KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — One of the most dominant pitchers softball has ever seen is coming back to campus. Former Lady Vols star Monica Abbott will serve as grand marshal of the University of Tennessee Homecoming parade in Knoxville on Friday, Nov. 6.
Floats line up at Fraternity Park and roll out at 4 p.m., moving east down Volunteer Boulevard. Judges will watch from a booth near the Torchbearer statue at Circle Park, and the route bends onto Peyton Manning Pass to finish outside Neyland Stadium. Kids 10 and younger can march along in the Little Vol Walk.
Homecoming week runs Nov. 1-7 under the theme All Roads Lead to Tennessee. The week ends Saturday, Nov. 7, when the 17th-ranked Vols, 6-2 overall and 3-2 in the SEC, take on eighth-ranked Kentucky, which is 7-1 and 5-1.
Abbott pitched for Tennessee from 2004 through 2007 and piled up numbers that still look unreal: 23 no-hitters, six perfect games, 189 wins against 34 losses, 112 shutouts, 2,440 strikeouts and an ERA of 0.79. She took the Lady Vols to three straight Women’s College World Series and reached the finals in 2007. The school retired her No. 7 in 2013.
No Division I pitcher before her had reached 500 strikeouts in four different years, and she did it every season she wore orange. After college she won Olympic silver twice, in 2008 and 2020, and she took gold at the 2010 World Championship. In 2016 she signed the first $1 million contract in National Pro Fastpitch history.
Abbott earned her degree from UT’s College of Communication and Information and now works as a college softball analyst. She also started the Monica Abbott Scholarship for female athletes who play more than one sport and lead in the classroom.
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