Five Gators claim All-SEC honors

The names of five Gators appear in the 2019 All-SEC awards list released on Sunday — improving from last season’s lone winner, Lais Araujo.

Senior Julia Lester and junior Parker Roberts claimed their spot in the All-SEC first team. Forward pair, Vanessa Kara and Kit Loferski, feature in the All-SEC second team. And Kouri Peace earned a spot in the SEC All-Freshman team.

All-SEC First Team

Seventeen of the most outstanding regular season performers make up the All-SEC First Team. Moreover, Arkansas led the pack with four representatives while Texas A&M, South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida featured two each.

Parker Roberts

The redshirt junior from Leawood, Kansas, is no stranger to this award. Having won the award after an outstanding 2017 season, this is the second time she has been decorated with this honor.

Roberts set her collegiate season-bests for goals (4) assists (4) and points (12) this time around. The veteran started every match, scored game winning goals against Missouri and Auburn, and tied second among Gators in assists.

Lets throw it back and take a look aft this beauty against Kentucky:

https://twitter.com/GatorsSoccer/status/1183451868254502912

Julia Lester

Standing at 5’4″, Lester is not your conventional tall center back. But height doesn’t matter when you have the mentality and endurance that the Tampa native has.

Lester averaged 88.5 minutes per match playing the entirety of 16 of 18 matches and sits at No. 15 all-time Gator career leaders playing 44 complete matches. In addition, Lester assisted junior Deanne Rose’s goal versus No. 8 South Carolina.

All-SEC Second Team

The 18-player All-SEC Second team has two Gators names engraved on it. Despite not having a single player in the first team, Vanderbilt features the most players in the second team (5) while South Carolina has the second most (3).

Vanessa Kara

The Drexel graduate received three all-conference honors during her time at the Colonial Athletic Association, making this one her fourth. Kara led Florida in goals (8) and points (17) also earning two SEC Offensive Player of the Week awards.

Furthermore, Kara shared fourth among SEC players with five goals in league play.

Kit Loferski

Speedy, crafty and unpredicatble are all fair descriptors for Loferski. Despite playing on the defensive side of the field in past seasons, Loferski has evolved into one of the SEC most feared wingers. Not because of her statistics, but the impact she has on the wing.

Two goals and four assists was enough to get her a spot in the All-SEC Second team.

All-Freshman Team

Alabama was the only program with two players on the freshmen team.

Kouri Peace

The six-time National AAU Track & Field sprint medalist chose the soccer field over the track earlier this year and it has paid off.

Peace scored three goals including two in league play appearing in 17 matches.

What’s Next?

The fifth seed Gators will take on fourth seed Texas A&M in Tuesday’s SEC Tournament quarterfinals round at 8:30 p.m. at the Orange Beach Sportsplex in Alabama.