Nearly one year after suffering a season-ending injury while a member of Ohio State, Greensburg, Indiana, native and outfielder Melina Wilkison is looking forward to continuing her college career with Indiana softball.
At Indiana, Wilkison has the opportunity to be closer to her family, while playing in front of all her home-state friends. IU was the first school she visited after entering the transfer portal. Originally, she planned to go on more visits afterward.
“But after this one, I just realized it was home,” Wilkison said Feb. 5. “And my sister’s a senior in high school, so I was able to watch all her senior activities. It’s just awesome being home and being able to have girls from my hometown and everybody just come out and represent me.”
Prior to entering the transfer portal, the outfielder experienced plenty of success and racked up numerous Big Ten awards throughout her two full seasons with the Buckeyes.
As a true freshman in 2022, the Buckeye appeared in 49 games and started 45 of them. Wilkison exhibited signs of dominance at the plate throughout her showings, posting the third highest batting average on the team with .342 and adding four home runs.
Following a weekend series with Michigan where she hit .583, Wilkison was presented with Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors. She rounded out the season on the Big Ten All-Freshman Team and led the Buckeyes to the 2022 Knoxville Regional tournament.
After a successful freshman season, Wilkison was handed more opportunity as a sophomore, when she started all 53 games in right field. In year two, the right-handed batter led the Buckeyes in almost all major hitting stats. She hit .373, with 11 home runs and tallied 44 RBIs. In conference play, Wilkison had a .311 batting average, which placed her seventh among Big Ten players and ranked first in triples.
In a dominant win against Charleston Southern University, Wilkison became just the second player in Buckeye history to record five hits in a single game. Wilkison’s sophomore play earned her First Team All-Big Ten honors in 2023 and a quarterfinal appearance in the Big Ten tournament for Ohio State.
Coming off back-to-back seasons where she helped power the Buckeyes’ offense, Wilkison looked to build upon her resume in her third year. However, her junior season abruptly ended in mid-February due to injury after playing in only five games for the Buckeyes. Because of her injury, Wilkison earned a medical redshirt in 2024, which left the door open for two more years of eligibility.
“Being on the other side of the sidelines, I think I just got more of a coaching perspective,” Wilkison said. “More like being able to pick signs or help look out for stuff for my teammates. So, I think that was a perk of me being hurt.”
In June 2024, Indiana head coach Shonda Stanton announced Wilkison had joined the team from the transfer portal. Softball America ranked her in the top 50 available portal players for the 2024 cycle.
Since joining the team, the transfer has been impressed with the roster around her and said she looks forward to competing with her new group of teammates.
“I think especially just with our sticks, we have some really good hitters who are going to come together really nicely in the lineup together,” Wilkison said. “So, I think I'm just excited to be a part of that. On the other hand, we have one of the best pitchers in the conference, so I think being able to play behind that is really exciting and something I'm looking forward to.”
While the Hoosiers’ roster was appealing, the biggest factor in Wilkison's decision to come to Indiana was her homegrown roots.
Wilkison was a high school standout at Greensburg Community High School, where she led the Eastern Indiana Athletic Conference in batting average as a freshman and sophomore and set a program record in triples. Wilkison was named the Most Valuable Player of the EIAC as a senior in 2021.
The outfielder's high school play also earned her an all-district selection during her senior year and multiple all-conference selections. She signed her national letter of intent to attend Ohio State in 2020.
Heading into her first year with Indiana, Wilkison is eager to compete for her home state.
“We’ve been practicing hard for about a month and a half now and I just think it’s time to see another opponent out there,” Wilkison said. “We’re more than ready.”
The Hoosiers added Wilkison to an already high-powered team that made it to the Big Ten tournament title game and the Columbia Regional tournament in 2024, where their season ended in double elimination.
After falling short of a Big Ten title in 2024, the Hoosiers began their 2025 season Feb. 6 in Miami, where they competed in the Felsberg Invitational. Over the opening weekend, Wilkison compiled eight hits across 17 at-bats, while adding six RBIs and a home run.
