The Auburn Softball Player That Got Into It With Florida's Head Coach Got Exactly What She Wanted

TheBigLead- Auburn defeated Florida in softball 1-0 today. In the handshake line, there was some animosity. Auburn shortstop Haley Fagan did not have her hand up in the line. Florida coach Tim Walton, whether he was on autopilot or offended by the gesture, tapped Fagan on the shoulder. She turned around and gave him a push in the back. She had some words in the general direction of her opponents before being restrained by her teammates.

Larry Brown Sports points out a possible source of the beef: “We know there is some beef between the Fagan family and Walton, as Haley’s sisters, Sami and Kasey, started off at Florida before transferring after being kicked off the team.”

At the time of this news, in 2012, Fagan’s father said that his daughters had been released because there had been “an altercation on the team.”

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Far be it from me to call into question the seriousness of the altercation that got Sami Fagan And Kasey Fagan dismissed from Florida's softball team, but it's extremely hard for me to believe that they were justifiably let go. After all, if the maturity of their sister Haley is any indication than there is no way the Fagan's are the type of gals to turn an interaction that is based on mutual respect into an unbearably contentious bitch fest. I haven't the slightest clue what went down inside the Lady Gators locker room in 2012, but clearly the younger sibling learned how to appropriately handle conflict somewhere. Who better to model herself after than her sisters that were booted off a college softball team for reasons that remain vaguely undisclosed?! 

In all seriousness, I'm not giving Coach Walton a pass here. As someone that's spent years working with college girls, he has to know better than to respond to an obvious act of aggressive passiveness. The slight shove to the shoulder wasn't that big of a deal, but he should have known it was going to be treated as such when the person on the receiving end basically invited it by ignoring his high five. He fell hook, line, and sinker for a clear set-up to an inevitable blow-up that was less inconspicuous than a "it's fine" text. She set the stage with familial pettiness and he stuck his stupid hand right in the damn trap. Christ, I bet this dude is also the type to breathe a sigh of relief when his wife says she doesn't want to do gifts. This altercation is on him, and that's simply because he gave the aggressor the opportunity to play the victim by being too prideful to take it in stride when he was purposefully left hanging. Haley Fagan got exactly what she wanted. She didn't care about showing up an opponent's head coach. It was just bait to reel in the opportunity to scream in the face of the guy that had enough of her sisters' (probably similar) shit five years ago.