Q&A With Florida Gators AD Stricklin On Full-Attendance, Tennis Championship and (No) Spring Game
Updated: May 28, 2021
Scott Stricklin likens it to the first morning in the Colorado mountains. It’s been a couple of years since you last visited, you’ve made the long trip out west, you get there late and even knowing you’ve finally arrived, still feel like you’re waiting; waiting for the moment. Then the next morning, it comes. The sun rises, you step outside, see the mountains and take a deep breath of mountain air.
“It’s like ‘ah, that’s right, I love this.’”
That’s how it felt for the Florida Gators athletic director to walk into Katie Seashole Pressley Stadium this past weekend. The No. 4 Gators softball team won all three games in their regional, easily advancing to the Super Regional this coming weekend, which they will also host.
For a team that’s 45-9, that wasn’t too shocking. But as Stricklin walked back through the gates and was met with a cacophony of noise, excitement and anticipation, it was clear—fans were back in the stands. And that was the moment worth waiting for.
"That’s what this feels like it's kind of like, you know that's kind of like walking into the softball stadium last week, is kind of getting reacquainted with that feeling of having people in the stands, and being able to enjoy that.”
Stricklin, the Gators AD since 2016, admits he was never truly worried about the possibility of getting fans back in the stands after a year in which the global pandemic COVID-19 shut down spring sports in 2020 and severely limited attendance in fall sports of 2020, continuing into spring sports in 2021.
This past weekend at the softball regional was the first Gator athletic event since early March 2020 that has been allowed to host full attendance from fans.
“The doctors and everybody were telling us we're going to get there so I don't think anybody was surprised that we're there.”
Speaking with GatorBait Magazine, Stricklin recapped getting back to this point, highlights the struggles and successes of the past year, talks the football spring game that didn't happen and finally reflects on seeing the Gators mens tennis team win their first National Championship.
GatorBait: When did you realize, ‘hey we can open these games up (softball and upcoming baseball regionals) to full attendance’?
Scott Stricklin: I think you know, obviously when the CDC made their changes last week, the ball really got rolling. It seemed like we were gonna be close but weren’t sure we were gonna get there this school year. But once the CDC made that decision…[we knew] it was coming quick.
GB: Did you can an appreciation this past year how much of a difference it actually makes having the fans there?
Stricklin: I haven’t sat and looked at people's records in a way to see if the home records decreased this year. They probably did because the crowd does make an impact. Anyone who was in the Swamp last fall with limited capacity understands the impact the fans make.
GB: What has this past year been like for you, just kind of having to navigate the changing landscape and dealing with the medical aspect of it as well?
Stricklin: We were blessed to be able to lean on UF Health and our sports medicine staff, you know Stacy Higgins and Duke Werner and the people working for them did a great job, so we really it was probably the biggest, the biggest challenge we faced from an administrative standpoint was making sure that we were taking care of our people who were kind of on the front line, so to speak, as far as the protocols and the testing and doing everything to keep our athletes safe.
And then just the mental grind of everything for everybody. That was probably the most challenging part.
We have really talented people and they do a great job and you never doubted that; but it took a toll on me because it was such a unique year and wasn't always a lot of fun. But, you also look back and you see, you know, we played all these sports, and everybody was safe and healthy. We're able to kind of navigate it appropriately. We’re all kind of—pride’s not the right word—a sense of accomplishment that we got through that and gratefulness that we’re on the other side of that.
GB: The fact that vaccinations have been going on at the stadium, is that what played into the decision to not have a spring game there?
Stricklin: There were so many unknowns. We started spring ball a month before everybody else did so January was when we had to make a decision on what that was gonna look like. And at that time, case counts were sky high. We were hoping to be able to play our spring sports, and all of our focus and energy was on, ‘let’s play games on outside competition that matters.'
We're going to have more sports going on at that time of year than ever before because volleyball and soccer had been pushed in addition to everything else. And the stress that took our staff, in addition to the fact that we were using, at that time, our facility was being used at that time for testing and then vaccines.
So there was a lot of murkiness. If we had made that decision a month later, we probably would have had a spring game. But in January, when the decision had to be made, it just, it didn’t feel right.
If our practice, if our spring practice had been March-April, we probably would have had a spring game.
GB: Getting to be down in Orlando this past weekend for the tennis National Champioship, what is it like just to experience the first one for a sport?
Stricklin: It's pretty special. It's really special because you're proud for the school but you’re really proud for the people involved, the coaches—Brian, Tanner and then Coach P. And the players, you watch for several years kind of grow and go through last year when they were really good and had their season cut short and didn’t get a chance to come back and be at that stage this year.
You saw a lot of, I went down there, and a lot of Gator tennis fans. We've got a pretty good collection of people even that are former players or they just love the sport. People I see at our matches all the time, they’re down there getting to enjoy that, see the team, celebrate with them. That was really special. And they never get old, I don’t care what sport it’s in. You know when you're the last one standing and they bring that trophy out and there's no more games left and you won the last one, that’s a hard feeling to replicate.
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