UF coach Tim Walton greets Ava Brown with a fist bump after a home run in last year's NCAA Gainesville Regional.
UF Aims For Another Regional Celebration
Thursday, May 14, 2026 | Softball, Chris Harry
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By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The calendar says it's mid-May, which means it's NCAA Tournament time at Pressly Stadium. Since Tim Walton arrived at Florida in 2006, his softball program has reached NCAA play all 20 seasons and hosted an opening regional weekend 19 times.
Being at home is a reward and, of course, the 10th-ranked Gators (48-9), as the tournament's overall No. 6 seed, want to take advantage, which means taking care of business in Friday morning's opening-rounder against Florida A&M (38-20) and being the lone team standing come Sunday in a four-team pod that also includes Texas State (38-20) and Georgia Tech (30-27).
Should UF outlast the three, the Gators will host the Super Region round next weekend, something they've also done a bunch of times; 15 of 'em since 2008.
But that's a conversation – in an ideal orange-and-blue world – for next week.
In the meantime, the 2026 squad is locked in on the here and now, which starts with bouncing back from an uncharacteristic last couple weeks when the Gators not only lost three of their last four games (two in the regular season-ending series at Georgia, followed by one in the semifinals of the Southeastern Conference Tournament) by surrendering at least nine runs in four consecutive games for – get this – the first time in program history.
10-9 loss at Georgia.
9-1 loss at Georgia.
10-9 come-from-behind victory over Auburn in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals.
9-1 loss to Alabama, the No. 1 overall NCAA seed, in the SEC Tournament semis.
The big-number outcomes were byproducts of the team's '26 Achilles heel: pitching depth. The search for consistency from anyone behind 26-win, All-SEC workhorse Keagan Rothrock now moves into NCAA play, where the margin for error closes the deeper a team advances.
Walton has accepted the fact he'll have to lean on a UF committee in the circle and won't ask any of his pitchers for much. One good inning from each, he said, could be enough to navigate the opposition, as long that other, far more reliable element of the team comes to the ballyard.
Jocelyn Erickson's20th homer of the season came last week in a late rally to defeat Auburn at the SEC Tournament in Lexington, Kentucky.
"I want to see us mash," Walton said Thursday. "I want to see us drive the ball. I want to see doubles, home runs, RBIs galore. That's what this team should be doing. I want to see us mash. It's hard to do, but I want to see it."
Junior designated hitter Ava Brown's gradual comeback (hitting safely in eight straight until last game) from a lower body injury that cost her nearly six weeks has allowed her to move up to No. 3 in the batting order, behind sluggers Taylor Shumaker (.443, 16 homers) and Jocelyn Erickson (.398, 20 homers). Kendall Grover (.324, 11 homers) was held out of the last game with an injury, but has practiced every day this week. UF is hitting .355 as a team.
Walton hopes his mash unit shows up.
Florida is a whopping 33-1 in its last 11 home regionals (dating to 2013), winning those games by a combined score of 243-15, with 16 mercy-rule victories. Breezing into Supers is the standard around here. Keagan Rothrock(7) and the Gators got a visit from former All-America ace Kelly Barnhill (11) earlier this month.
Speaking of standards, the Gators have been visited often this season by famous softball alums – Aubree Munro, Lauren Haeger, Kelsey Stewart, Aleshia Ocasio, Amanda Lorenz, Kelly Barnhill, to name a few – who spoke of the rich tradition of excellence and community Walton established over the last two decades.
"The family that is encapsulated in our program is something we can't replace," Shumaker said of the visits from Gator Greats past. "We play for a coach who is invited to their weddings, who they want to meet their children. They want to continue to come back and feed into this program. it's almost like a message back to us that we picked the right place."
Validation is nice, but a couple of those former standouts had another interesting observation.
"There were times in the season where they didn't think we were celebrating enough," Brown said. "They could see we were having fun, but [didn't] feel like [we were] celebrating the little things. That we drifted away from that."
Well, now's the perfect time to get back to immersing themselves in the joy of the most pressure-packed time of the season. A time the Gators have made a tradition – as in 13 trips to the Women's College World Series the past 17 chances – to celebrate.
It won't be easy, but that's the point.
As Brown put it, "If you're at this point in the season and you let pressure get to you, you're in the wrong place."
Being at home is a reward and, of course, the 10th-ranked Gators (48-9), as the tournament's overall No. 6 seed, want to take advantage, which means taking care of business in Friday morning's opening-rounder against Florida A&M (38-20) and being the lone team standing come Sunday in a four-team pod that also includes Texas State (38-20) and Georgia Tech (30-27). 
