When Ali Gardiner steps into the batter's box, she only hears one voice resonating from the stands.
It's the same voice she heard as a 12-year-old working on her game in the basement of her home in New York - the voice that not only helped teach her how to perform on the field, but off the field as well.
Whether they are words of encouragement after a strong hit or disappointment over a missed opportunity, Ali can hear the words of her father, Wally Gardiner.
"We can have a packed house, and if I swing and miss and mess up, I can hear him," Ali said. "Or if I get a hit, I can hear him say, like, 'Thatta girl.' And I'm very good at blocking out stuff."
Wally, who played for the UF baseball team for four years, began helping his daughter train during the long, cold winters in New York from the time she was 12 until she entered high school. They worked together for three or four days a week for a few hours a night, splitting time between pitching and hitting.
"She always had an aptitude for it," Wally said. "I do expect a very high level from her because she is that good."
Gardiner, now a senior first baseman for the Gators, has met - even surpassed - those expectations, as she broke record after record on the way to being named an All-American last year on UF's 70-5 softball team.
"Ali's always had one trait, and it's that she's always won," her father said.
This season, Gardiner hopes to continue her winning ways and help lead the Gators to the top of the college softball world.
Family Matters
Growing up in a baseball family, Gardiner learned a lot of things about the sport from her father.
One of the most important things he taught her, however, was not how to swing the bat, how to throw a strike or how to make a play at first base. It was to never take things for granted and to work hard to achieve her goals on or off the field.
"In life, you have to realize that when you learn things, it's not an all-of-a-sudden thing. It's a process," he said. "You don't become a good writer overnight, you don't become a good hitter overnight and you certainly don't become good at anything else without going through the process of getting better. You've got to work hard, stay consistent, and you can accomplish anything."
Gardiner made her first step toward success in third grade when she began playing slow-pitch softball, where coaches pitched to the players. A few years later, when her father realized she had a better feel for the game and more potential than he thought, Gardiner began playing travel ball in Katonah, N.Y., a few miles away from her hometown of Waccabuc, N.Y.
By her second year of high school, she had decided she wanted to play softball in college, which meant taking her game to Gold-level travel ball, the highest tier of the sport.
The list of players who have taken the field for her team, the Virginia Shamrocks, over the last few years reads like a who's who of NCAA softball players.
Angela Tincher, the 2008 NCAA Player of the Year, played for the Shamrocks in 2004. All-American shortstop Courtney Bures, who now plays at Mississippi State; Arizona State pitcher Megan Elliott; and Maddy Coon, the starting shortstop for Stanford and Gardiner's best friend played alongside Gardiner in 2005.
But since team practices were held in Leesburg, Va. - a five-hour drive from the Gardiners' home - Ali gave up her weekends to be a part of the Shamrocks.
"Every weekend in December and January, my dad and I would drive five-and-a-half hours to practice for three hours, where all we did was hit, and then we'd drive back up. So I sacrificed a lot," Gardiner said. "There were these little things that I missed, but in the long run, obviously, I wouldn't change it for the world."
The Perfect Fit
The Shamrocks had just become the first east-coast team to ever win the Gold Nationals, a point at which most players would have rushed the mound, screaming and dogpiling on top of each other.
Gardiner and her teammates, however, displayed a different kind of postgame emotion.
"We all just kind of like looked at each other, and we were like, 'It's over. The season's over. We're now all going to college, and we will never play together again,'" Gardiner said. "It was a bittersweet moment. We did it, we'd made it all the way to the end, but we would never play together again."
So the Shamrocks went their separate ways, and Gardiner enrolled at North Carolina-Wilmington, which she chose over UF before her freshman year because, at the time, she would have been relegated to the role of designated hitter.
"I was looking for a place where I could pitch, play first and hit, and Wilmington was on the beach. The school's beautiful," Gardiner said.
It was an ideal playing situation in the perfect place. Or so she thought.
"I loved the school, I loved the coaching staff and I loved the girls, but the competition just wasn't what I wanted," she said.
Gardiner transferred to UF, where she made an immediate impact, starting all 72 games and tying for the team lead in RBIs with 40. That season, the Gators, in their second year under coach Tim Walton, finished 50-22. Gardiner finished with the team's third-highest batting average (.290).
"She came here very highly touted as a hitter," Walton said. "A couple people told me, 'You're getting a very good hitter, but she'll probably just be a DH for you.' That's what they told me, and that's what I told her. We really worked with her to become a better, more complete player."
Gardiner attributed her quick improvement at UF to Walton's style of coaching.
"He called me, and it clicked," she said. "He's a hitting coach. He focused on hitting, and that's why I love the game so much. There was a spot for me, it fit and my dad and I were ecstatic."
Although Gardiner and the Gators were moderately successful in 2007, it was only a hint of things to come in 2008.
One Last Step
Even though Gardiner led the team in six offensive categories last season, she can't remember herself hitting that well. Instead, she remembers her teammates' ability to build on each other's success.
"When one person did well, the next person followed because we wanted to play with them," she said. "It reminded me of the summer when I was with the Shamrocks, when everything was going our way because we were all there to have each others' backs."
Gardiner had a team-leading and single-season school-record batting average of .407 and led the team in hits (88), doubles (18), on-base percentage (.508), slugging percentage (.616) and walks (42).
But teammates praise her consistency, not her gaudy statistics.
"Even when she's not clobbering the ball or hitting home runs, she finds a way to put the ball in play," senior pitcher Stacey Nelson said. "As a teammate, you love to see someone like that up to bat because they're always going to give you a chance, and that's so comforting."
Gardiner could be counted on at the plate during her junior season no matter who she was facing. She hit good pitching. She hit bad pitching. She even hit great pitching, as some of her best at-bats came against upper-level competition.
She took her hitting to the next level in conference play, as she batted .500 with four hits in the SEC Tournament and went 2 for 3 with a triple in the conference championship game against Alabama.
"I call her a professional hitter," Walton said. "That's her nickname from me. She knows how to hit. She knows how to set a pitcher up, and she knows how to make adjustments when she feels like she's being set up."
With Gardiner leading the offense and Nelson in the circle, the 2008 Gators cruised to an NCAA-record 70 wins but fell short of a Women's College World Series championship after their loss to Texas A&M in the semifinals.
After such unprecedented success, Gardiner will enter her senior season - her last chance at a national title - with the same attitude she's had when facing any other challenge the game has thrown her way.
"Although we have the confidence from last year, we're still starting at the same place when it comes to not looking ahead," she said. "It's in the back of our minds, but we're taking it one game at a time."
Taking everything one step at a time and nothing for granted - just like her father taught her.
