TALAHASSEE, Fla. – Anything can happen.
The UCF softball team played Ellie Goulding’s 2012 release in the moments following their Tallahassee Regional-opening win over Jacksonville State Friday afternoon.
The song served as the ambiance on the team bus after the Knights earned a convincing 10-1 run-rule Saturday victory over Stetson to clinch a spot in the Regional Final.
And Sunday afternoon, rather than succumbing to discouragement following a narrow 2-1 defeat to the host No. 9 overall seed Florida State Seminoles, the Knights instead pressed play once again on their song of the weekend in between games.
“Our mindset going into this regional was ‘Anything Can Happen,”’ said freshman right-hander Tori Payne. “We just have to stick together, and it’s going to be what it’s going to be.”
Led by a remarkable performance in the circle by Payne, the Knights authored one of the biggest wins, if not the biggest win, in program history, knocking off the Seminoles in game two of the teams’ Sunday twin bill, 4-2, to clinch the second NCAA Super Regional appearance in program history.
The outing punctuated a 3-1 weekend in Tallahassee that secured the second NCAA Regional championship in program history, and the first since the 2022 Knights swept their way through the NCAA Orlando Regional at the UCF Softball Complex.
UCF outscored each of Jacksonville State, Stetson and Florida State by an aggregate 17-6 on the weekend, highlighted by a dominant Sunday against Florida State that saw the Knights allow just four runs in 13 innings to the Seminoles.
“Florida State is an amazing team and program,” said head coach Cindy Ball-Malone. “It took every ounce of us to be able to get to this point, and I’m so proud of the fight that they had. It is very difficult to play here, and I’m so proud of the resilience of our team to stay together and fight.”
The victory, UCF’s first over Florida State since April 6, 2011, represented the sixth over the Seminoles in program history, third over Florida State in Tallahassee, and the Knights’ first in NCAA Tournament play.
It came after the Knights nearly ended it without needing Sunday’s second contest. Ace redshirt sophomore Isabella Vega produced one of the gutsiest performances of her career, spinning a six-inning complete game while holding Florida State to just two runs on three hits.
“I’m incredibly proud of Isa for throwing that full game,” Ball-Malone continued. “I don’t think we have our staff that we had in game two if she doesn’t do that for us.”
In stifling the Seminoles in game one, Vega produced just the fourth game this season in which Florida State was held to three or fewer hits, joining the efforts made by Virginia Tech Mary 9, FGCU Feb. 26, and Alabama Feb. 20.
Vega also held Seminoles star leadoff hitter Isa Torres, who finished her 2026 season hitting .530 overall, hitless for just the eighth time this spring.
Florida State’s lone two tallies came on solo home runs by Hayley Griggs and Anna Hinde in the third and fourth innings, but UCF’s veteran right-hander allowed little else the remainder of the contest.
The Knights held a brief third-inning advantage in Sunday’s opener, on an Aubrey Evans double that plated Samantha Rey from first base, but a stellar outing in the circle by FSU starter Jazzy Francik led the Seminoles in forcing game two.
“That hitter is one of the best hitters we’ve faced,” Ball-Malone said of Florida State’s Torres. “We put together a plan, that someone else was going to have to beat us. Obviously that happened in game one. But coming into game two, we said that entire team is going to have to beat us. Tori just stuck to her plan and stayed diligent, throwing strikes when she needed to and throwing balls when we needed to mix it up a little bit.”
Indeed, Payne, making just the eighth start and 16th appearance of her career, gave UCF exactly what it needed, producing the strongest outing of her debut season on its biggest stage yet.
She spun a career high six innings, allowing just a single score on four hits while the Knights supported her efforts with a pair of two-run home runs.
Sophomore catcher Beth Damon ignited UCF’s efforts at the plate in the bottom of the first, blasting her 16th home run of the year over the center field fence to give the Black and Gold an early 2-0 lead.
With 16 long balls, Damon has now doubled her freshman year total of eight, and bring a season extra-base hit total of 26 to the NCAA Super Regional round.
Fellow sophomore Izzy Mertes added her team’s second two-run home run of the afternoon, breaking a 2-2 tie in the home half of the fourth inning. The two-run shot marked the second home run of Mertes’ NCAA Tournament career, after the Chatsworth, California, native slugged a game-tying fifth inning solo shot in UCF’s eventual 10-8 win over then-No. 25 Michigan in the 2025 NCAA Austin Regional.
“This team is chippy, and they have to play chippy,” Ball-Malone continued. “It’s feisty in there. It feels like they’re on top of you. We’re a young team, still building and growing. It’s cool to see how much belief they have.”