During her junior year, Francesca Enea broke the UF career record for RBI, set the single-season RBI mark and shattered the school record for home runs in a career and a single season. And she basically did it all on only one good knee.
Enea suffered a partially torn ACL for the second time in her three years at UF during the team's preseason workouts in the fall. However, the doctor told her she could play without missing any time if she wore a brace, as she did during her freshman season.
UF coach Tim Walton told the Alligator that Enea made her mind up and presented him with the options.
"She said, 'There's no way that I'm not playing this season,' and that was it," Walton added.
Despite the injury, Enea started the season as one of the best offensive players in the country and had a record 71 RBI in 2009. In a Feb. 14 doubleheader &ndash the seventh and eighth games of the season &ndash the left fielder launched two grand slams and drove in 10 runs.
Part of a lineup so deep and effective that Walton once described it as "murderer's row," Enea was consistently the biggest all-around threat. She finished the year with UF's highest on-base percentage (.494), the most home runs (18), the most RBI (71), tied for the highest slugging percentage (.713), the second most walks (48) and had the fifth-highest batting average (.339) on the team. The UF softball team set record after record while going 133-10 over the last two years, and Enea shattered several career milestones in just three years. Her 41 home runs and 157 RBI are both high marks for the program, and she still has another season to add to those numbers.
Her record-breaking 18 homers helped UF break its single-season home run record in just 49 games, 26 fewer than the Gators played in the entire season that they set the mark.
One of Enea's most memorable longballs came on April 8 at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium against FSU. Two innings after Megan Bush's homer sent the game to extra frames, Enea led off the ninth with a towering walk-off bomb to give the Gators the 4-3 victory.
Enea picked up two Southeastern Conference Player of the Week honors early in the season, and she was one of the top 25 finalists for the 2009 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year.
For lighting up the scoreboard and rewriting the UF individual and team record books &ndash all while dealing with a serious injury &ndash Francesca Enea is the alligatorSports No. 7 UF Athlete of 2008-09.
BY THE NUMBERS: Enea earned two fifth-place votes, two seventh-place votes, one ninth-place vote and was left off one ballot.
