For the first time since its founding in 2020, Athletes Unlimited (AU) is organizing a traditional team-based league meant to be “Major League Baseball for softball,” in the words of former Miami Marlins general manager Kim Ng, the senior advisor of the inaugural Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL).
AU has annually hosted weeks-long competitions for pro women’s sports, including softball, basketball, volleyball and lacrosse, with no coaches or GMs involved. A player, as opposed to a team, would win the so-called championship for a given season based on an unorthodox points system, with all games held at one location. Softball is the first sport for which AU is implementing a team format.
The AUSL, scheduled to start in June 2025, is set to facilitate a 30-game slate for each of its four teams. The sites of said games will vary across to-be-determined touring locations, meant to help inform the league’s leadership on which cities might be most receptive to supporting a professional softball team in the long term. Starting in 2026, the AUSL plans to station up to six teams in different cities.
At least 30 AUSL games will be exclusively broadcasted on ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.
Softball icon Jennie Finch, an Olympic gold medalist, is one of four supporting advisors to Ng, whose tenure as Marlins GM from 2020 to 2023 made her the first female GM in North America’s big four sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL). Ng believes the establishment of a premier softball league has been long overdue. But perhaps there is no better time than now, given the momentum stirred in recent years by sports such as women’s college basketball and the WNBA.
GET HYPE Y’ALL 🗣️
we are thrilled to introduce the first group of players to join the #AUSL ✍️
— AUSL (@theAUSLofficial) November 22, 2024
“There are people every day saying, ‘On Saturday night, I was watching the WNBA game with my 10-year-old son.’ … Stuff we didn’t think would happen for quite some time has all of a sudden just become so much more mainstream,” Ng said.
Ng hopes AUSL will serve as a training ground for the best softball players in the world ahead of the sport’s return at the 2028 Summer Olympics.
The group of coaches and GMs selected for the first season are prominent softball figures. Stacey Nuveman-Deniz, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is one of the four coaches. The GMs include Lisa Fernandez, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, and Cat Osterman, a four-time National Pro Fastpitch champion, among others. And among the first nine players signed are Olympic silver medalists Carley Hoover and Dejah Mulipola.
The four teams will construct their rosters via the AUSL Allocation Draft in early 2025 and a college draft in the spring, a significant shift from how AU’s leagues have previously functioned.
Players with the most points on an individual leaderboard would be deemed captains and given the power to pick their teams on a weekly basis, with an individual being crowned as champion at the end of the season. This setup will not go away entirely. After a best-of-three championship series decides the AUSL champion, the AUSL All-Star Cup, formerly known as the AU Pro Softball Championship season, will take place over four weeks to determine an individual champion. Such a format was born of a player-centric mission sported by AU, which has no owners or investors and instead enables players to serve as direct shareholders.
Ng said she probably should’ve taken more time off after stepping down from her GM role with the Marlins in October 2023. The AUSL, and what it might enable for the future of softball and other professional women’s sports, was just too important for her to pass up.
“Being a woman who has fought for other women in sports, and now to have the opportunity to be someone on the inside fighting for women’s sports, that’s really cool,” said Ng, who joined AU this past summer to lead the AUSL.
(Photo of Kim Ng from 2022: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)
