Gymnastics coach Jenny Rowland shares an embrace with NCAA floor champion Alicia Boren, who will graduate this summer with a degree in women's studies.
Gator Graduates Get Hawkins Center Sendoff
Thursday, April 25, 2019 | General, Gymnastics, Chris Harry
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The weeks that followed her team's stunning elimination in the regional round of the NCAA Gymnastics Championships were difficult for Coach Jenny Rowland. One can only imagine the letdown associated with the program's first absence from the sport's final weekend since the 2000 season.
Yet, there's a saying that's become popular the last few weeks. Something about using the lessons of disappointment to find the way to a place unreachable by any other means.
Think Virginia men's basketball. Think Tony Bennett.
Rowland did.
"I'm going to use Coach Bennett's words," Rowland said Thursday, invoking another quote that helped UVA's inspiring one-year turn-around from epic collapse to national champions. "I've been watching his videos. He called what happened to his team last year a 'painful gift.' "
Rowland relayed as much from the back of the Tom and Jane Johnson Family Atrium, the grand entrance to ExactechArena, where the University Athletic Association held its Annual Spring-Summer Graduation Luncheon for student-athletes ticketed for UF spring and summer commencement ceremonies.
Moments earlier, Rowland had draped a sash around the neck of senior Alicia Boren, who on April 19 shook off the dispiritedness of failing to go to nationals with her team and exited her remarkable UF career by winning the individual title in floor exercise with a 9.95, becoming just the third Gator in program history to win the NCAA floor crown.
Thursday she was saluted by her advisor, Kelly Bradley, and cheered by her fellow Gators from all sports. In August, she'll graduate with a degree in women's studies and then — like the rest on hand at the O'Dome— embark on the next chapter of her life.
Whatever and wherever that might be.
"I'm kind of overwhelmed, I'm not going to lie," Boren said. "But I also feel very supported. These people here say, 'You don't have to know exactly what we're going to do after this, but we'll always be here for you.' That takes a little bit of the stress away from it all."
Whatever the case, the folks from Hawkins Center always will be a resource.
"This is our Super Bowl," senior associate athletic director Jeff Guin said.
Guin heads up operations at The Hawkins Center, the academic arm of the UAA. The building is occupied by hundreds of success stories like Boren's. The luncheon is a chance to recognize those stories and give each a special sendoff.
All told, 88 student-athletes who will take the graduation walk in May or August were honored. Of the five dozen or so that will graduate next week, 10 were part of national-championship teams in baseball, women's tennis, indoor and outdoor track and field, four won individual titles in tennis, track and field, plus swimming, and five — Brooke Austin (women's tennis), Kelly Barnhill (softball), KeAndre Bates (Indoor Track), Haley Hicklen and Sydney Pirreca (both lacrosse) — were named conference athlete of the Year in their respective sport.
More numbers: 14 will graduate with honors, three will receiver their master's degrees and seven will remain at UF next season and compete in the 2019-20 athletic year as grad students.
No wonder Guin was smiling.
"The thing that's great is to see is the special bond between the academic support team and our student-athletes," Guin said. "They spend four years and a lot of time with each other and they do so in a different capacity. They're not getting on them about what happened on the court, in the pool, or on the field, but how they're progressing in their lives. Coaches, of course, do the same thing, but each relationship is obviously special and something you can sense when they talk about it."
For Rowland, one last moment with Boren — one week removed from winning that title — put an exclamation mark on a year the coach won't forget for reasons both good and the bad.
In the end, it was all painfully good.
"We just had individual meetings with Alicia and I didn't go where I wanted to go because I knew we'd have been blubbering messes," Rowland said. "She's been a great ambassador for our sport and our university. She is a legend. Everybody here knows who Alicia Boren is. She has made her mark on this program, this school and community and will forever be remembered."
Like a bunch of her classmates.
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