Freshman Taylor Unroe earns SEC honors

Despite the Florida Gators’ first loss of the season to the Iowa State Cyclones, they have much to celebrate about. The redshirt freshman libero Taylor Unroe from Muncie, Ind. has been named the Southeastern Conference’s Freshman Player of the Week.

Unroe earned the award for her performance against No. 24 Florida State and the Gators’ sweeps in the Campus USA Credit Union Invite against Jacksonville, Florida Atlantic University and Clemson.

Unroe was also named to the Campus USA Credit Union Invitational All-Tournament team as the No. 7 Gators won the title to the invitational tournament.

Unroe had 15 digs, four assists and a service ace against Florida State on Tuesday as she helped the Gators to a three game sweep over the Seminoles. In the Campus USA Credit Union Invite, Unroe had a total of 29 digs and five assists.

Unroe’s recognition is the first SEC weekly award for the Gators this season. The freshman already has 80 digs and seven aces under her belt thus far into the year and leads the team with an average of 3.48 digs each set.

Before the rivalry game between the Seminoles and Gators occurred, coach Mary Wise discussed how impressed she was with Unroe’s performance already.

“She is only two matches into her career so there is a lot of great future ahead of her,” Wise said. “Her game will continue to get better in terms of her serving, secondary setting and defense, but for her as a freshman, the way she started is really exciting.”

The Gators’ next game will be Friday against No. 10 Texas at 11 PM in the Nike Big Four Classic in Palo Alto, Calif. Florida will play at 11 p.m., against No. 10 Texas, and will take on either No. 2 Penn State or No. 3 Stanford on Saturday.