Florida announces honorary Two Bits for Week 8 game against Mississippi State
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Florida announced on Tuesday that Gators softball legend Lauren Haeger will be the celebrity “Mr. Two Bits” for Saturday afternoon’s SEC matchup against Mississippi State (4:15 p.m. ET, SEC Network).
Haeger, who will be inducted into the UF Athletics Hall of Fame on Friday night, saw an already-special weekend in Gainesville become that much more special with the honor of being “Mr. Two Bits” for the Gators’ homecoming game at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium.
Tim Walton, Haeger’s softball coach at Florida, called her last week at her home in North Carolina to ask the now 33-year-old to be the celebrity “Mr. Two Bits” for the occasion, according to Florida’s press release. That meant that Haeger, who led the Gators to back-to-back national titles in 2014 and 2015, had to clear a little more space out of her schedule this weekend than she thought.
Haeger is the 4th softball player to get the honor, joining Stacey Nelson and Hannah Rogers, who performed the “Mr. Two Bits” act in tandem in 2015, and Aubree Munro, who performed the act as part of a group cheer that same year.
“Out of all the Hall of Fame inductees, they asked me, so I couldn’t believe it,” Haeger said in a release. “It may be the coolest thing I have ever been asked to do. I may black out in front of the whole stadium.”
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
