For the primary time since its founding in 2020, Athletes Limitless (AU) is organizing a conventional team-based league meant to be “Main League Baseball for softball,” within the phrases of former Miami Marlins common supervisor Kim Ng, the senior advisor of the inaugural Athletes Limitless Softball League (AUSL).
AU has yearly hosted weeks-long competitions for professional ladies’s sports activities, together with softball, basketball, volleyball and lacrosse, with no coaches or GMs concerned. A participant, versus a group, would win the so-called championship for a given season primarily based on an unorthodox factors system, with all video games held at one location. Softball is the primary sport for which AU is implementing a group format.
The AUSL, scheduled to start out in June 2025, is about to facilitate a 30-game slate for every of its 4 groups. The websites of stated video games will differ throughout to-be-determined touring areas, meant to assist inform the league’s management on which cities may be most receptive to supporting an expert softball group in the long run. Beginning in 2026, the AUSL plans to station as much as six groups in several cities.
No less than 30 AUSL video games will probably be completely broadcasted on ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU.
Softball icon Jennie Finch, an Olympic gold medalist, is one in every of 4 supporting advisors to Ng, whose tenure as Marlins GM from 2020 to 2023 made her the primary feminine GM in North America’s large 4 sports activities leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL). Ng believes the institution of a premier softball league has been lengthy overdue. However maybe there isn’t a higher time than now, given the momentum stirred in recent times by sports activities reminiscent of ladies’s school basketball and the WNBA.
GET HYPE Y’ALL 🗣️
we’re thrilled to introduce the primary group of gamers to affix the #AUSL ✍️
👉 https://t.co/F5bUlvhV0D pic.twitter.com/UQIdaBtJWn
— AUSL (@theAUSLofficial) November 22, 2024
“There are individuals day by day saying, ‘On Saturday evening, I used to be watching the WNBA sport with my 10-year-old son.’ … Stuff we didn’t assume would occur for fairly a while has impulsively simply grow to be a lot extra mainstream,” Ng stated.
Ng hopes AUSL will function a coaching floor for the perfect softball gamers on the planet forward of the game’s return on the 2028 Summer season Olympics.
The group of coaches and GMs chosen for the primary season are outstanding softball figures. Stacey Nuveman-Deniz, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is among the 4 coaches. The GMs embrace Lisa Fernandez, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, and Cat Osterman, a four-time Nationwide Professional Fastpitch champion, amongst others. And among the many first 9 gamers signed are Olympic silver medalists Carley Hoover and Dejah Mulipola.
The 4 groups will assemble their rosters through the AUSL Allocation Draft in early 2025 and a school draft within the spring, a major shift from how AU’s leagues have beforehand functioned.
Gamers with essentially the most factors on a person leaderboard could be deemed captains and given the facility to select their groups on a weekly foundation, with a person being topped as champion on the finish of the season. This setup is not going to go away solely. After a best-of-three championship sequence decides the AUSL champion, the AUSL All-Star Cup, previously often known as the AU Professional Softball Championship season, will happen over 4 weeks to find out a person champion. Such a format was born of a player-centric mission sported by AU, which has no homeowners or buyers and as a substitute permits gamers to function direct shareholders.
Ng stated she most likely ought to’ve taken extra day without work after stepping down from her GM function with the Marlins in October 2023. The AUSL, and what it’d allow for the way forward for softball and different skilled ladies’s sports activities, was simply too necessary for her to move up.
“Being a lady who has fought for different ladies in sports activities, and now to have the chance to be somebody on the within combating for ladies’s sports activities, that’s actually cool,” stated Ng, who joined AU this previous summer season to steer the AUSL.
(Photograph of Kim Ng from 2022: Megan Briggs / Getty Pictures)