Gator Country

More than 500 fans were on hand at 6:10 a.m. Thursday when head coach Urban Meyer put the Florida Gators through their first practice of the 2009 preseason./Gator Country photo by Buddy Martin

Three generations of Warner family women were not going to allow the defending national champion Florida Gators to feel their love on the first day of preseason practice on the Sanders Practice Fields.

The ringleader of this pre-dawn madness – coach Urban Meyer whistled the returning members of the 2008 SEC and BCS champions to work on dew-covered Bermuda grass fields at 6:10 a.m. with a full moon settling beyond the nearby Perry Beard Track and lightning dancing in distant clouds – her daughter and granddaughter wouldn’t have missed the opportunity even if the heavens were erupting and the practice was starting at midnight.

“We got up at 4 to make the drive over (from Jacksonville),” said Lynda Warner, the mother of four – two daughters who would root for the Gators and two sons whose allegiances were with the Georgia Bulldogs.

“We had to divide everything down the middle,” Lynda added with daughter Lisa Hatfield nodding in agreement. “We had a lot of fun doing that.”

As the elder Warner admitted, she and Lisa were die-hard Gators – “We’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly,” Lynda admitted – but the times lately under head coach Urban Meyer have made it really good to be a Florida Gator fan – two SEC titles and two national championships with a chance for another. Florida is the consensus preseason favorite to capture its third national title in four seasons in the Citi BCS National Championship at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.

“He (Meyer) has done a wonderful job,” Warner continued. “I think he’s a great coach. I’d like to make the money he does and be able to walk on that field.”

Like most Florida fans, she likes what Meyer and his staff are trying to do with their players off the field in the classroom and the community.

“I like the moral standards he and Tim Tebow have set for this team,” she said. “You know, I love the fact that we’ve dropped to No. 2 as far as party schools.”

That title now resides in State College, Pa., at Penn State University.

Granddaughter Emily Hatfield, a sixth-grader, sat with her mother and grandmother and took it all in as the Gators went through their paces. On her face were two stickee “tattoos” supporting her favorite team. According to her grandmother, Emily gets straight A’s in school and wants to attend college in Gainesville.

“Yes, I’d like to come here and study architecture,” said Emily, who saw her first game in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium last November when Florida beat The Citadel, 70-19. “That was awesome.”

More than 500 fans sat on the berm overlooking the practice fields quietly as the Gators worked on various drills. Their silence would be interrupted with polite applause whenever the offense made a great play or the defense, led by middle linebacker Brandon Spikes, forced a turnover.

One fan, Otis Green, had a particular interest in one of assistant coach Dan McCarney’s players. When asked which one he was watching, Green said simply, “No. 96” – sophomore defensive end William Green of Hoover, Ala., near Birmingham.

The elder Green hasn’t seen much of his son this summer – Willliam has been in Gainesville attending summer classes and working with his teammates and eating, too.

“He weighs about 245 pounts (on a 6-foot-3 frame),” Otis Green said. “When we brought him here, he was 215 pounds.”

Otis Green is an area operations manager for home-improvement megastores Lowe’s and was in Valdosta, Ga., earlier this week before coming over with wife Cynthia to visit their son. Cynthia, however, didn’t respond to Meyer’s early wakeup call as her son and husband did. She got to sleep in, which would be fine with Meyer.

“William had a lot of offers, particularly those from Alabama and Auburn,” Otis Green related. “But after Cynthia met Urban, it was pretty much a done deal.”

So there is truth to those stories that the assistants recruit the players while the head coach recruits the parents.

After the final horn ended practice at 8 a.m., a Florida security person came and asked everyone to exit to the left. He did a double-talk when he noticed that two middle-aged men were there wearing the hats of their favorite SEC teams, Auburn and Alabama.

“We’re here with him,” said Billy Burns, pointing to son Trey, who was wearing a Florida hat to try to mask any suspicions Florida’s faithful would have of the two enemy supporters in their midst.

“We came down here to move his grandmother, who lives in Alachua, back to Alabama (Florence) to live with us,” said the elder Burns, the script “A” on a red hat indicating his allegiance to the Crimson Tide.

The fellow in the blue-and-orange Auburn hat was Burns’ lifelong friend Kerry Mashburn, who had volunteered to help the Burns with the move.

“He’s a good friend,” Burns noted as Mashburn smiled.

Except for one day around Thanksgiving every year.

If you’re a member of Gator Nation, you have that love 365 days (366 in leap years) annually.

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