For 188 consecutive games, senior Corrie Brooks has shown up at the ballpark on game day and done whatever her coaches and teammates asked of her.
Whether the Gators needed a big-time play at third base, a clutch game-tying or game-winning hit in the bottom of the seventh, or even an extra outfielder or reserve pitcher, Brooks has always been there.
And when the No. 6 Gators (42-7, 20-4 Southeastern Conference) take the field to play Auburn (30-23, 11-17 SEC) today at 2:30 p.m. in the first round of the SEC tournament, Brooks will once again be there for the 262nd time in her UF career, putting her only 11 behind Ashley Boone for the all-time Florida games-played record.
“I think it is significant because that just says something about how great of a team we are,” Brooks said. “I’ve gotten the opportunity to play that many games because our teams have been good enough to make it that far, and it definitely says a lot for me to be a starter on that good of a team.”
It’s been 824 days since Brooks last missed a start on Feb. 9, 2008 against Memphis- the fourth game of her sophomore season.
Perhaps not coincidentally that was about the same time Brooks started bringing her lucky gator head to the games, a tradition she’s kept alive ever since.
“One of the times I was working at the gator farm they had a few alligators that people had brought in, and they were just throwing away the heads and feet and everything, and I said ‘Well I’d like to have one of these,’” Brooks said. “So I took it to the taxidermist and got it done and since then I’ve just brought it on every road trip and everything.”
And while not many people usually get to experience alligators that up-close and personal, for the residents of the small town of Christmas, that closeness with nature is just the way of life.
The 3.6 square-mile town that’s last recorded population was 1,369 is what has made Brooks into the person she is today - a girl who says her main hobbies are hunting, fishing and riding four-wheelers and horses.
“That’s pretty much just from living out in the country and having really nothing else to do,” Brooks said. “We have a pond with catfish in our back yard and growing up with a family that was raised outdoors and having them pass that stuff along to me led to me taking it up and that’s what I like to do.”
It is that upbringing that has led Brooks to pursue a degree in Animal Science, which she hopes to parlay into a job either with the USDA or as an agriculture teacher.
And although the senior will be leaving the softball program after this season and leaving UF when she graduates in August, both her coaches and teammates will not be quick to forget her.
“I just want them to remember me as somebody who worked hard, did what she was told, never talked back, and never questioned anything anybody was doing,” Brooks said. “Just as somebody that they could talk to and know I wouldn’t say anything out of line.”
