With UF’s less-than-stellar football season this year, it can be tough for some people to rep the school as much as they did in the Tebow era. There are plenty of bandwagon fans jumping off Florida’s wagon at the moment, but the fans sticking with the Gators can look to the success in UF’s other intercollegiate sports to get their spirits back up.
The Gator’s Men’s Swimming and Diving team got some publicity the summer before last with Ryan Lochte’s success in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. With a total of five medals won, two of which were gold, Lochte showed the world that Gators swim pretty freakin’ fast. The 2013 Men’s Swimming team is living up to Lochte’s example with a 1st place at their only invitational meet so far and two for two wins at duel-meets against Minnesota and Missouri. The so-far perfect season is being led by talented swimmers such as Sebastian Rousseau and Matt Elliot. It may not be as rough and tough as football, nor as exciting to watch, but swimming is still a trying sport that requires a ton of time, talent, and dedication; Florida’s currently dominating swim team has definitely earned some respect.
With some matches lasting for multiple hours, tennis can be a grueling sport. So it’s no joke that UF’s Women’s Tennis team is being met with moderate success so far this year. Some of these ladies are ranked in the Top 100 women collegiate tennis players in the entire U.S. The team finished their last tournament, The Bedford Cup here in Gainesville, with Olivia Janowicz winning the singles championship and the pair Kourtney Keegan and Belinda Woolcock winning the doubles championship.
If we really want to talk about a dominating season, we don’t have to look any further than the Gator’s Volleyball team. They’re currently a little more than halfway through the season with 19 games played so far. Of those games, they’ve only lost once to Penn State; however, of each of the eighteen wins they’ve earned, none have even been close. The volleyball team continues to win in three straight sets with the opposing teams typically winning either no sets or just one. The volleyball team has always been extremely solid and has yet to have a losing season for quite some time now. Head coach Mary Wise has a record at UF of 686 wins and 80 losses in twenty-three seasons of coaching, which is an utterly insane figure when one realizes that that means the team has won a little less than ninety-percent of their matches in the past twenty-three seasons.
Gator Football fans take pride in the fact that “in all kinds of weather, [they] all stick together”, but there’s no shame in wanting to root for a winning team. If you’re craving a W, maybe it’s time to pick up a volleyball ticket instead of a football or basketball ticket. Every school has one sport or extracurricular that it excels in and the students are able to get behind. Luckily for us, UF happens to excel in a quite a few, so take your pick and go out a support a team that’s doing well but doesn’t get the spotlight it deserves. They’ve earned it.
Photo courtesy of: The Huffington Post
