Athletes Unlimited Softball League gearing up for 2nd season with 6 teams competing this summer
NEW YORK (AP) — Kinzie Hansen-McKinzie is looking forward to connecting with a fanbase as the Athletes Unlimited Softball League switches to a traditional model of teams in fixed cities in year two rather than the touring model of its initial season . “That’s going to be so fun because then you can establish fans that can keep coming back,” the 24-year-old Oklahoma City catcher said. Six teams will compete this season: the Carolina Blaze, Chicago Bandits, Utah Talons and Texas Volts return, joined by two expansion teams, the Oklahoma City Spark and Portland Cascade.
Two ballparks host minor league baseball teams and four are softball specific. “We wanted all of our markets to be softball strong, as well as hospitable to women’s sports,” said AUSL Commissioner Kim Ng, the former Miami Marlins general manager. “I would expect somewhere in the next three-to-five years we’ll be in, say, a couple of bigger metro areas.
” Major League Baseball invested last year in Athletes Unlimited, which administers the AUSL along with competitions in basketball and volleyball. “We don’t think about the trajectory of AUSL on a 30-year horizon. We think of it as a much shorter, kind of quicker horizon,” Athletes Unlimited CEO Jon Patricof said.
"We really see the Olympics and then the years right after that as being kind of the time that we’re shooting for to kind of really reach major league status and be where we want to be business for us. " Each team has a 16-player roster and there is a league-wide reserve pool filled with potential replacements in the event of injuries. Training starts May 27 at Vero Beach, Florida, and each team is scheduled for 25 regular-season games from June 9 to July 20.
The top three advance to the playoffs: the second and third seeds meet in a knockout game at College Station, Texas, on July 23, with the winner advancing to the best-of-three championship against the top seed two days later at the Davis Diamond. This season’s schedule includes 51 games on ESPN platforms, 20 on the CBS Sports Network and 11 on the MLB Network. Ballparks were at 90% capacity last year, including 24 sellouts as four touring teams competed.