coach at Eastern Kentucky (2018-19), an assistant at Purdue (2017), Louisville (2015-16) and Iowa (2011-14) and a volunteer assistant at Louisville (2008-10).

Her success as a head coach, her Hawkeye roots and her vision for Iowa softball moving forward was enough to convince Goetz that May-Johnson was the right person to provide stability and ultimately lift Iowa back to prominence in softball.

“They were just ready for some consistency,” May-Johnson said Wednesday’s at Iowa annual media day event. “And so by the time I got here, it was kind of like, ‘okay, we’ve got our direction, we know who our leader is, let’s move forward.’

“And so a lot of it just went unspoken. They dealt with a lot. We know that. We tried to keep that within context as we coach them. We show up every day; what do they need from us? But they were ready for a solid leader to come in, tell them what direction we’re going and lead.”

Iowa’s 2026 roster includes 14 newcomers and 11 holdovers from last season.

The May-Johnson era will start when Iowa faces both Samford and Florida State on Friday in Tallahassee, Florida.

“Team’s ready to go,” May-Johnson said. “We’re excited to play somebody other than ourselves. I think this first trip down to Florida is going to be real telling. We’re going to learn a lot about ourselves and we’re ready to go.”

May-Johnson, who is from Reno, Nevada, considers herself fortunate to have played under Blevins at Iowa, saying that Blevins “wrote the book.”

“She created the recipe that worked,” May-Johnson said of Blevins. “She recruited the state very, very well; coached really, really gritty teams that were tough and competitive. And it worked, and it worked for a reason.”

May-Johnson said there are similarities between what Blevins accomplished at Iowa to what Kirk Ferentz has built with the Hawkeye football team over the past 27 seasons.

Ferentz is the Big Ten’s all-time winningest football coach with 213 career victories.

“Quite honestly, you can look across this campus, look at coach Ferentz’s program; it’s the same thing, tough, gritty, competitive,” May-Johnson said. “Players that want it more than the other team. And I think that’s the way it’s going to work here. And there’s a reason why it works, so we’re excited to bring some of that back to Iowa City.”

Junior pitcher Jaylee Ojo is one of the 11 players that decided to stay at Iowa following the coaching change.

“It was a bit difficult just because there wasn’t necessarily a lot of consistency,” Ojo said. “But change is something that is constantly happening and you have to be able to adapt, and adapt to different things, which was a big part of it.

“But so far, things have been good. It’s been a consistent few months.”

Ojo credits her teammates and new coaches for helping her handle all the changes that have occurred.

“I have my team around me, which is like a big supporting staff,” she said. “And I think going through it together was a good thing.

“The new girls coming in, that was change. But getting to learn about them and the way they play and everything has been really cool.”

There was time when the Iowa softball team was arguably Iowa’s second best team in any sport behind only wrestling.

Blevins won 40 or more games in 13 of her 23 seasons at Iowa, including a career-high 53 wins in 1991, 52 wins in 1997 and 50 wins in 2005.^[ 

Her teams were known for having dominant pitching, reliable defense and for being fundamentally sound on offense.

May-Johnson hopes to build a similar foundation, though the game has changed over the past 15 years, especially on offense where lineups are now more potent.

That fact that May-Johnson was able to convince star freshman Mariah Myers to stay committed to Iowa through all the coaching changes was certainly a step in the right direction.

A native of Fort Dodge, Myers was named the Iowa Gatorade Player of the year in 2024 and 2025.

“I knew that I wanted to be a Hawkeye,” Myers said. “That’s just been my dream since I was little, being able to where the state that I’m from across my chest just really means so much to me.”

Iowa has struggled recently to keep star recruits from leaving the state.

May-Johnson wants to seal the border, much the same way Blevins did as the Iowa coach.

“Top priority,” May-Johnson said of recruiting instate. “They may not all say yes, but we’re going to try for every single one of them, and we certainly will retain some talent. There’s no question about it. We already have. That’s no secret.”