GAINESVILLE, Fla. — They did it for the team. They did it for the Florida Gators.
Those are givens.
But what each of the UF athletes (oh, and coaches, also) singled out in this story did was extraordinary and thus makes them notable among the best and most memorable performances — in some cases, moments — of the 2021-22 athletic calendar.
Like every year, the candidates for inclusion were lengthy and paring them down difficult, but we painted ourselves into a Top 10 box years ago, so here we are again.
Each made us take notice and, in some cases, just watch in sheer awe.
Note: And in case you missed our Year in Review, Part I (Top Team Moments), click here.
1) THE CHAMPIONS' CHAMPIONS … AND THEIR LEADER
Anna Hall (left) and Jasmine Moore (right) led the Gators to a sweep of the women's track titles in 2022 and were co-nominees for the sports Honda Award.
Where to start? The women's team seems like the right place. All they did was win the NCAA indoor
and outdoor track and field championships, the former coming in March and setting the stage for arguably the greatest dominance of a single sport in a single season in Florida athletics history.
Bold statement? Absolutely. And true.
The UF women had one national championship on their books. That was an indoor crown back in 1992. They matched that in March at Birmingham, Ala., behind sterling title-claiming performances from do-everything
Anna Hall, jumper
Jasmine Moore and distance sprinter
Talitha Diggs. And as dominant as they were at indoors, they were every bit as much outdoors three months later at Eugene, Ore.
Hall, who won the five-event pentathlon at indoors, claimed the seven-event heptathlon at outdoors, with her signature moment coming when she ran in the hep's 800 just 23 minutes after placing second in the individual 400 hurdles. Yeah, 23 minutes. Moore competed in four jump events over the two meets — the long and triple — and won all of them. Diggs placed first in the open 400 at both indoors and outdoors. In both meets, the Gators defeated runner-up Texas by double-digit points.
The women loomed as a meet favorite in Oregon, but that wasn't the case for the men. A top three-to-five finish was more likely (and probably would have been lauded).
But then
Joseph Fahnbulleh raced his way into UF — make that NCAA — history by sweeping both the 100- and 200-meter sprints (defending the 200 title he won as a redshirt freshman in 2021) to become not only the first Florida athlete
ever to win both events, but the first Gator to win two running events of any kind at the NCAA championships. Fahnbulleh also anchored UF's second-place 4x100 relay team, meaning he had a hand in 28 of the team's 54 points that easily bested runner-up Texas in the final standings 54-38.
Four NCAA team track champions over the two seasons, and the Gators raised three of them.
The collective achievements, in turns, raised Coach
Mike Holloway to some rarified air. Probably even above that air. The two outdoor titles gave Florida 45 all-time national titles (in 16 sports), with Holloway's programs responsible for 12 of them. That's 27 percent.
So, where should they put that "Mouse" statue?
2) BIG BEN II
Gator Champ, Gator Chomp.
Recalling (and ranking) the top athletic moments has become an annual tradition here at
FloridaGators.com. The 2021 team review had freshman
Ben Shelton and father
Bryan, the UF men's tennis coach, sharing the No. 1 spot by virtue of young Ben's national title-clinching victory in the NCAA finals against Baylor. Said it then, we'll say it again: Imagine that father-son moment.
And 2022 brought another instant classic.
The second-seeded Florida men fell short of their goal of repeating as national champions, losing to eventual champ Virginia in the NCAA quarterfinals. The end of the team draw, however, gave way to the singles bracket, which ended with the second-ranked Shelton defeating No. 6
August Holmgren, of San Diego, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 to become just the fourth NCAA singles champ in the program's history.
Shelton, the rangy left-handed sophomore, dropped the first set, battled back to force a third that he took command of with an early break and rolled from there.
He joined
Mark Merklein (1994),
Jeff Morrison (1999) and teammate
Sam Riffice (2021) on the short list of UF players to wear the singles crown. Yes, Riffice wore it last year, making the Gators the first program since Baylor in 2004-05 to have two different players win the NCAA singles draw in back-to-back years.
The match result led to another very special
Shelton post-match father-son moment. Don't be surprised if there aren't more down the line.
3) A NEAR-PERFECT ALL-AROUND SEASON
The titles, the 10s and the trophies just never seem to stop for gymnast extraordinaire
Trinity Thomas.
Thomas, the senior and 2022 SEC Gymnast of the Year, was the all-around winner at every postseason meet, including the NCAA Championships at Fort Worth, Texas, when she equaled the meet record of 39.8125 points set by former Gators standout
Alex McMurtry in 2017. In the NCAA team final, Thomas posted the second-highest score ever in the competition, with her perfect 10 on floor her fourth consecutive in that event (twice at NCAA regionals, twice at nationals). She was the only gymnast in 2022 with five first-team All-America honors (all-around, vault, bars, beam, floor) earned at the NCAA Championships.
Her run through NCAAs came in April, the same month she graduated cum laude with a degree in Applied Physiology & Kinesiology. Not bad.
Adding to the accolades and hardware, Thomas got the Honda Award exclamation point signifying her as the top female college athlete in her sport.
4) RARIFIED FOUR-DIGIT AIR
Mary Wise and Tim Walton are at a grand and counting.
In December, a Florida coach achieved the astonishing milestone by winning a 1,000th of their career. In May, a second Gators coach did it, making UF the only school in the country with two active coaches with 1,000 victories on their resume.
First, it was
Mary Wise, whose volleyball team defeated Florida A&M in straight sets in opening-round play of the NCAA Tournament on Dec. 2. In doing so, Wise became the first woman in Division I volleyball to hit the mark, and just the fourth D-I coach ever to get there. When the Gators were eliminated two rounds later by No. 1 overall seed Louisville, Wise's record stood at 1,001-126 (that's a winning percentage of .880), with 920 of those coming of her 31 seasons at Florida.
Five months later to the day, the UF softball team was at LSU and locked in an extra-innings battle on the road when senior
Cheyenne Lindsey launched a rocket over the right-field wall that ultimately gave the Gators a big 2-1 victory. UF coach
Tim Walton would later call Lindsey's blast the biggest hit of the season and one that catapulted the team onto its late-season surge that ended in the Women's College World Series. True, all of it. But it also was the game-winning stroke in Walton's 1,000th career win.
Walton's road to a thousand came in his 20th overall season (17 of them at UF) and via 1,259 games, making him the second-fastest in D-I history behind only
Mike Candrea, the Hall-of-Famer who led Arizona to seven national titles and the US to an Olympic gold medal. Candrea did it in 19 seasons and 1,219 games. Walton exited the 2022 season with 1,011 wins, all but 123 coming as a Gator.
5) AT HIS BEST WHEN IT MATTERED MOST
Junior
John DuBois went to the SEC tournament unranked. He left as the conference champion.
A red-hot second-round score of 64 — the third all-time lowest in tournament history — left DuBois two strokes back of the leader heading into the third round on April 22, the final day at Sea Island on St. Simon's Island, Ga. DuBois was paired against Texas A&M's
Phickaksn Maichaon, who was atop the leader board, and in a tie with Vanderbilt's
Gordon Sargent for second place. DuBois immediately applied pressure to both with birdies on the first two holes. Sargent moved to a one-stroke lead at the 14th, but the two flip-flopped spots when Sargent bogeyed the 16th hole and DuBois birdied it, putting the Gator up by one with three holes remaining.
That's where things stood at No. 18 when DuBois hit a perfect drive and clean green landing on his second shot, leaving him 40 feet from the title. He two-putted for a crown-clinching par, making him the 25th SEC champ in program history — joining the likes of
Tommy Aaron,
Steve Melnik,
Brian Gay and
Billy Horschel — while giving Coach
J.C. Deacon his third such conference winner (alongside
Alejandro Tosti (2017) and
Andy Zheng (2018). He did it in a field that included the first, second, eighth, 13th and 17th ranked players in the country.
Oh, and it was the first collegiate tournament victory for DuBois. Pretty cool way to get on the board.
6) A RECORD AND SEASON FOR THE BOOKS
Wyatt Langford, a year after playing in just four games for the Gators as a freshman, smacked a UF single-season record-tying 26 homers in his 2022 sophomore season.
It would have meant so much more if sophomore
Wyatt Langford's home run in the ninth inning in the final elimination game of the NCAA regional against Oklahoma had come with a man on base. Langford's 26th homer of the season was a solo shot that merely drew the Gators within a run of the Sooners, who closed out the inning and the UF season with a 5-4 victory.
Langford's blast, though, was a shot heard around the UF books, as it equaled the single-season record set by
Matt LaPorta in 2005. It also put quite the cap on a magnificent offensive season for the All-SEC outfielder and second-team All American.
A year after appearing in just four games as a freshman (no, he wasn't not injured), Langford erupted in his second collegiate season and put together one of the finest performances ever by a UF player at the plate. His batting average of .355 (and on-base and slugging percentages of .447 and .719, respectively) led the team, as did his 91 hits, 73 runs, 63 RBI, three triples and 184 total bases, all while starting all 66 games in left field.
In June, Langford was invited to the 2022 USA Baseball Collegiate National Team training camp where he'll vie with some 50 other players for a spot on Team USA and a chance to compete in international play overseas this summer.
7) KIKI CARRIES WBK
Kiki Smith was Florida's first first-team All-SEC selection in five years.
Kiara Smith deserved such a better ending to her Florida career than the one fate delivered March 3 in the SEC Tournament at Nashville, Tenn.
Smith, better known as "Kiki," returned for her graduate fifth season despite well-publicized turmoil in the women's basketball program that saw the exit of the coach who recruited her (
Cameron Newbauer) from a New York junior college following two ACL surgeries to the naming of associate head coach
Kelly Rae Finley to the interim post. Smith was coming off a year when she averaged 18.9 points, 6.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists. Her teams, though, had won just 12 league games over her three UF seasons and never finished better than 10th in SEC play.
That changed.
Smith's grad numbers took something of a dip — 14.6 points, 5.5 rebounds, 4.6 assists — but the Gators, with Smith as their on-the-ball alpha female, did the opposite of dip. They ascended. Her pace on offense and will on defense defined one of the biggest turnarounds in all of women's college basketball. Smith and UF went on a roll of 10 wins over 11 games in SEC play and eventually finished tied for fourth in the conference standings, and as a shoe-in for their first NCAA Tournament berth in six years.
Unfortunately, the first-team All-SEC guard, All-SEC Defensive Team selection and 12th scorer in program history wouldn't be there for the postseason fun. Smith's career ended with 4:16 left in Florida's second-round SEC Tournament matchup against Vanderbilt when she went down with a knee injury, the third torn anterior cruciate ligament of her college career. Her teammates rallied from a five-point deficit to win the game, but the absence of their leader (Smith scored in double figures 24 times during the season and averaged 2.4 steals in league play) left a huge void in the Gators' lineup; both tangible and intangible.
The prologue to her Florida story, however, was a good one. A week after the college season end, Smith was selected by the Connecticut Sun with the 35th overall selection in the WNBA Draft, the first UF player taken since
Ronni Williams in 2017.
8) KESSLER KEYS WOMEN'S TENNIS RESET
McCartney Kessler came back for her fifth season and made the most of it en route to 2022 SEC Player of the Year honors.
The last of UF women's tennis coach
Roland Thornqvist's four NCAA championships came in 2017. The years that followed were uncharacteristically lean for a program that annually contended for conference and national titles.
McCartney Kessler reported for her freshman season a couple months after that last NCAA crown. She soldiered through some difficult seasons, including a COVID-cancelled campaign, but still returned for a fifth year to try and redirect the Gators back to prominence.
In doing so, she exited her career as the 2022 SEC Player of the Year.
Kessler went a team-best 19-7 playing No. 1 singles, at one point winning 13 straight matches and also claiming 13 wins against ranked opponents, including two over top-10 players. In doubles, while bouncing among three teammates, she went 16-6 and had a hand in three ranked wins.
After failing to survive past the NCAA's first weekend in each of the previous three tournaments, Kessler helped the Gators earn the 16th overall seed, win a couple home matches and reach the Sweet 16 round for the first time in five years, before falling to No. 1 overall North Carolina. She left as the ninth player in program history to win SEC Player of the Year, and the sixth to do so on Thornqvist's watch.
She also left the program better than she found it, and inching back closer to where it needs to be.
9) APPLEBY FROM THREEEEEEEEEE!
As basketball seasons go, the UF men had a middling season. The Gators went 9-9 in SEC play. They lacked wins against top-flight teams. The head coach left for a conference rival after missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years. Along the way, Florida's best player, forward Colin Castleton, had a wonderful '21-campaign, on his way to a second-team All-SEC recognition for the second consecutive seasons.
But a case can be made that the two biggest feel-good moments of the season came courtesy of the long-range shooting hand of fifth-year senior
Tyree Appleby.
Down seven in the second half against Ohio State in the championship game of the Fort Myers Tip-off on Nov. 24, the Gators rallied to tie the score on a textbook alley-oop dunk by
Anthony Duruji on a perfect pass from Appleby with 36 seconds to go. The Buckeyes worked the ball to their star, forward
E.J. Liddell, who missed a baseline jumper, with the rebound caroming to UF guard
Myreon Jones with six seconds left. Jones pitched the ball ahead to Appleby, who took one dribble past half court and let fly an arching 3-ball that splashed after the buzzer to give the Gators a pulsating 71-68 victory, with Appleby falling into a courtside table after being mobbed by his teammates.
Just shy of three months later, Auburn came to town ranked No. 2 in the nation. The Tigers, led by likely 2022 No. 1 overall NBA pick
Jabari Smith, had a nine-point advantage in the second half when the Gators commenced their comeback. At the heart of it, again, was Appleby, who scored 20 of his UF career-high 26 points after intermission, including four 3-pointers, two of which came at dastardly times for the Tigers, who left with a 63-62 loss and as the highest-ranked opponent —
ever! — to lose at the O'Dome, which was sold out for the first time in two years. About a hundred fans or so even stormed the court.
10) IT COUNTED IN THE HEARTS OF GATORS
Early in the fourth quarter of the annual Florida-Florida State rivalry game at "The Swamp," senior tailback
Dameon Pierce, in his final home game,
took an inside handoff from the FSU 13 yard, ran through a couple Seminole tackle attempts, had his helmet ripped off, and — undaunted — barreled into the end zone to the roar of the home crowd.
The moment brought back memories from the 2007 national championship game when UF linebacker Earl Everett lost his helmet, but — undaunted — chased down an Ohio State runner in the Gators' blowout victory.
That play counted. Pierce's did not.
A few years ago, the NCAA passed a rule (designed for safety and the prevention of head injuries) mandating that a ball carrier that loses his helmet must give himself up on the play. Basically, take a dive, hit the dirt, whatever. Pierce didn't do that. He not only remained engaged, but ran through contact. Florida was penalizes 15 yards for unsportsmanlike conduct, but four plays later Pierce scored on a 3-yard touchdown run that, as it turned out, provided the winning points in a 24-21 win.
Nobody remembered that TD run.
Everybody remembered the other one.
In fact, in a football season minus any superstars or signature victories — and one that led to a coaching change and just the third losing record in more than four decades — Pierce's play (the one that went down as a penalty in the official scoring book) provided a moment that made Gator Nation stand, take notice and beam with orange-and-blue pride. In that moment, scoring for his team was all Pearce was thinking about. He did it for the Gators.
They all did.
