While the Southeastern Conference has been a dominant force in football and basketball for years, its softball teams have only started to earn national recognition recently.
An overlooked conference has turned into one of the sport’s cornerstones, and No. 6 Florida will continue its SEC schedule today against Auburn.
Between the Gators’ inaugural season in 1997 and the 2004 campaign, the SEC had only three seasons with more than three top-25-finishing teams and never landed more than two teams in the top-10.
In the five seasons since, it has notched at least five top-25 teams or three top-10 teams four times.
Last season might have been the conference’s strongest yet, as three of the final four teams standing in the Women’s College World Series came from the SEC, including then-No. 1 Florida, which fell to Washington in the finals.
Now the Gators (18-3, 2-1 SEC) are faced with the challenge of trying to win their third-consecutive championship in a conference stacked with powerhouses like No. 8 Alabama, No. 9 Georgia, No. 14 LSU and No. 17 Tennessee.
The next step in this quest will begin at 4 p.m., when they host the Tigers (15-7, 2-1 SEC) in a doubleheader at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium.
Even though Auburn is one of the few SEC teams not making an appearance in the top 25, the Gators know they can’t take them lightly.
“We just have to fight pitch-by-pitch the whole game because every SEC team out there is tough, and it’s going to be a battle,” freshman Brittany Schutte said.
As UF’s opening SEC series against Ole Miss last weekend showed, nothing will come easy against any conference opponent.
Despite earning a run-rule victory in the first game, the Gators got all they could handle from the Rebels in Game 2, falling 6-4 in extra innings.
“Just because you beat a team by 10 runs doesn’t mean the next game in the SEC that that’s gonna happen,” catcher Tiffany DeFelice said. “Every team is going to give you a dog fight.”
Despite the strength of the conference, UF has faired incredibly well over the past two seasons, going a combined 53-2 en route to a pair of SEC titles.
This, along with the fact that Florida was the preseason pick to win the SEC East and is now the highest-ranked team in the conference, means every opponent will be gunning for the Gators.
“People always come after us hard just cause we’re Florida and we beat a lot of teams up in the past,” senior Francesca Enea said. “They’re going to come with everything and you never know what’s going to happen so we have to be our best every day.
“We can’t just show up and win we have to show our heart and our fight.”
There was a time when college softball was completely dominated by the Pacific-10 Conference, which is filled with perennial powers like UCLA, Arizona, Stanford and defending champion Washington.
However, the SEC is quickly gaining ground, and UF has shown its mettle by going 3-2 against the Pac-10 in games played on the West Coast over the last three years.
“It definitely motivates us and gives us credibility because the SEC hasn’t been known like the Pac-10 has been known in softball,” junior Kelsey Bruder said.
“But we’re coming up with teams like Georgia and Alabama and when they come out and do things against the West Coast, it really gives us a great name."
