Florida softball will host No. 8 Duke on Friday, Feb. 14. It’ll likely be the first ranked contest held at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium in 2025, but not the last.
As the sun sets for the 7 p.m. Valentine’s Day affair, a pair will rekindle a mutual love and live out a dream that’s been more than a decade in the making — a dream that seemed unimaginable five years ago, the last time they played a notable game together.
Pregame
The temperature in Tempe, Arizona, rivals that of Gainesville, but what differentiates the two is the humidity. The air sits disconcertingly still, and on May 13, 2019, the dirt in Alberta B. Farrington Softball Stadium's infield pleaded for moisture.
As the sun drifted behind the Four Peaks mountain range northeast of Tempe, providing a moment of rest for the drained soil underneath it, a bus rolled into the parking lot of the Arizona State football facility. Out stepped a line of teenage girls. Dressed in dark uniforms, they shuffled their Nike slides and charm-covered Crocs across the heat-radiating rubble towards a set of gates.
“When we got there, it’s like we were free to just kind of compete,” Holtorf said. “Because we [knew] we’re prepared for it.”
Rylee Holtorf, a high school sophomore and Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year candidate, led the band into the dugout. Within the last week, the infielder had strengthened her already well-established candidacy.
“Rylee is a natural leader on and off the field,” Sandra Day O’Connor High School softball head coach Melissa Hobson told the Arizona Republic. “She is so willing to do whatever is best for the team.”
And what was best for the team was her bat. As the Sandra Day O’Connor Eagles weaved their way through the Arizona Conference 6A State Championship bracket, Holtorf’s hitting was at an all-time high, batting over .400.
Sandra Day O’Connor played the same school, Red Mountain, twice, winning their second meeting with the Mountain Lions 17-2. But three days earlier, it wasn’t nearly as easy. The Eagles needed an extra inning and a walk-off hit by an unnaturally calm freshman catcher to keep their tournament berth alive.
Youthful Growth
Club sports are intense, and when you’re talented at your sport, that intensity starts at an early age.
Jocelyn Erickson and Holtorf stumbled into the West Coast softball factory system around the same time at 9- or 10-years-old (the two argued about which year it was), but they didn’t play with each other immediately. Holtorf’s a year older than Erickson and made the top team the grade above her.
After a rapid ascension through travel ball that featured home runs, throttlings and disheartened middle schoolers, Erickson moved a grade up to join Holtorf’s Arizona Storm team. Welcoming her with a skeptical smile, Holtorf met the girl everyone was talking about, the girl who was now playing with 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds at 12. Joy ensued.
Florida sophomore Jocelyn Erickson bats during a Regionals game versus Florida Gulf Coast University on Friday, May 17, 2024.
“The first big tournament that I feel like [we] ever won was the Colorado Sparklers [Championship],” Erickson said. “The trophies were like the coolest thing ever.”
She raved about how they were glass — the first award of an esteemed career. Now, the pair have closets, bins and shelves filled with similar souvenirs.
They spent years playing games in cars, traveling from Arizona to Nevada, Nevada to California: anywhere an invitational wanted its field to be uncompetitive. But as the wins rolled in, the pair began to take trips together for a different reason.
Both finished as top seven collegiate recruits in their respective classes, according to MaxPreps, and at the time, the NCAA didn’t have a strict recruiting framework. Showcasing their talent to colleges became a task as early as middle school.
“When we were in like seventh and eighth grade, we started going to all the college camps,” Holtorf said. “Every single college camp and college thing that we did, we did it together.”
The First Inning
A Monday night game in a torrid 87 degrees isn’t typical for high school softball. But alas, the Sandra Day O’Connor softball team stood warming up as if it wasn’t already warm enough.
As the heat billowed from Arizona State’s field, Holtorf and Erickson lingered away from the clay frying pan after warmups, giggling. Any crowd member paying close attention could observe an interaction that occurred hundreds of times.
“Rylee would either do my braids or my eye black [before each game],” Erickson said as Holtorf interrupted: “Jocie was always very particular on how thick or skinny I made her eye black.”
“Gotta look good to play good,” Erickson laughed.
While they joked before the game, the pair was methodical when their cleats met the arid dirt. Sandra Day O’Connor jumped out to an almost instantaneous 4-0 lead, with Holtorf scoring in the first inning. She smiled ear-to-ear as she entered the dugout after her run, but seconds later, she stared emotionless at the ocher playing ground.
There were still six innings to go.
“They both have a unique competitiveness and drive to win,” Holtorf’s dad and the pair’s youth club coach, Ronnie Holtorf, said. “It’s not just here and there, and it creates an environment around them.”
Separation
Entering her senior year of high school, Holtorf knew she had a decision to make.
The 2020 season her junior year was shut down after less than two weeks due to COVID-19. She had taken advantage of the 16 games the Eagles squeezed in, winning Player of the Year. But it meant nothing to her.
“I wish I could be playing next to my favorite girls right now,” she wrote in an emotional Instagram post about the shortened season.
Her recruiting peaked with the award, and offers hailed from the country’s top programs. That’s when Washington stepped in. Led by an uber-competitive All-American shortstop, Sis Bates — who resembled Holtorf, but was about to graduate — it wasn’t hard for coach Heather Tarr to pitch what the Huskies had to offer.
“Rylee is going to come in and make a huge impact in our infield,” Tarr said. It was only weeks before Holtorf made up her mind.
On Nov. 11, 2020, Holtorf signed with Washington, and as Erickson shifted through her one-year-back recruiting process, it became evident they wouldn’t end up at the same school. Their dream was slowly slipping away.
“We, for sure, wanted to play together going through the recruiting process,” Holtorf said. “But I think that when you’re young and you’re looking at things, both of our eyes were just open to different things in the process.”
Holtorf and Erickson expected to play together in 2021, but Erickson suffered a season-ending injury before the season. With that, the playing field friendship that dominated their childhoods ended without warning.
The Sixth Inning
As darkness fell and the blinking lights of planes landing at Phoenix Harbor International Airport dotted the black sky the batter gazed at, Holtorf and Erickson stressed. What was once a 4-0 lead had gradually drifted to 4-2.
While Pinnacle pitcher Morgan Smith took to the mound, a disturbing click rattled throughout the packed Pac-12 facility.
“We were really trying to get in the pitcher’s head,” Erickson said. “In the dugout, we had this thing called the hype bench, and everyone, or a few people, would… bang on the bench with their cleats.”
The Eagles entered the state tournament as the seventh seed when they coined the term “GTA”: Get to ASU.
“We kind of held true to that for the whole season,” Holtorf said. “When we were in those stressful games, that was what we were all striving for.”
Smith heard the “GTA” chants and banging all night, but as a Sandra Day O’Connor batter looked up to the spattered sky, it was evident she was bothered. Smith settled herself and then launched. With a ringing “crack,” the crowd erupted.
College Journey
Transferring from a reigning national champion is atypical in any sport. Transferring from a reigning national champion when you played in all but five games is unheard of. That is until Erickson did it.
After a high school senior campaign that saw Erickson join Holtorf as an Arizona Gatorade Player of the Year, she committed to Oklahoma. Erickson elbowed her way into the lineup during her freshman year. While she primarily plays catcher and first base now, Erickson started in right field during the 2023 College World Series in Oklahoma City. But that’s not what she wanted to do.
“I knew I had more to offer,” Erickson told Church News. “I knew my capabilities and goals and felt I could be used more.”
She transferred to Florida following head coach Tim Walton’s worst record with the Gators (38-22), and UF felt her effects almost immediately.
With the SEC slate underway, Erickson gained momentum, leading Florida’s lineup in RBIs by mid-April en route to winning NFCA Division I Player of the Year. But her second stint in Oklahoma City didn’t go as well as the first, as Florida lost in the semifinals to Erickson’s previous home, Oklahoma.
“We did have that bad taste in our mouth at the end of Oklahoma City,” she said. “We’re ready to get after it again.”
The Florida Gators softball team met junior left fielder Korbe Otis at the plate after she hit a solo home run during the Gators' 4-2 win over Baylor on Friday, May 24, 2024.
While Erickson ventured to the College World Series, Holtorf did the same. In 2022, Holtorf guided the Huskies to a win in their opening CWS game, hitting 1.000 with a run and three RBIs.
But the postseason run was short-lived, and after a swift burnout in the 2024 NCAA Regionals, it was time to make a change. With her communications degree attained, Holtorf looked for a new opportunity. That’s when Erickson reached out.
“[She explained] how she was able to flourish… and just how happy she was,” Holtorf said. “How genuine her comments were about Florida made it so real.”
Holtorf decided to visit UF, and when she came to town, the pair spent a day wandering around Gainesville meeting with coaches and absorbing the all-too-familiar heat. By the end of Holtorf’s brief taste of Florida, a dream was reborn.
“When Rylee was thinking about transferring [to UF] and when she went on her visit,” Erickson said. “I was like: ‘This feels like we’ve done this before.’”
The Seventh Inning
Gently rubbing the chalk off the ball onto her pants, Erickson’s intensity was palpable among the spectators. Sandra Day O’Connor’s pitcher walked its last batter and loaded the bases in the bottom of the seventh inning.
With a 6-4 lead and two outs, anything but a hit would do for Erickson. But she doesn’t control that. Neither does Holtorf.
“They both made incredible plays to help their team to get to where they were at and win the championship,” Ronnie Holtorf recalled.
With years of early mornings, long car rides, hotel stays and back-to-back-to-back games, Erickson and Holtorf reached the culmination of their hard work. They watched as the moment unfolded.
A snapshot: The dry dirt of Arizona State’s softball field is strewn throughout the air, with gloves, hats and anything else not thoroughly attached to someone’s body dancing among the airborne grime. Bodies rise and fall as a team converges on itself at the mound. Sandra Day O’Connor walked away victorious.
“We had two outs, and then the bases were loaded,” Erickson recounted. “I was like, ‘Oh my god!’ And then a pop fly got hit.”
The ball landed squarely in the Sandra Day O’Connor shortstops’ mitt. With its placement against the overworn leather, Erickson and Holtorf concluded what they later believed was their last notable game together.
Two Gators
The Sandra Day O’Connor gym is quiet in the evening. Janitors and teachers may shuffle through, occupied by their thoughts, but they never look up. If they did, they’d see two names side-by-side hanging in the rathers: Rylee Holtorf and Jocelyn Erickson.
Over a decade, the pair lived two different lives. The first was one of youth, spending every moment together as they navigated the rapidly appearing opportunities of their sport. The second was one of reality, where they separately developed into the players and people they are today.
But now, those lives converge.
Holtorf, now a graduate student, committed to Florida after her visit in June and has spent months acclimating to UF. Joining an already well-established roster, she hasn’t missed a beat.
“Rylee’s just really consistent with everything,” Ronnie Holtorf gushed about his daughter. Erickson, a junior, echoed the sentiment: “I feel like she’ll always be there.”
With No. 1 UF set to begin its national title quest in less than two weeks, the pair recognize the pressure and know what it takes to win. But emotions will flare.
Erickson and Holtorf never imagined they’d play together after their original commitments. “[We] knew that we were always going to cheer each other on no matter what,” Holtorf, who will play in the infield for Florida, said. “[But] the fact that we got to reunite was really something special,” Erickson added.
As the Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium PA announcer presents the Florida lineup, two girls will wait to hear their names called the way they did for years. But this time, it’ll represent a moment of youthful joy — a childhood dream taking shape.
Contact Noah White at nwhite@alligator.org. Follow him on X at @noahwhite1782
Noah is a Spring 2025 Assistant Sports Editor and Copy Desk Chief. He's a second-year journalism major who enjoys reading and shamefully rooting for Tennessee sports teams. He is also a Liberty League Women's Soccer expert.
