Life comes at you fast. OK, not as fast as a Mouse Holloway relay team (more on that later), but the old adage about how time flies seems so applicable when we’re closing in on July and our compilation for the year in review.
With the start of the summer comes our look back at memorable moments and outstanding achievements by Florida teams and individual student-athletes. Most of the choices are obvious, while some require context and perspective. The rankings, of course, are completely subjective and lend themselves to debate.
Have at it.
10) Encouraging trajectory on the pitch
No one in the soccer program, Coach Samantha Bohan included, was popping any champagne corks after going 6-5-6 last fall, with a 2-4-4 mark in Southeastern Conference play. But guess what? It was UF’s first winning season since 2019. Those half-dozen victories represented half the total number of wins the previous three seasons combined, with one of the losses a 1-0 setback on the road against fifth-ranked and eventual national champion Florida State, almost a year to the day the Seminoles demolished the Gators 5-0 in Gainesville. Progress.
Bohan arrived by way of Division II Embry-Riddle in 2022 and inherited a roster bereft of talent following five wheel-spinning seasons under two previous coaches. Her first squad went 2-14-1 during a culture reset. Her second team was headlined by some young players who figure prominently in her rebuild. This fall, the Gators welcome back two with 2023 All-SEC honors – first-team Daviana Vaka and second-team/SEC Freshman of the Year Megan Hinnenkamp.
Here’s betting the third season follows suit.
9) Signing Day Happy Meal for K-Rae
The first McDonald’s All-America team for girls was rolled out in 2002. The first McDonald’s All American to sign with the Gators was Ronni Williams in 2013. The second was Laila Reynolds in ’22.
That’s two over the first two decades of the honor’s existence.
Well, UF coach Kelly Rae Finley bagged two in the ’23 class alone, signing point guard Liv McGill and forward Me’Arah O’Neal as part of her ’24-25 freshman class. McGill, out of Minneapolis, was the No. 7 overall prospect in her class, making the playmaker the highest-ranked recruit in program history. O’Neal, a 6-4 forward from Houston and daughter of Basketball Hall-of-Famer Shaquille O’Neal, was a consensus top-30 player. Those two will team with Reynolds to give the Gators a trio of Big Macs – more than the previous 22 years combined – in the upcoming season.
Worth noting: Another incoming freshman, forward Kylee Kitts from Orlando, was rated a top-25 player in the 2025 cycle (and probably a favorite to be on the McD team next spring), but opted to reclassify to ’24 and already is on campus working out with the Gators.
8) Taming the eventual champion Tigers
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In one of the most electric gymnastic environments in Exactech Arena/O’Connell Center history, the fifth-ranked Gators upset second-ranked LSU on Feb. 23 in dramatic, walk-off fashion in front of a sellout crowd to keep UF’s regular-season league title hope alive.
When Super Senior Payton Richards had to stop mid-routine on floor due to an injury it left Leanne Wong, with her team’s final turn of the night, needing a solid performance to push the Gators past the Tigers on the scoreboard.
She went beyond solid. Wong nailed a 10.
In doing so, Wong not only sent the O’Dome crowd of 8,884 into hysterics, but also gave the junior All American a “Gym Slam” of 10s on each apparatus for her career, just the fourth Gators and 15th in NCAA history to achieve that milestone.
For UF, that team win looked even better two months later when LSU won its first NCAA team championship at Fort Worth, Texas.
7) Golden’s shiny second season
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The men’s basketball team lost three of its first four SEC games, including the league opener at home against Kentucky. Coach Todd Golden didn’t panic, but he also knew his ’23-24 was much better than his inaugural ’22-23 Gators’ squad and needed to start playing like it.
And it did.
The Gators found their groove, thanks in great part to a trio of transfers – guards Zyon Pullin and Walter Clayton Jr., plus forward Tyrese Samuel – that helped lead the team to 10 victories during a 13-game stretch, including road wins at Kentucky and a sweep of the season series against eventual Final Four participant Alabama, both by blowouts. The second of those lopsided affairs came in the quarterfinals of the SEC Tournament in Nashville, Tenn. UF followed that one by coming from 18 points down to shock Texas A&M in the tourney semifinals, not only avenging a last-second, one-point loss at College Station earlier in the season, but ending a five-game losing skid in the series.
The 95-90 triumph put the Gators in the SEC championship game for the first time since 2014. They lost that title tilt to Auburn, but five days later were in the NCAA Tournament for only the second time in five years, erasing a 13-point deficit with less than four minutes against Colorado only to drop a 102-100 heartbreaker on a buzzer-beater with 1.7 seconds to play.
Golden’s third team will return five of his nine top rotational players, including Clayton, an All-SEC selection, and is being talked about as preseason Top 25 fodder. Florida hoops is relevant on a national scale again.
6) A double back-to-back
When Florida’s men and women claimed team titles at the 2023 SEC championships it marked the first time since 1993 years the Gators had swept both crowns.
Yes, 30 years.
How long did it take them to repeat that repeat feat?
Just one year.
Anthony Nesty continued on his conference coaching rampage by leading the men to their 12thconsecutive SEC title with a NCAA-record 1,584 points. The women, ranked third, claimed their first SEC back-to-back since 1996-97, broke eight school records and also set a NCAA record with 1,391.5 points.
All told, UF smashed a collective 40 records, including the American mark in the 200 men’s medley relay’s set by Adam Chaney, Julian Smith, Scotty Buff and Macguire McDuff, who clocked a 1:21.66. Josh Liendo won two individual events, the 100 fly and 100 free, and was part of three championship relays. On the women’s side, freshman Bella Sims won the 200 individual medley, 200 backstroke, 200 butterfly and earned gold in three relays.
At the 2024 NCAA championships, Liendo and the aforementioned 200 medley team helped the Gators take home third place, while the women, led by Sims’s titles in the 200 and 500 free, also checked in third.
If Florida’s men run their consecutive SEC championship streak to 13 next year, it’ll be a feat that probably bears a higher spot on our annual list, considering Texas, with five of the last 10 national championships, officially joins the conference July 1.
5) LAX to the Final Four
The lacrosse team lost its first two matches of the season, falling at Loyola Maryland and week later at sixth-ranked North Carolina.
The next time the Gators lost was three months later – a span of 21 games that included an unbeaten run through the American Athletic Conference regular season and tournament – against reigning NCAA champion and No. 1 Northwestern at the Final Four.
UF, led by first-team All-America attack and point machine Maggi Hall, opened the NCAA Tournament by avenging the defeat against the Tar Heels, then followed that with an upset of host and fifth-seeded Virginia, thus blazing a trail through the powerhouses of the Atlantic Coast Conference. When the Gators defeated fourth-seeded Maryland 15-9 in the quarterfinals – by scoring the first nine goals of the game, no less – they’d secured the second Final Four berth in program history.
Coach Amanda O’Leary, who has led the program since its inception in 2010, has guided Florida to each of the last 13 NCAA Tournaments. The Gators, who fell 15-11 to the eight-time champion Wildcats, finished fourth in the final national poll. In 2025, UF will join the Big 12 Conference.
4) XC goes the distance in SEC
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Women’s cross country became a thing at Florida in 1973. Over the next four decades, the Gators placed in the top 10 at the NCAA championships just twice (7th in ’81 and again in ’09) and claimed just four individual SEC champs through 2021.
In January ’23, Will Palmer was hired as XC coach by way of his assistant’s post at Alabama. He inherited a runner by the name of Parker Valby, who he had watched win the ’22 SEC women’s crown and then tutored to a 5,000-meter title at 2023 NCAA outdoors championships.
Last fall, Valby ripped the competition at the SEC cross-country championships in Columbia, S.C., by running the 6k course in 18:37.5, becoming the Gators’ first back-to-back conference champ since Becki Wells in ’95-96. Her time was 34 seconds better than the second-place finisher, 54 seconds ahead of her fourth-place teammate, Flomena Asekol, and another 1:19 ahead of eighth-place Amelia Mazza-Downie, also of UF. Those were the three big scorers for the Gators – who also had two more runners (Elise Thorner and Allison Wilson) in the top 19 – to give Florida just its seventh SEC cross-country title in program history and first since 2012.
Three weeks later, the women placed an all-time best fifth at the NCAA championships, with Valby claiming the individual title, the first in program history.
Regarding Valby, rest assured, she will be further celebrated in this space. We’ll talk about her some more (in this installment and the next).
3) Gave OU everything it wanted in OKC
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For Tim Walton, the turning point of the ’24 softball season came in the last week of April when the Gators gave up 12 runs in an inning and were mercy-ruled on their homefield by rival Florida State, then just two days later run-ruled SEC rival Georgia in the first game of a weekend road series. Two days after that win, UF kicked in a streak of 11 straight victories, including a three-game sweep to the SEC Tournament title (the program’s first in five years), and rolled into NCAA play as a top-8 seed.
Florida, playing at home, took care of business in the postseason, riding the red-hot bats of Skylar Wallace and SEC Player of the Year Jocelyn Erickson, along with the tireless arm of freshman phenom Keagan Rothrock. UF swept its regional in three games, defeated Baylor in the best-of-three Super Regional play and rolled to the Women’s College World Series for the 12th time in program history.
In Oklahoma City, the Gators reached the NCAA semifinals and in smashing fashion bludgeoned three-time reigning champion Oklahoma 9-3, halting the Sooners’ record 20-game WCWS winning streak. The two teams met again a day later, with a berth in the championship series on the line. The Gators had a three-run lead midway through the game, but mighty OU (and its built-in homefield advantage) rallied to tie the game, the won it 6-5 with a walk-off homer in extra innings.
It was a sudden and emotional end to the season and magnificent career of Wallace, one of the greatest ever to wear the uniform. But it was a season that redirected the program — preseason projections had UF finishing seventh in the SEC — and reset the bar back to to the level of excellence Walton established over his 19 seasons.
2) Postseason second wind
Florida’s baseball team, looking to build on the 2023 trip to the College World Series championship series, entered the 2024 season ranked No. 2 in the country. The Gators, despite a second consecutive season-for-ages by record-setting slugger Jac Caglianone, didn’t play like the No. 2 team, however. Not for a long, long time.
At 28-27 – including 13-17 in league play to finish tied for seventh – they were one of the last teams to be receive an at-large berth to the NCAA Tournament. UF was tabbed as the No. 3 seed at Oklahoma State’s regional. UF won four of five in Stillwater, ousting higher seeds Nebraska and host OSU to advance to the Super Region round at No. 6 Clemson.
The Gators swept the Tigers, clinching their ninth CWS berth under Coach Kevin Sullivan with a pulsating 11-10 walk-off victory on a bases-loaded, two-run single by Michael Robertson in the 13th inning, thus shutting down (and up) a lot disgruntled baseball fans on social media.
Florida was the only unseeded team to reach Omaha, yet the Gators bounced back from a rain-delayed first-round 3-2 loss to No. 3 seed Texas A&M (a game that started at 11:16 p.m. ET), then stuck around by winning elimination games against 10-seed North Carolina State and 2-seed Kentucky before running out of gas in a 6-0 loss against A&M on a day they had to play twice. UF, basically, was spent, but took its fans on fun-filled ride that concluded in the place where every team in the country hopes its season ends.
1) Another Mouse Trap at NCAAs
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We at FloridaGators.com are not in charge of commissioning statues, nor are the UF fans who flooded social media timelines June 8 with orders to commence sculpting a Mike Holloway likeness to be planted outside Pressly Stadium after the Gators won their third consecutive NCAA outdoor men’s track and field championship and 12th under Holloway.
What was amazing, though not totally unexpected, was that Florida hosted the SEC meet for the first time since in 15 years in May and placed fourth. A month later, Holloway and troops were hoisting the hardware in Eugene, Oregon, while the UF women (third at the conference meet) finished second by four points.
The Gators did not win a single gold medal at the meet. They won on sheer depth, as seven different athletes, highlighted by Robert Gregory’s second place in the 200 meters, scored in individual events, with the 4×100 and 4×400 relay teams accounting for another 11 points. When the final tally was in, the scoreboard showed Florida with 41 points to Auburn’s 40. The party was on, as Florida extended its streak of capturing at least one NCAA team title over each of the last 15 complete seasons.
The next night, the UF women finished runner-up to Arkansas, 63-59, but not before Grace Stark won the 100-meter hurdles (the first Gator to take gold in that event in 32 years) and Valby completed her outdoors distance double by shattering the NCAA mark in the 5,000 meters two nights after setting the meet record in the 10,000. Claire Bryant finished second in the long jump.
What a year.
* Coming Wednesday: Top 10 (The Athletes)