Kaylan Marckese braces for the approaching celebration after her three saves and penalty kick to advance Florida at the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
2018-19 Year in Review: Top 10 Individual Moments
Wednesday, June 19, 2019 | Soccer
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A handful of the instances profiled in our "Top 10 Team Moments" file Tuesday will have some overlap to the second part of the look-back at the 2018-19 University of Florida athletic year.
And that's OK.
Relive, enjoy and appreciate these individual highlights, all of which, of course, had team ramifications.
1 Look out, world!
Grant Holloway (center) avenged an upset loss to Kentucky's Daniel Roberts (right) in the SEC's meet with a record-setting victory in the 110 hurdles at the NCAA Championships in June.
Last year, this top space was occupied by Caeleb Dressel, who made history in the swimming pool at the 2018 NCAA Championships, and in doing so foreshadowed what figures to be global persona by the time the 2020 Olympics in Japan roll around. While there next summer, hopefully Dressel will find time to strike a pose with Grant Holloway. All Holloway did at the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships was pop a 12.98 in the 110-meter high hurdles to win the individual title — upending Kentucky's Daniel Roberts, who upset Holloway at the SEC meet barely a month earlier — and become the first in collegiate track and field history to win the indoor and outdoor high-hurdles event three years in a row. His winning time also broke the 40-year-old collegiate record held by Maryland icon Renaldo Nehemiah. Holloway, the junior from Chesapeake, Va., also ran the third leg of UF's national-champion 4x100 relay team that alongside Raymond Ekevwo, Hakim Sani Brown and Ryan Clark set the collegiate record in a time of 37.97. Oh, he also anchored the Gators' 4x400 team that finished second to Texas Tech in a time school-record of 2:59.60, with Holloway's split — get this — the fastest in the field at 43.75. All in all, it was quite the way to wrap his Florida career, as Holloway, whose eight individual NCAA titles moved him past Marquis Dendy (seven from 2012-15) for tops among all-time Gators, announced after the meet that he would bypass his senior season to focus on international competition, most notably the World Championships this summer and Olympics in 2020. Maybe Dressel and Holloway can do an alumni Gator chomp for the ages.
A case can be made that all the really good late-season stuff — namely, the blowout road win at Florida State and equally lopsided rout of seventh-ranked Michigan a month later in the Peach Bowl — would not have happened without the Gators' big home win Oct. 6 against fifth-ranked LSU. On that day, the "Swamp" was alive with its biggest crowd in three years. The fans came to get loud. The Tigers took a 19-14 lead with just over 11 minutes to go when quarterback Feleipe Franks took the Gators on a nine-play, 75-yard march that lasted just 2 minutes, 26 seconds and was capped by Lamical Perine's two-yard, go-ahead touchdown run. The potential two-point coversion to push Florida's lead to a field goal failed, keeping the UF lead at 20-19 with 8:48 remaining. Both teams traded punts over the next five-plus minutes, with LSU getting the ball at its 12 with 2:21 to go, needing only a field goal to win. On third-and-4, Tigers quarterback Joe Burrow dropped and threw into the flat, where defensive back Brad Stewart was in perfect coverage, intercepted the pass and raced untouched into the end zone, as Spurrier/Florida Field went berserk. Just like that, everyone in Gator Nation knew Stewart's name. Also, just like that, Florida returned to college football national consciousness and rode the momentum back into a season-ending four-game winning streak and place in the final Associated Press top 10.
What happened June 1 wasn't nearly as significant as the three-week run-up to it all, but it may have been one of the most truly poignant moments in UF sports — and not just this season, but in several seasons. Senior pitcher Kelly Barnhill started her 11th straight postseason game, this time against Alabama in a Women's College World Series elimination game at Oklahoma City. To that point, Barnhill had recorded a staggering 66.1 of UF's previous 69.1 innings in the SEC and NCAA Tournaments. She didn't have it that day, though. Alabama bucked Barnhill for six runs through the first eight batters, prompting Coach Tim Walton to pull the program's all-time strikeouts leader and No. 3 career victories and ERA performer. The circumstances, though, did not sit well with Walton, even as the Crimson Tide poured it on against UF's relievers on the way to an 11-0 lead. That's when Walton went to Barnhill in the dugout and told her she was going back in the game — for one pitch. "I'll cry again," she said. "It'll be worth it," he said. She did. It was. The pitch was a strike and Barnhill exited her magnificent career the right way: to a standing ovation at the Mecca of Softball. What a scene.
4 Brooks second at NCAA Championships
Junior All-American Sierra Brooks' finish at the NCAA Championships was the best by a UF player in 16 years.
Junior Sierra Brooks began the final day of the NCAA Women's Golf Championships with a one stroke lead. Unfortunately, that slight margin was over Arkansas' Maria Fassi, who just happened to be playing on her home course at Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, home to the Razorbacks. Brooks had a roller-coaster final round of eight birdies, four bogeys and two doubles — good for an even-par score of 73 — while Fassi shot a 5-under 68 on the last day to win the individual title by four strokes. Still, the runner-up finish by Brooks was the best by a UF player at the NCAA championships since Andrea VanderLende placed second in 2003, and second-best since Page Dunlap won the individual medal honors in leading the Gators to a second straight national title in 1986. Dunlap won what is today the program's loan championship the year after Deb Richard was runner-up in '85, as Brooks became just the fourth UF woman to place at NCAAs.
5 Gators tumble, but Boren flips to floor title
Senior Alicia Boren went on in style ... and as a champion.
The UF team's chances at a national title fell from the beam two weeks before at regionals in Oregon, but that didn't deter senior Alicia Boren from exiting her splendid career in style. At the NCAA Championships in Fort Worth, Texas, Boren posted a 9.95 in the first floor rotation during the semifinal round. The score held the rest of the way and Boren became the third Gator to win floor at the NCAA meet, joining Maria Anz (1984) and Kytra Hunter (2015), while making UF the only program in the nation to claim at least one individual title over the previous nine seasons. "To have the opportunity to be here is an awesome ending," Boren said. "It is not how our team wanted to end the season, but to be here to represent the Gators is an honor." UF coach Jenny Rowland called Boren, the 18-time All-American from Franklin Lakes, N.J. a "legend" who left her mark on the program. "She'll forever be remembered."
6 David jumps into history Yanis David became the first UF woman to win a long-jump title in program history.
Talk about saving the best for last. Yanis David didn't just have her career-best long jump in the NCAA Outdoor Championships, she had the best three of her three career. The last of 6.84 meters (22 feet, 5.25 inches) was five inches better than Northwestern State's Jasmyn Steels and gave UF its first long jump title in women's program history. A senior from Lamentine, Guadaloupe, David concluded her career trailing only LSU's Sheila Echols (6.94 meters in 1987) and Ole Miss' Brittney Reese (6.93 in 2008) for the longest jumps recorded in NCAA Outdoors history. Worth noting: both Echols and Reese went on to win gold medals in the Olympics. Before the meet was done, David finished second in the triple jump with a leap of 13.93 meters (45 feet, 8.5 inches) and tallied 18 of sixth-place UF's 32 team points. She is the only woman in the history of the collegiate all-time top-10 in both the long and triple jumps.
7 Hudson takes "Senior Night" to heart
Jalen Hudson had it going on his "Senior Night."
Jalen Hudson led the Gators in scoring during the 2017-18 season at 15.5 points per game and afterward waded into the NBA underclassmen waters before opting to return to UF for a fifth-year senior season. Five games into the year, he was benched. A week before Christmas he was averaging 5.4 points per game. When the calendar flipped to February, Hudson was barely over six points a game when something flipped. An internal switch, perhaps. After hitting double figures just twice over a 17-game stretch, Hudson finished his career with 13 of 14 double-digit games, including a sensational swan-song home game when he poured in 33 points in an emotional 79-78 overtime loss to 10th-ranked and eventual league champion LSU. Hudson went 11-for-21 from the floor over 39 minutes and at one point during a 15-minute second half and overtime stretch scored 27 of his team's 30 points. "I gave it all I had," Hudson said afterward. "I wanted to go out with a win." The Gators, eventually, made up for the defeat by upsetting the Tigers in the SEC Tournament, a huge win that allowed Hudson to finish his career in the NCAA Tournament, a third straight for the program under Coach Mike White.
8
Record-setting Ronbeck in ALC clincher
Don't look now, but Lindsey Ronbeck may have just scored again against Cincinnati.
As lopsided as Florida's 25-6 plastering of Cincinnati looked on April 27, the box-score line of senior attack Lindsey Ronbeck shredded the Bearcats for a school single-record nine goals, breaking the mark of eight that she set three separate times in her career. The four-time All-Region selection from Manhasset, N.Y., finished the season with 89 goals and 18 assists for 107 points, setting the mark for most by a player in the program's 10-year history.
9 Vale's victory on Court 5Sophomore Duarte Vale exults as his Tennessee opponent's shot goes wide at match point, giving Vale a grueling 10-8 third-set tiebreaker victory and the Gators a 4-2 win in their NCAA Super Regional over the Volunteers.
The distinction just as well could have gone to a couple teammates, but it was Duarte Vale who remained on the court May 11 and endured — more importantly, ultimately won — a gut-check singles match in sweltering heat the likes of which was emblematic of the UF men's NCAA Super Regional defeat of Tennessee. In a lot of ways, it was emblematic of season turned in by CoachBryan Shelton's bunch in the way the Gators fought as a team and leaned on one another en route to equaling the deepest NCAA run in school history. The fourth-seeded Gators had what seemed like a cushy 3-1 lead on No. 14-seed UT until the feisty Volunteers, less than two weeks from upsetting UF on its home court in the SEC Tournament, rallied to within a point and had leads and/or momentum on the three remaining courts. Vale, the sophomore from Portugal, had dropped the first set, battled to take the second and was in a tiebreaker against Preston Touliatos on Court 5, with the outcome of his match looming as the decisive point. Twice in the tiebreaker Vale had match point (at 5-4 and 6-5), only to double fault the first and lose the second on an unforced error. He got his third match point at 9-8 and Touliatos's wide return set off a UF dog pile that ended the match and punched UF's ticket to the NCAA Championships in Lake Nona, Fla.
10 Marckese leaves a mark
The Florida soccer team had never posted a losing record in its 23 previous seasons — not until 2018, that is, when the Gators finished 7-10-4, only qualifying for the SEC Tournament by beating Arkansas in the regular-season finale. Once in the tournament, though, Kaylan Marckese had a night to remember in Orange Beach, Ala. After playing Auburn to a 1-1 double-overtime tie in opening-round play — despite the Gators playing 53 "man-down" minutes after a red-card ejection — the senior keeper not only stopped a trio of penalty kicks, but provided the first of two made PKs that allowed the Gators to advance to the quarterfinals. After punching away the Tigers' final attempt and clinching the 2-1 PK edge (and match victory), the Gators mobbed Marckese and left the field chanting "KAYLAN FOR PRESIDENT!"
