The senior class of the No. 1 Florida Gators softball team has put up astounding numbers and broken many records while establishing a softball powerhouse at a school where earning a berth in the NCAA Regional used to be the barometer of success.
But when the Gators (49-3) take the field against Longwood this weekend for a three-game series (doubleheader Saturday at 3 p.m. and the finale Sunday at 1 p.m.), seven numbers will stand out among the rest.
The jersey numbers of the seven seniors — Danyell Hines (4), Kim Waleszonia (5), Brooke Johnson (15), Le-Net Franklin (20), Ali Gardiner (24), Kristina Hilberth (31) and Stacey Nelson (42) — have been painted across the edge of the outfield to commemorate Senior Weekend, and the gesture has already started to stir the emotions of this talented class.
“When you look out and see the numbers,” Coach Tim Walton said, “with how many numbers there are, it’s obviously a big class and the winningest class we’ve ever had here. There are a lot of great memories of those players.”
The talent level has assured all of them a place in Florida softball lore, and while the team doesn’t have a policy of retiring numbers, no one will be filling their shoes anytime soon.
“It’s going to be tough to replace them and we won’t ever replace them,” Walton said. “I guarantee you a couple of things. As long as I’m coach here, you won’t see a No. 5 (Waleszonia) and you won’t see a No. 42 (Nelson) on anybody else’s back. They’ve earned that. To me, they’ve meant a lot.”
Nelson and Waleszonia, along with the rest of the seniors, have slowly built the foundation for a perennial power, from bowing out in the NCAA Regionals as freshmen to the NCAA Super Regionals as sophomores and reaching the College World Series and finishing one game short of the championship match last year.
Yes, they’ve earned their place with their talent but also their character and work ethic.
“They just bought what I was selling,” Walton said. “They haven’t always liked me, but I expect one day when they look back they are going to respect a lot of things we did as a program and it made them better people and it’s going to make them a better person down the road. I think that’s all you can really ask as a coach.”
With such a large and significant class being honored this weekend, the emotions are sure to be high and tears plentiful. To try to keep the team’s emotions from going into overdrive, the event will be split over two days, with Nelson being honored on Sunday.
“Typically you do it over one day,” Walton said. “I moved Stacey Nelson to Sunday on purpose so we only have one game to worry about with her emotion level. She’s an emotional type of kid anyway. It’s going to be emotional. I think there is going to be a lot of excitement, but there’s going to be a lot of tears.”
Nelson would be the first to agree with that assessment.
“I kind of have a rep of being a little bit emotional, maybe hysterical, so I don’t know,” Nelson said. “I’m hoping to keep it under control. That’s my goal. But there’s no way of telling. I’ve already shed a couple of tears already.”
Nelson has raised the bar for Gators softball pitchers in her time in Gainesville. She currently sits eighth on the NCAA all-time wins list with 125 career victories and is the only Florida pitcher to record 1,000 career strikeouts. Nelson is a finalist for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award and the National Player of the Year, while also getting an invitation to try out for the USA softball team after the season. The list of achievements is endless as is the praise for Nelson on and off the field.
“When you look at how much and how far she’s come in four years — and obviously without her success there would have been another person’s success — but I don’t know if would have been the magnitude of what Stacey Nelson has done for our program,” Walton said. “Her work ethic is phenomenal. Her performance is phenomenal. But I think as a person, she really deserves all the credit she gets.”
But Nelson, who could care less about her personal achievements, says she will miss her teammates the most when she plays her last game in Orange and Blue.
“Obviously being here for four years is a long time, but I really feel connected to the senior class as a whole and I feel like we’re very complete,” Nelson said. “Our personalities kind of play off each other. We have a lot of characters and, I don’t know, we just have a special class.”
If the emotions during Senior Weekend weren’t enough for Walton to deal with, he also has to find playing time for all of his seniors, three of whom are not starters, while trying not to tinker with the momentum of the current 15-game winning streak before the postseason.
“This will be actually one of the most complicated series for me as a coach because I’m working really hard to get all of our seniors in our games and justly so,” Walton said. “Of course the next goal for us — one of the goals all along — we’ve really been working hard figuring out how to get better and be better to win championships along the road, whether it be Regionals, Super Regionals or the College World Series. So we still have a lot to do. We still have a lot of work to be done. So I have a little bit of a challenge in three games to try to stay on track that way.”
Along with getting all of the seniors their share of playing time, Walton is still in the process of working Waleszonia back into a full-time role. Waleszonia will probably return to centerfield for one game over the weekend, most likely the second game on Saturday, while also getting some work on the basepaths. Last weekend, Waleszonia was replaced by a pinch-runner every time she got on base to avoid being overworked so soon. Walton also plans to shift Waleszonia around in the lineup all weekend to figure out the best mix for the postseason.
“I’ve got a plan,” Walton said. “I’ve got a good plan for the whole weekend to try to get things going, from batting her leadoff to batting her two-hole to batting her six-hole. There’s a lot of things when you look at the lineup and how good the lineup is where you can be the best at and that’s all I’m trying to figure out right now.”
The weekend signifies the beginning of the end for this unique senior class, but after the emotional outpour, they know they don’t have to hang up their cleats just yet.
“This has just been such a great experience here and I’m already having to swallow the fact that I’m leaving,” Nelson said. “I know I have to keep concentrating on what’s ahead of us, but this is definitely going to be an emotional weekend.”
With all the seniors have accomplished, there is still one more goal that needs to be checked off. If Nelson has her say, it’s only going to be a matter of time.
“I’m pretty stubborn and I have it in my head that this team is going to win a national championship,” Nelson said. “So we’re going to do it.”
If the Gators do, those seven numbers might as well be permanently engraved.