As fans swamped Midtown bars and the Stephen C. O’Connell center reached maximum decibel levels on April 7, another Gator watch party was brewing a few miles away — quieter, and with a much earlier bedtime, but no less spirit.
At Oak Hammock, a Gainesville retirement community, more than 400 residents broke out in orange and blue gear to cheer on the Florida Gators men’s basketball team in their faceoff against the Houston Cougars for the NCAA Men’s Basketball National Championship title.
“It’s hard not to be a Gator in this town,” said 83-year-old Ann Elnicki, who earned her master’s in occupational therapy from UF in 1982. “It makes us feel young.”
Her 86-year-old husband, Dick, a former UF information systems and operations management professor, doesn’t just watch the games — he analyzes them. He even checked the betting odds that morning, but wasn’t putting any money on it.
His only prediction? “Nobody here is going to die because of the way the game comes out.”
For 84-year-old Jim Dodge, a long-time college basketball enthusiast, the Gator spirit still makes things feel like a party.
“The culture here is absolutely mind-bending for us,” said Dodge, who moved to Florida more than 20 years ago. “It’s loud, it’s a continual thing — during the whole game, before and after. It’s amazing.”
His wife, 85-year-old Peggy Dodge, chimed in enthusiastically.
“It’s been fun to be on the winning side,” she said, confident in the Gators’ victory even before tipoff. “As a new resident, I just can’t get over the spirit.”
Though neither of the Dodges attended UF, they proudly sported orange and blue, joining their Oak Hammock neighbors for a championship-themed buffet. Tables at the bar and dining hall featured alligator trinkets and pompoms in UF colors.
Even Oakley, the community’s recently acquired robot assistant, got in on the festivities. Sporting an orange-and-blue tie sticker, the wheeled waiter glided from room to room, diligently bringing residents beer and wine.
Not everyone in the room was a lifelong basketball fan. Jeani Valter, an 80-year-old recent Gator convert who dressed head-to-toe in orange and blue, confessed she’s more of a football girl.
“I’m in love with Tim Tebow,” she said, her Gator earrings swinging. “I have a life-size cardboard cut-out of him in my apartment.”
Still, she spent the past two weeks diving into basketball, doing her homework and sticking to her game day tradition of drinking out of her lucky cup.
“I always have to have a Gator tumbler,” she said.
Pat Kelley, an 81-year-old former lawyer and Smathers Library night guard who attended UF in the 1960s, didn’t have any lucky rituals.
“We’re too old to be superstitious,” he said. Plus, he was confident the Gators would win, and chance had nothing to do with it.
“Only because they are a deeper team,” Kelley clarified, agreeing with other seniors that Florida is a “second-half team” that would pull through later in the game after wearing Houston out — which they did.
Some residents admitted they might not make it through the 8:50 p.m. game, setting their DVRs just in case. But 84-year-old Donna Wagner had no plans to miss a second of the showdown.
“I’m going to wait for the blast at the end,” said Wagner, who studied at UF from 1959 to 1961 and holds season tickets for nearly every Gator sport.
Though she considered watching the game in the common area’s dedicated screening room, the comfortable chairs of her own home — and its looser rules — were tempting.
“There’s so many rules here,” she said. “We’re trying to get [them] changed so we can party all the time.”
Contact Pristine Thai at pthai@alligator.org. Follow her on X @pristinethai.\
Pristine Thai is a university general assignment reporter and a third-year political science and journalism major. Her free time is spent attending classical music concerts or petting cats.
