STILLWATER, Okla. — Ann Hughes will do what she has done countless times over the past 30 seasons on Friday afternoon when the Gators baseball team plays Nebraska in its first game of the NCAA Tournament.
The 68-year-old Hughes, Godmother of the Gators, will cheer on her boys from her seat at O'Brate Stadium. Hughes joined the University Athletic Association in 1981 after a stint at Nebraska, where she received an endorsem*nt from legendary Nebraska football coach Bob Devaney, then the school's athletic director, for a position as an academic counselor with the Cornhuskers football program at the time led by another legendary coach in Tom Osborne.
"I talked my way into Nebraska,'' said Hughes of a time when a woman working in college athletics, much less a big-time football program, was rare. "I will always owe [Devaney] for that."
As Hughes watches Friday's game, anyone within earshot can expect to hear more about Florida's players than their batting average or pitching velocity. Hughes knows the Gators as people perhaps more than anyone other than their parents.
Hughes' official title is assistant director of student services at the Hawkins Center, the centerpiece of the UAA's academic commitment to student-athletes. She has been the academic advisor for UF's baseball team since the fall of 1994 and advises the men's and women's golf teams.
"Who wouldn't want to be around all these kids who have all this promise," she said. "Who wouldn't dream of a job where they got to be around people like that? I learn something from every kid I work with. That's why I do it, and that's why it's a dream come true."
Of course, Hughes is rooting for the Gators to win, but her stories are more personal than a final score. All she has to do is look at the first-base coach's box Friday for a reminder of why she never moved into a sports administrator position or wanted to be an athletic director.
Former UF catcher Mike Rivera, forever rooted in Gators history when photographers captured him raising his arms and racing toward the mound after the final out of the 2017 College World Series, is a poster boy for the work that has defined Hughes' professional life.
A sixth-round draft pick of the Cleveland Indians in 2017, Rivera spent five seasons in the minor leagues before officially retiring in 2022.
That was not his plan.
"In my mind, I thought I was going to play 10 years in the big leagues," Rivera said. "That didn't end up happening."
While Rivera's career made stops in Ohio minor-league outposts like Mahoning Valley, Lake County and Columbus, and in Lynchburg (Va.) of the Carolina League, Hughes maintained a file on Rivera and what he would need to do should he decide to return to UF and finish his anthropology degree.
Hughes was delighted when Rivera rejoined the Gators two years ago as a student assistant coach. She charted his progress on a whiteboard she put on the wall in a small conference room attached to her corner office at the Hawkins Center.
"He epitomizes what this office is about,'' Hughes said. "He came to play baseball, but he always listened, and for some reason, he always trusted, which is absolutely necessary. And he never gave up. He is an amazing young man."
Rivera completed his degree earlier this month, no small achievement considering how he viewed his potential in the classroom when he first arrived at UF in 2015 as a freshman from Venice (Fla.) High.
"Growing up, school was always difficult for me. Fifteen years ago, you told me I was going to graduate from Florida, and I'd be like, 'Yeah, whatever.' Wow, without this woman, there is no chance. She has been a blessing in my life.
"She had the plan already set up when I was playing. The fluidity coming back into it was unbelievable. I've had no issues at all."
***
Hughes grew up in University Place, Wash., and graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle. The marriage of academics and baseball was shaped early in her life.
Her late father, Ray Hughes, grew up a childhood friend of big-league manager and All-Star pitcher Fred Hutchinson. She remembers as a young child attending the 45-year-old Hutchinson's funeral when the Cincinnati Reds manager, who was future hit-king Pete Rose's manager during Rose's rookie season in 1963, died from cancer.
Meanwhile, her late mother, Margaret Ann Hughes, instilled in her that a woman can have the same success as a man. Hughes' mother was a merchandise manager at Marshall Fields & Co. at 28. Her accountant father was equally supportive of Ann and her older sister.
"He would take me to any game I wanted to go to,'' she said. "Baseball has always been a big part of my life. I grew up in a way where anything was possible. I knew about the importance of each person and, what their role was and how we should celebrate those roles. I know that sounds Pollyanna or whatever, but I really believe that."
Trips to the ballpark became a love affair when Hughes met neighbors Connie and Don Hill. She was in elementary school and started tagging along with Connie Hill, who did not have children, to Cheney Stadium, home of Tacoma's franchise in the Pacific Coast League. Don Hill was the team's play-by-play voice, and according to the obituaries of the beloved Hill, who died in May 2002, Connie often helped him share tidbits during broadcasts.
The experience deepened Hughes' interest in the game and a possible career in sports. Still, it wasn't until she read a newspaper article on trailblazer Gertrude Peoples as a teenager that she cemented a career plan. Peoples, the founder of the country's first academic-support office for student-athletes, was the director of academic services at the University of Washington in the early 1970s when Hughes first learned of her.
Not only was Peoples a woman, she was a Black woman who went on to great notoriety in her career and now has two athletic awards named in her honor at Washington.
Hughes later got to know Peoples when, as a student majoring in history at Washington, she interned with then-Huskies football coach Don James, helping provide academic support to the Washington players. Hughes remains in contact to this day with the 92-year-old Peoples.
"I admired what she was doing, and I knew it was necessary," Hughes said. "She was helping make people feel at home and that they belonged. It was something that needed to be done. I still feel that way today. I want everyone to know that Florida is their place, and they can be comfortable here and excel in things other than just the one they have been noticed about."
After she graduated from Washington, James suggested Hughes earn a master's degree in sports management from Ohio University to further establish her credentials. She did, and after earning her master's in 1979, Hughes got her first full-time job at San Diego State as a fundraiser.
However, the pull of academics was too great, and she accepted an internship at Nebraska that included building a relationship with another female trailblazer, Ursula Walsh, a lifelong educator and former Nebraska academic counselor and director of research for the NCAA. Walsh, featured often in newspaper stories and even on NBC's "The Today Show" during her distinguished career, further boosted Hughes' determination to make a difference as a woman in college athletics.
"I've been lucky with the people I had in my life," Hughes said. "I hope I've shared those things with other people."
When Hughes took a job at UF in the fall of 1981, Charley Pell was the football coach, Norm Sloan the men's basketball coach, and Jay Bergman was in his last months as baseball coach. Hughes joined an athletic department that had about as many women as her hands has fingers. She figured she would work for the Gators for a few years and then return to her alma mater.
But like Rivera's professional baseball career, plans don't always work out as we envision.
Hughes is now among the UAA's longest-tenured employees and comes to work with the same enthusiasm she did on her first day.
"When I think about Ann, I think about how much she cares,'' former Gators athletic director Jeremy Foley said. "I have always said the people in the Office of Student Life never get the credit they deserve. Their fingerprints are all over the success this program has had and continues to have. Certainly, Ann's fingerprints are over a lot of success. She's impacted a huge number of lives, and she's selfless. She's not looking for credit."
Those who work closely with Hughes know she deserves recognition for the impact she continues to make, whether it's academic counseling, mapping out class schedules or welcoming newcomers at student orientation.
Calling Hughes an academic counselor is like saying Taylor Swift is just a singer. She does whatever it takes, whenever it's needed.
"Nothing gets past her,'' Gators junior Jac Caglianone said.
"The biggest thing I'll say is that Ann does not let anything slide,'' UF senior Tyler Shelnut said. "She'll give you a call at 7:15 in the morning. She'll call you at 10:30 at night. If she sees something, she's on top of it. She keeps us accountable for what we do in the classroom and our class schedules."
Hughes has been his team's academic advisor since Gators baseball coach Kevin O'Sullivan took the job in 2008. O'Sullivan bumped into Hughes in the hotel lobby Thursday morning, another hint that she is as much a part of the Gators as the players and coaches.
The landscape of college athletics has changed drastically since Hughes started, but what she does remains the same — make connections, be a teacher and supporter, and provide the tools to flourish away from the lights.
"Ann is right in the center of this thing since day one," O'Sullivan said. "She is always on top of it. Her passion for her job is second to none. She's on top of the tutors. She's on top of the class schedules, she's on top of the incoming guys we have coming in for Summer B. Her love for our program, her passion for our program day in and day out for as long as she's done it, it's really inspiring. To have her here be a part of this, I think, is really special."
Hughes bounced around practice Thursday, checking in on players as they waited for their turn in the batting cage. It's what she does. She wants to know if they need help with anything, and that someone has interest in them beyond their batting average and ERA.
It's the way she was raised and the way she has lived.
When she interviewed at UF, she met with Thomas Hill, the 1972 Olympic bronze medalist in the high hurdles in Munich. Hill, the father of former Duke basketball player Thomas Hill Jr., was dean of students at Florida.
You can't talk to Hughes for long before you realize how many mentors she credits with guiding her to where she is today.
"I came here because of him,'' she said. "He's had a remarkable life."
And people like Rivera have kept her at UF and become family.
"She is involved in so many different ways,'' Rivera said. "I don't know if this woman ever sleeps. I tell these young guys that you don't understand how important and precious she is to our program. There is not going to be another person like this that you'll ever be involved with."
Print Friendly Version
