The Florida Gators softball season gets underway on Friday when the Gators make their annual appearance in the USF tournament in Tampa to open the season.
When fans tune in to watch the Gators this year, it will be a different looking team from what you’ve been accustomed to seeing the last fours year from Florida.
Gone are five of the most successful Gators softball players in Florida’s rich softball history to graduation. Losing those five seniors is something that head coach Tim Walton and his staff are still trying to coup with.
“I spoke last week to our Gator Diamond Club and I told them that when I look out on the field I’m missing the likes Aubree Munro, Kelsey Stewart, Taylor Schwarz, Taylor Fuller and Kirsti Merritt,” Walton said on the Gators losing five seniors from last year. “Some of the best players we’ve had at their position in the history of softball at the University of Florida. Obviously, I’ve known those kids now for over eight years; they’re family members to me and in a lot of ways, just not only there on the field success but their off the field success, their transition to help our program take the next step which is obviously to win national championships. So there’s a special bond between the coach and those players.”
Not only did Florida lose five players who were incredibly successful on the field but also off the field they were leaders of the Gators program. Those five seniors were the clubhouse leaders who held everyone accountable on and off the field when the pressure was really at an all-time for Florida after winning back-to-back national championships.
Walton and his staff are looking for players to step up and take that leadership role and they’ve named three captains for this year’s team including one underclassman.
“Our three captains this year are Justine McLean, Kayli Kvistad and Amanda Lorenz,” Walton said on his captains. “They’re our named captains and the reason they are is because of what they do throughout the 6 a.m. runs, the lifting, on the field and in a locker room. They bring a little bit of an edge to them.”
With only three seniors on this year’s team and only one of the being named a captain, the question is out there on what the other two seniors bring to the table. Walton broke that down by saying while those ladies aren’t captains, they still play a huge role in the clubhouse.
“But you know with Delanie Gourley I mean she’s just got the leadership personality she’s calm, cool, and collective. Everybody looks up to her,” Walton on whom else is a leader. “She handles the success well but the pressure well too. Chelsea Herndon, that is obviously the last remaining senior. She’s not really a captain or a leader so to speak because she just doesn’t have those kinds of characteristics about her. But I’ll tell you the one thing about her she brings the same mentality and the same work ethic and the same passion every single day and I think a lot of her teammates really look up to her in her style of play.”
One of the biggest things the Gators will miss with the five seniors from last year is their ability to just do things without having to be coached to do that or being told to do that. Walton and his staff called upon this year’s team to take up those characteristics and be players who can self-motivate themselves.
“Yeah that’s huge,” Walton said on having self-motivators on the team. “Every once in a while you have to kind of stream them a little bit in one direction or the other and keep them you know kind of going but I don’t have to explain what the expectations are at the University of Florida. I think that they all understand that and they push each other for that. You have some players that really push and compete.”
While this year’s team comes in with high expectations from playing at the University of Florida, they don’t have the same target on their backs like last year’s team did coming off of back to back titles. This team, however, understands what the goals are for Florida and they return several members of those back-to-back title teams so what it takes to get that ring is something they understand.
“We have some you know World Series champions on this team and we have some high school champions on this team that never won at this level, but they understand really what the expectations are and what it’s going to take,” Walton said on his team. “I think in the weight room that’s the biggest separator of all teams. How do you prepare yourself in the weight room? How do you prepare yourself to get up at 5:00 in the morning to go out to actually compete for real numbers at six o’clock in the morning? I think our players have handled that pressure and just the management of that time. Nobody sleeps well the night before and they know they have to get up really, really early the next day. So I think that’s just that’s what our players have kind of come to expect.
All of the expectations and all of the talent of this team is one thing but the key with those back-to-back title teams was the bond they had together. When the Gators were going well, the team was loose and having fun and that was something that was a little lost to end last year.
Senior Justine McLean believes they’ve found that bond with this year’s team despite the new players and the new role players are taking this season.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem with this team,” Justine McLean said on the team bonding. “We’re really close. We’ve gotten a lot of scrimmages in, so we’re kind of used to playing with each other. I think we’re all just really excited and anxious to just get out there and start playing.”
One thing is for certain with this team and that’s that Tim Walton will have his ladies ready to go come Friday in Tampa.