There was much anticipation over the Athletes Unlimited Softball League Draft on Monday night. The two-part event featured the new franchises, the OKC Spark and Cascade, creating their teams from scratch. While the original four – the Bandits, Blaze, Talons, and Volts – rebuilt missing pieces of their roster.
The live show on ESPNU began with an Expansion Draft where the Spark and Cascade selected from unprotected players currently affiliated with existing AUSL teams.
Oklahoma City won the coin toss and elected to have the first pick. Spark General Manager Kirk Walker announced the team selected utility Maya Brady with the first overall pick.
The UCLA phenom was unprotected by the Talons, and their former assistant coach, Walker, wasted no time in securing her.
Brady missed the first month of the 2025 AUSL season due to injury, but returned with a vengeance. She reached base safely in her first 10 plate appearances in the AUSL and on the season, recorded 11 hits in 17 at-bats. Walker was also familiar with Brady from UCLA; he was on staff with the program while she was a player. Brady is a back-to-back winner of the Pac-12 Player of the Year award.
The Cascade selected former Oklahoma pitcher Sam Landry with their first pick. The team chose six unprotected athletes from the existing AUSL franchises, while the Spark took seven.
The night then shifted over to the Allocation Draft, where all six teams could select from a pool of players who opted in for consideration to an AUSL roster. This included players from pro leagues around the world, other professional teams, and the AUSL 2025 Reserve Pool.
Kelly Maxwell was the No. 1 overall pick of the Allocation Draft and joined the Cascade.
Maxwell national champion pitcher from OU, who led the team to a title in 2024. She was the Women’s College World Series Most Outstanding Player that year and, since then, has competed with Team USA and the OKC Spark while they were an independent team.
Full draft results for all six teams can be found here.
Savanna Collins is the Senior Reporter for the AUSL. You can follow her on X @savannaecollins.
