Florida Gators Softball Is Back, Albeit Nearly A Year Removed
Three hundred and thirty-nine days will separate the Florida Gators’ softball team’s last game and their first of the 2021 season.
After entering the 2020 season with countless questions about their identity after having graduated ace pitcher Kelly Barnhill and their slugging leader Amanda Lorenz, the Gators exited their 2020 campaign with some of those questions answered, but with a new, overarching unknown: When will we get to do this again?
Had you told them that they’d have to wait just a month shy of a year, they probably wouldn’t have believed you.
The Gators were just off a 5-2 win against the No. 12-ranked Florida State Seminoles and were preparing to host yet another ranked matchup against the Baylor Bears when the NCAA pulled the plug on the spring athletics season on March 12.
The premature ending was brutal for the Gators, who had mustered a 23-4 record, including five ranked wins, in just over a month of play.
But come Saturday, Tim Walton and the Gators will finally return to the dirt as they visit USF for the long-awaited 2021 season opener.
And per usual, the Gators enter the season as one of the top teams in the country.
Florida will trot into Tampa on Saturday bearing the ranking of the seventh-best team in the nation. And given the talent on Walton’s roster, there’s no question as to how voters came to that conclusion.
The Gators have a roster as talented as any in the country, not to mention mature. But what might set the Gators apart in 2021 is their preparation for adversity.
“I think everybody is, I think if we learned anything in the past year, you better be prepared for things that maybe you weren’t prepared for in the past,” Walton said.
According to Walton, he and his coaching staff have spent time in the offseason coaching each other on their respective duties.
“We’ve dealt with some stuff with our staff that we’ve never done before,” Walton said. “You know, if we were to lose Coach Bosch or someone coaching third should we lose me. I think we just tried to do a lot better job preparing for a lot of other things and sometimes you feel like you’re wasting your time a little bit, but I think more than anything, we’ve got a lot of athletes that can play a lot of positions.”
In the circle, despite the Gators having five arms to choose from, Walton has also identified an “emergency pitcher” should they need a sixth person in the circle.
In 2020, most of Florida’s pitching duties were divvied up between then-sophomore Natalie Lugo and then-freshman Rylee Trlicek.
Both will return to the circle for the Gators in 2020.
Lugo earned the title of “ace” least season, having posted an earned-run average (ERA) of 1.64 and having tallied 102 strikeouts through 81.1 innings pitched.
Meanwhile, the southpawed Trlicek quickly worked her way into being a sound alternative that Walton and the Gators’ pitching staff had confidence in.
Florida’s additional options in the circle include Katie Chronister, Dani Farley, Elizabeth Hightower and the “emergency pitcher”, whose identity wasn’t revealed by Walton.
Similarly, the Florida’s pitchers could hurl pitches to three different catchers – two designated catchers and one emergency catcher. However, sophomore Julia Cottrill is expected to be the Gators bellcow behind the plate in 2021.
Though Cottrill was steady behind the plate in 2021, her effort at the plate were equally as impressive.
As a freshman, Cottrill slid into the starting lineup and posted a .323 average on 21 hits, with eight going for extra bags.
However, Cottrill is just one, microscopic piece in Florida’s electric lineup.
Last season, the Gators finished with a team batting average of .317. And this season, seven of the Gators’ top hitters return to Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium. But there are no two names bigger in Florida’s lineup than Charla Echols and Kendyl Lindaman.
Both transfers, Echols joined the Gators last year after transferring from Michigan State.
Meanwhile, Lindaman joined the roster in 2019 after spending her first two years playing for Minnesota.
The two have had immediate impacts for the Gators.
Batting in the three hole last season for Florida, Echols surged in the ranks as one of the best hitters in the Southeastern Conference.
Echols’ .417 batting average ranked her as the 13th most consistent hitter in the SEC, while her 35 hits and eight home runs tied her for fourth and fifth in the conference, respectively.
And as impressive as Echols’ contributions have been in just a season’s time, very few players in the country amount to what Lindaman has accomplished as she heads for her third year in the Orange and Blue.
“When you have an All-American, and she’s already a three-time All-American in her career... you have an All-American like Kendyl Lindaman in your lineup and somebody you’re going to ride in the lineup every single day... Yes, it’s definitely a luxury,” Walton said of his first baseman.
After deciding that she had unfinished business to take up and elected to return for her fifth year in Gainesville, the Gators’ super senior enters the 2021 season having played 212 college games in her career, the third-most played amongst active players in the NCAA.
The three-time All-American was the second hitter in Florida’s lineup in 2020, being sandwiched between Hannah Adams and Echols.
Her time in the No. 2 spot with the Gators has helped her amass 207 RBIs through her career – which currently leads the NCAA.
Gushing about Lindaman is a specialty of Walton’s.
During the first media availability of the season, Walton commended Lindaman for her leadership, followed by the fact that the fifth-year senior had never gotten anything but an ‘A’ in her classes at the University of Florida.
“I just want her to be our leader. Be the leader that she is and not worry about certain traditions we may have held here at Florida that she may or may not have been a part of,” Walton said of Lindaman. “Just be the best leader that she can be and teach the young players how to not necessarily hit like her, but think like she does. See the game like she does and make adjustments like she does.
“So it’s clearly a luxury to have someone like Kendyl.”
Lindaman and Echols both made the preseason All-SEC team, in addition to being named to the USA Softball Player of the Year Top 50 Watchlist.
Maintaining focus through the ups and downs of this offseason has been difficult, Walton admits.
But clearly, with his team hauling in such honors and recognitions, he and his staff are doing something right. But he and the rest of the world won’t know for certain how his team stacks up until finally opening up the season and playing something other than the mirror in intra squad scrimmages.
“I think there’s a lot more unknowns about every team in the country this year,” Walton said. “I think the first thing is to kinda get a measuring stick on our players... I think the teams that are probably going to rise to the top are the teams that can handle the adversity of playing games then stopping a little bit during the season and then getting out there and doing it again.
“But the anticipation is super high. I think everybody is excited to play... to get back out there in the Orange and Blue.”
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