GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In college baseball, Friday nights are reserved for your best. It’s your tone-setter for the weekend. A good start on Friday can propel a team to a series win, while a blowup can ruin your bullpen for the following to games. It’s both an honor but also a major responsibility.
Liam Peterson was handed the ball on Opening Night and the sophomore didn’t waste the opportunity. He needed only nine pitches to strike out two in the top of the first. He added two more punchouts in the second and then struck out the side in the third. It was a dominant performance from Peterson, who would throw six innings of shutout baseball, allowing just two hits. He faced just two over the minimum and his 11 strikeouts tied a program record (dating back to 1999), for the most on an Opening Night in program history (Hunter Barco vs Liberty in 2022).
“You don’t know what to expect opening day, but hopefully, starts like this continue for him,” Kevin O’Sullivan said of Peterson. “hard work he’s put in, most of the time, it’s not the stuff, right, that holds them back in the you know, freshman years. Tuesday the ability to to slow the game down is to have the beginnings and you got that one one situation where you threw six balls a row and took a short visit and they made some big pitches after that.:
Peterson was good but the Florida bats managed just two hits through the first two innings. Brody Donay ended that, jumping on the first pitch he saw — an 88 MPH fastball — sending it over the visitor’s bullpen and onto Hull Road.
“(I was) just trying to out and go up there and honestly just have a calmer approach and, you know, just have fun with it, you know. You only get so many.”
The Gators got hits from all of their transfer portal additions with USF infielder and Stetson outfielder Kyle Jones both going 2-4.
Air Force head coach
Mike Kazlausky has been the head baseball coach at Air Force for 14 seasons but this is the first time Air Force and Florida have met on the baseball field. Kevin O’Sullivan wanted to take advantage of the opportunity and asked Kazlausky if he would speak to the Gators on Friday. Kazlausky spoke to the Gators about the life of a student-athlete at a service academy. The men and women who chose to go to a service academy are more than just students and more than just athletes and their daily schedule reflects that.
“All this type of stuff that they do for their program and something that, honestly I think is very interesting,” Donay said. “We get on the bus and we go to get on the plane and do all this stuff and it kind of takes us a while to get going and all this and I guess they as soon as the bus stops, they’re able to get onto the plane and take off and four minutes and 30 seconds. So that I mean, I’ve never seen that happen for us before, so I mean, I that’s pretty cool.”
The National Anthem was also a little different and special on Friday night. There was a call to attention before the entire team presented arms (salute) and faced the flag in left-center.
“It was really cool you know, the way they did the national anthem, and I’m glad our players had an opportunity to see that. I think it’s a great experience for all of our teams to play the academy. Their head coach came down to today they were gonna do the uh you know, a trial parachute, I think at 1 o’clock or so. um and uh very head coach, you know, was talking to our whole team. you know, about the experience of these his players go through day in and day out. I thought that was awesome. It’s it’s really, really cool that for our for our players to, you know, to be exposed to this.”
With rain in the forecast for Sunday afternoon, the Gators and Air Force will play a doubleheader on Saturday. The first game will start at 1 p.m. with an hour break after the completion before the second game will start.
