Tim Walton was ejected in the fifth inning of Florida’s 16-7 loss to Texas Tech in the decisive game of the Gainesville Super Regional on Sunday, May 24, and the aftermath turned quickly into one of the series’ strangest flashpoints. Jason Williams said Walton’s ejection for arguing balls and strikes was premeditated so the coach would not have to shake hands after the game with Mia Williams.
Mia Williams, Jason Williams’ daughter and a standout infielder for Texas Tech, spent two seasons at Florida before transferring after the 2025 season. She had already built a familiar profile in Gainesville. Last season she played all 65 games for a Florida team that reached the Women’s College World Series, then moved to Texas Tech and became a centerpiece for a program that had just gone on its own run to the championship series of the Women’s College World Series.
That made the matchup in Gainesville loaded before the first pitch. Texas Tech and Florida were playing for a berth in the Women’s College World Series, and Mia Williams was at the center of it from the start. Over the course of the series, she was hit by five pitches, including the first pitch of the first game and the first pitch of the decisive third game. In her second at-bat in Game 3, she answered with a two-run home run that gave Texas Tech a 5-4 lead, and the umpire warned the Red Raiders after the celebration that followed.
She finished the series 3-of-7 with five RBI, a line that matched the way the whole weekend felt: physical, noisy and impossible to separate from the family ties in the stands. Jason Williams was seen in the crowd yelling toward the Gators’ dugout after a Texas Tech homer and doing the gator chomp, then celebrated with the team on the field at Katie Seashole Pressly Stadium after the series-clinching win. The teams did not shake hands after Texas Tech advanced.
Walton pushed back hard on the suggestion that the ejection was anything other than a dispute over the strike zone. “It makes no sense to me at all,” he said. “I have no idea where that came from.” He added, “I don’t think that’s fair to the kids in both dugouts,” and said, “I have no idea where that pot was being stirred.” Walton also said, “There’s never been a problem ever,” and, “Kids transfer all the time.”
The friction mattered because it landed in a game already defined by one of college softball’s most visible transfers. Mia Williams delivered for Texas Tech in the biggest moment of the series and then left Florida behind in a scene that grew louder by the inning. In her first season at Texas Tech, she set program single-season records with 24 home runs, 86 runs scored, 177 total bases, 82 RBI and 22 doubles. The on-field production is no longer in dispute. What Sunday made clear is that her return to Gainesville carried far more weight than a reunion, and it ended with Texas Tech moving on and Florida left arguing over what the handshake line never got to resolve.
