Gophers scheduled rugged nonconference games with a purpose

OKLAHOMA CITY – Jamie Trachsel became hooked on softball growing up in Duluth and was looking for all avenues to improve. Mike Candrea, the highly successful coach at Arizona, was producing numerous instructional videos.

"I bought those videos and Arizona became my favorite team," Trachsel said Wednesday.

This was after Trachsel, now the Gophers coach, found herself sitting at a media session with three coaching giants in college fastpitch softball: Washington's Heather Tarr, UCLA's Kelly Inouye-Perez and, yes, Arizona's Candrea.

Those are the four teams in the early bracket of the College World Series that opens Thursday. The coaches were asked for remarks to open the session and Trachsel said:

"We're proud to be in the Women's College World Series. I'm a little bit star-struck. Earlier, I texted Candrea …"

Then, Trachsel looked to her left to the coach in his 34th season at Arizona, smiled and said: "You're the first tapes I bought, all about Arizona. To be up here, it's quite an honor."

Trachsel fielded a question about the Gophers' big-time nonconference schedule her team played in February and March:

The Gophers lost all four, although three were very close. Why this rugged schedule?

"We thought we had the team to try to host a regional tournament," Trachsel said. "You can only do what you can do at the time because you don't know how other teams will fare. A lot of the teams we played were really successful. That always helps, especially down the road.

"Put together a schedule [and] if we do our job, had some success, got enough Ws, we'd be in contention to host a regional tournament …"

Candrea was seen nodding his head in approval as Trachsel made these comments.

Later, Trachsel confirmed that a tough schedule was meant to nullify the reasoning the NCAA selection committee used to send the 2017 Gophers on the road for a regional after a 54-3 start.