Florida Gators
Dodge ACC/SEC Invitational
Another senior class ready to embark on life's next chapter
Thursday, April 23, 2015 | Women's Golf, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – For Keith Carodine, the event represents something of a rite of passage.
Carodine, senior associate athletics director for the Office of Student Life, thumbed through the program following Thursday's luncheon honoring UF's graduating seniors. Each had their own page and action shot. Each had written their own Gators story.
Carodine, like all UF administrators, coaches, support staff and teammates could relate to just about every one of them.
* Basketball player Kayla Lewis: “She competed this year as a post-grad.”
* Distance runner Macy Huskey: “Knew her family long before she got here. I remember her as a toddler.”
* Golfer Eric Banks: “Overcame open-heart surgery. Talk about courage and perseverance.”
* Thrower Jayla Bostic: “I remember the coach calling me and saying he didn't know much about her, only that she was tall, long and going to be really good.”
* Volleyball player Holly Pole: “She's working in our accounting office now.”
* Swimmer Matthew Thompson: “Just got a job at Northwestern.”
You get the idea.
All told, 69 student-athletes are set to graduate in the spring or finish work toward their degrees this summer. Woven in that number are players who helped win 24 conference championships, nine national titles and received 50 all-league academic honors.
“Now they're all grown up and are ready for that next chapter,” Carodine said.
The keynote speaker of the event, always a former athlete, was 2013 graduate Kelsey Horton (pictured right), a four-year standout on the UF softball team. She recalled being in the very same Gator Room for her senior luncheon two years ago and listening to the message from that day's speaker, former gymnast Ashley Kerr.
The words resonated.
“When Ashley spoke about never having to let go of being a Gator student-athlete, I always thought of that when I was trying to fill that void as I looked at who I was going to be after softball,” Horton said. “Well, what I found out is that you can still be that Gator athlete and also be who else it is you're going to be.”
Horton went to Auburn to start pharmacy school, stayed there a year and transferred back to UF. Last June, she asked for three days off from her summer job in Tampa so she could come back and watch the Gators face Alabama in the championship series of the NCAA Women's College World Series.
She sat with friends in a midtown restaurant that roared as her former teammates won the program's first national title.
"It was so exciting," Horton said.
And now it's time for these young men and women – these Gator athletes – to move on to the next chapter of their lives. For them, that's exciting.
They'll leave, though, knowing the book on their UF experiences will be there to go back and read forever.
