Fresno State introduces new softball coach, with questions lingering about the old one
Fresno State introduced Stacy May-Johnson on Tuesday as its new softball coach, only its fifth for a program that won the Women’s College World Series in 1998 and has made 34 NCAA Tournament appearances.
She called it a dream, a better job than some programs in the Pac-12 Conference. But she acknowledged there is work to do with seven seniors leaving a team that won a Mountain West championship last season and, according to sources, seven players in the NCAA transfer portal.
May-Johnson said she is counting 15 players on the Bulldogs’ roster that she is inheriting, depending on which players in the portal stay or go, and will talk to the Fresno State players looking to move on.
“We’ve got good pieces in place,” she said. “That’s a great start. Not everybody has good pieces in place. We do, and, yeah, we’ll probably have to add a couple from the transfer portal, but we’re already on that. We’ve been recruiting the transfer portal hard since the first day I got this job.”
One returning player, pitcher Hailey Dolcini, attended the news conference, though most are home for the summer.
“I’m ecstatic to move forward with Coach May-Johnson,” said Dolcini, the conference pitcher of the year. “Her resume is impressive and I know us as a collective, we’re very excited we get to work with her and finally have a leader named to helm the ship in the direction we’re going. I came out today to meet her for the first time, but from what I’ve heard we’re ready to go win another Mountain West championship.”
But a lingering question in the room was whether Fresno State made a mistake in allowing former coach Linda Garza get away after an on-field altercation with a player in April.
A lingering question as Bulldogs make coaching change
After the incident with outfielder Kaitlyn Jennings, Garza took a leave of absence, missing the Bulldogs’ run to a Mountain West championship and the NCAA Tournament, and resigned after the season. The Hoover High alum had a 161-92 record in 4 ½ seasons leading the program, and was in the final year of her contract.
But she was snapped up by conference rival Nevada a few hours after Fresno State announced that it had hired May-Johnson, who was the coach the past two seasons at Utah Valley in the Western Athletic Conference and also coached at Eastern Kentucky, Purdue, Louisville and Iowa.
“We talked to everyone we could in and around the Fresno program,” Nevada athletics director Doug Knuth said in a virtual news conference after the Garza hire. “We talked to folks at the highest levels of university administration. I talked to the athletic director. We’ve talked to other people around Fresno softball who know Coach Garza, and everybody I talked to said the same thing, that this one incident was one situation and not her normal character and not anything that had happened before.
“She has this incredibly long track record of success of care and concern for her athletes, great relationships with her athletes. This is one moment that flared up and one moment that happened. Everybody that I talked to said it was a tough situation. It was an intense moment, intense athlete, intense coach and it was a one-time thing that happened.”
Fresno State athletics director Terry Tumey said those questions will come, with any change in leadership.
“There’s going to be some of that (talk), and I think with every change comes a little uncertainty,” he said. “But you have to do what you feel is best for the program and one thing we know in athletics is that staying stagnant is not going to be the way to have continuing success.
“You must continue to move forward and shore up areas you feel as though you need strength. I think a new voice coming in and Stacy being able to provide that for us will be a key. I’m not saying that we weren’t successful before. We’ve been successful, but this is all about moving forward and these athletes who are here right now deserve the opportunity to be successful in their own right.”
Fresno State to hit recruiting trail
Tumey also said he did not see a fracture in a program, given the turbulence of the past few months.
May-Johnson said that Whitney Arion, who was on her staff at Utah Valley, will be joining the Fresno State staff. An offer is out to a pitching coach, and May-Johnson said the Bulldogs will have recruits on campus this week as they try to put the pieces in place for another run at a title and perhaps more.
“I see the potential to obviously first to win the Mountain West, second to make it to that regional, third to make it through that regional, and once you start doing that you can make it to the World Series,” May-Johnson said.
“I see that potential in this program. I would not be standing here today if I did not believe that. You go back, again, the history … that creates a brand that people get excited about. The facilities, the support, the staff, everything is in place to have success here. That was really the big draw for me to come here.”