Pop The "Bubly" And Unwind With A Long Weekend Of Florida Gators Softball

When Florida Gators softball coach Tim Walton says that he and the Gators play a third of their schedule in the opening two to three weeks of the season, he isn’t joking.

One of the longest weekends in Florida sports kicks off on Friday at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium as Florida softball hosts its annual Bubly Invitational. The dirt of Katie Seashole Pressley Stadium will host seven match-ups this weekend and the hometown Gators will appear in five of them.

Come Sunday evening, the Gators will have played six games in a week’s time.

Coming off a 1-0 walk-off win over Jacksonville on Wednesday night, the Gators will look to find offensive rhythm as they face the Georgia Southern Eagles and Charlotte 49ers through the course of the weekend.

Looking back on Wednesday’s home opener, the Gators found themselves knotted up with the Jacksonville Dolphins heading into the seventh inning. A pitching duel between Jacksonville ace Alyssa Bilodeau and Florida’s Elizabeth Hightower and Katie Chronister kept the scoreboard dim.

The Gators’ bats kept busy last weekend in Tampa against the USF Bulls, where Florida jumped out to a 2-0 start on the season. And on Wednesday, Florida’s success at the plate continued. While the Gators sent nine hits into play, they neglected to plate any runs until senior second baseman Hannah Adams lifted a walk-off double to the left center field wall to score her speedy centerfielder Cheyenne Lindsey in the bottom of the seventh inning.

Lindsey reached first base on a bunt before blazing around second and third following Adams’ heroic pop.

“When you’ve got Cheyenne Lindsey in the nine-hole, it’s like another leadoff,” Walton said following the win.

Looking back at last season, Florida reidentified itself as an offensive-driven team following the departures of Kelly Barnhill and Amanda Lorenz.

The addition of Charla Echols, who went 6-for-6 in Florida’s opening series against the Bulls last weekend and was awarded SEC Player of the Week honors, helped bolster the Gators’ lineup after years of inconsistency.

As a roster, the Gators were swinging with an average of .317 in the shortened 2020 season.

But the top end of Florida’s lineup was performing greater than what the team’s batting average suggested.

Adams, who led off for the Gators in 2020, produced an average of .375, while Echols and fifth-year first baseman Kendyl Lindaman were hitting above the .400 mark.

Thus far in the 2021 campaign, the Gators’ lineup yielded .379 and .464 averages against the Bulls, before dipping down to the .333 mark against the Dolphins on Wednesday.

And with five games coming at Florida this weekend, one could imagine that Tim Walton wants to see the batting average trend upwards and become more consistent.

The Gators will open the Bubly Invitational on Friday evening with a 6 p.m. first pitch against Georgia Southern.

Florida will be the first squad the Eagles have faced this season after their opening weekend series in Statesboro, Georgia was scrapped due to inclement weather. The same batch of rain cut the Gators’ opening weekend series from a tripleheader to a doubleheader.

Prior to the season’s cancelation in 2020, the Eagles were finding momentum midway through their campaign.

Georgia Southern had posted a 14-10 record in 2020, but played the SEC’s then No. 16-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks and the Auburn Tigers in close games. The Eagles fell short in both.

“I think we understand what was taken from us, so there’s a different motivation behind finishing strong that includes last year,” Georgia Southern coach Kim Dean said ahead of the season. “Some of the goals and things of that nature that we had last year.”

Dean’s sentiments are similar to those shared by Walton ahead of the season.

“I think this is an opportunity for our team to go out and have fun,” Walton said in the preseason. “They’ve had something taken away from them in a way that they’ve never had it taken away from them before.

“And I think the true meaning of, you know, play for something bigger than yourself and play like it’s your last... Because you never know when it is going to be your last. I think those are all proven topics now that we, as coaches, can hopefully use for our athletes or our athletes can use for their own motivation, you know, day in and day out.”

Considering that they had to wait longer than most of the programs around the country, paired with the opportunity to play against the No. 6 team in the country, those on Georgia Southern’s roster are likely reeling to get to the dirt.

The Eagles’ fifth year centerfielder Mekhia Freeman led the team’s hitting efforts last season.

A member of the Sun Belt’s 2021 Pre-Season All-Conference team, Freeman was averaging .403 last season and had lifted five home runs out of the park, while also batting in 11 runs.

Freeman is a product of Newnan, Georgia – the same town in which Charla Echols, Florida’s hitting leader, hails from. There must be something in the water.

From the circle, senior righty Rylee Waldrep will likely be the weekend ace for the Eagles. Waldrep posted a 2.52 ERA behind 58.33 innings of action in 2020.

Florida will battle the Eagles a total of three times through the course of the busy weekend.

The other pair of games will come against the Charlotte 49ers, who enter Gainesville with three games under their belt.

The Niners kicked of their 2021 campaign with a three-game series against Appalachian State last weekend where they picked up the series advantage behind two wins.

Though it’s still early in the season and Charlotte has faced just one opponent, very little has silenced the 49ers bats through the opening trio of games.

As a roster, Charlotte posts a .333 batting average. However, that same roster possesses

three hitters averaging .400 or better, with sophomore Cori Henderson fielding hits over 50 percent of the time behind a .556 average.

Fortunately for the Gators, the 49ers don’t appear to be a heavy hitting team. Of the team’s 29 hits through three games, just seven have gone for extra bags and no one has sent one over the fence to date.

Meanwhile, junior bellcow pitcher Lindsey Walljasper has been a force in the circle for Charlotte.

The right-handed ace has two wins under her belt this year and has dished out 15 innings of action. However, Walljasper’s mere four strikeouts indicates that the 49ers likely pitch for contact and rely heavily on the field.

However, Walljasper probably hasn’t faced a lineup as talented as Florida’s.

Keeping pitches low in the zone will be the key for Walljasper if she wants to keep the Gators’ bats at bay. And all eyes will be on Florida’s lineup following its shaky outing against the Dolphins on Wednesday night.

All five of the No. 6-ranked Gators’ matchups can be listened to live on FloridaGators.com this weekend.