Walton Zooms Past 400 Wins With Eye on Ultimate Prize
Thursday, February 17, 2011 | Softball, Scott Carter
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – There were two games to coach the next day and another one on Sunday, but you could not have blamed Gators softball coach Tim Walton if he had wanted to drive over to Tampa on Friday night for a bottle of wine and a famous filet mignon from Bern's.
The Gators opened the 2011 season in Clearwater on Friday with a pair of runaway wins over Marshall and Florida Gulf Coast. Two wins to open his sixth season at UF may not seem like much, but if you add them to the previous 398 of his coaching career, Walton had 400 reasons to celebrate.
So how did he spend his night? He had Carrabba's at the team hotel. Not a bad choice, but certainly no Bern's.
“I think that's a great milestone for him,'' senior pitcher Stephanie Brombacher said. “He's not the type of person that is going to celebrate it.''
Since taking over the program in 2006, Walton's won-loss record has soared compared to the first portion of his career. He got his first head coaching job at Wichita State in 2003, quickly building the Shockers into an NCAA Tournament team.
A successful three-year stint at Wichita State helped him land the job at Florida, where the program has reached previously unknown heights under his direction.
A fact: Florida lost 25 games in Walton's first season. Another fact: the Gators have lost just 20 games the past four seasons combined following a 7-0 win at Jacksonville on Wednesday.
Walton took a brief glimpse back at his journey earlier this week at UF's softball complex.
“The first four years [of my career] were probably pretty typical for a coach,'' Walton said. “The fifth year, something clicked, the sixth year was magical, the seventh year unbelievable. We got better, but not only did we get better, we just didn't lose.
“That's more how the numbers have just, boom, shot up.''
Walton's Gators won 70 games in 2008 – the magical year of walk-off home runs and late-inning comebacks – a feat that might not be accomplished again due to new NCAA scheduling guidelines that have cut down on the number of games you can play. They only lost five times the entire season.
Florida followed that up by going 63-5 in 2009 and 49-10 a season ago. Florida's 182 wins the past three seasons are easily the most in the Southeastern Conference, which is still seeking its first softball national title since the NCAA sanctioned a championship tournament in 1982.
Add all the wins up, and Walton is comfortably at the top of the school record books. He now has a 281-67 record at UF, 404-131 overall. Since UF's softball program started play in 1997, neither of the previous two coaches – Larry Ray (1997-2000) nor Karen Johns (2001-05) – cracked 200 wins leading the Gators.
Walton credits his quick ascension up the win list to all the good players he has written onto the lineup card and making changes to his approach over the years.
“The 70-win season was really special because we were doing it with freshmen. We started a bunch of freshmen. I thought we were going to have that kind of year, but it wasn't going to be until the next year. Everything went right.
“We were just doing some things that were unbelievable. You can't script that.''
While Walton has built a reputation as one of college softball's most successful coaches, he certainly didn't plan it that way. He was certain his future was as a baseball coach, the game that delivered his most memorable win as a pitcher when he won the deciding game of the 1994 College World Series against Georgia Tech, lifting Oklahoma to its first national title since 1951.
But after playing in the Phillies organization for three years, Walton changed direction and became an assistant coach at his alma mater.
His wife, former Oral Roberts basketball player Samantha Rhoten, paved the way for Walton's crossover into softball. Walton met Samantha while she was still playing and saw the same dedication from a female student-athlete that he had during his baseball career.
From listening to Walton talk about his decision to change fields, Rhoten should probably get credit for at least a few of those 400-plus wins.
“If I didn't get married, I wouldn't be here today,'' he said. “I wouldn't be a softball coach. I know that.
“It more or less came down to the financial resources. I was in the baseball grind like all young former baseball players who go and coach. I always saw myself as a baseball coach. Then I got into it, and I didn't see anything at the end of the tunnel. There was nothing. It was a grind. I wasn't afraid to work hard, but it didn't appear that I was going to be able to be rewarded.''
When Walton took his first job as an assistant softball coach making $21,000 a year, he thought, “I finally made it.''
Walton is making it much better these days thanks to a better salary, a team ranked fifth in the nation, and a recruiting class considered the best in the country by ESPN.com.
But he wants more. Milestones like reaching 400 wins in less than a decade are nice to talk about when you retire, but winning an NCAA title is what he really covets. He knows the feeling as a player and he hopes his players get to experience the same.
Walton has adjusted his approach over the years to hopefully reach that ultimate goal.
“I've done about a 180 in my coaching,'' he said. “You come in and you are really hard on the players. Now, all the players know the expectations. I don't have to lay down the foundation. They know what's going to go on.''
Brombacher, a senior, can see the difference when the Gators arrive at the ballpark to practice.
“My freshman year, he was really hard on us,'' she said. “He was tough on us and taught us how he wanted everything run. I think he has relaxed a little. He's not always enforcing, enforcing, enforcing. He let's the older players enforce some now.''
As long as the wins keep adding up, Walton plans to continue his evolution chasing that national championship. His teams are known as power-hitting and power-pitching machines.
That won't change. But he hopes to add more to the mix with one of his most versatile teams.
“We're getting ready to transition,'' he said. “We haven't won a championship. We haven't won it because we've been one dimensional. We're making those transitions. You've got to hit for average, you've got to hit for power and you've got to be fast.''
