In June 2024, Alyssa Denham went to field a routine ground ball when a sudden tweak in her back didn’t feel great.
She played through a short, three-week season of professional softball in Wichita, Kansas, as the injury progressed. She couldn’t bend down to put dirt on her hands between pitches; fielding a bunt became a non-option.
At first, Denham thought her hips might be out of line. As a pitcher, she’s familiar with the discomfort that can come from shifting and manipulating her throwing motion. But when she returned home to Houston to see her doctor, scans revealed a much more serious injury. She’d broken her back.
Vertebrae in her spine had slipped 50% towards her belly button, rupturing the L5-S1 disk. Called the “workhorse junction of the spine” by Dr. Ara Deukmedjian, it bears the brunt of nearly every body movement.
Denham had to make the first of many hard decisions. She was scheduled to play in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League All-Star Cup in just a few weeks. She wasn’t sure what the future held for her softball career with the diagnosis, but “competing really wasn’t a question,” said Denham. It’s a unique season – 15 games in just over a month, using a unique point system to create a leaderboard. Denham came close to winning it all in 2022 and 2023, finishing second.
“It was more, ‘how am I going to do this,’ because I’m going to do this,” she said.
Denham had two injections and one epidural in her lower back in hopes of getting a nerve block – the cost to get through those six weeks of play, not pain-free, but manageable. She experienced foot drop, struggling to lift her foot or flex her toes because of the nerve damage. She was stubbing her foot and sometimes unable to feel the front side of her pitching motion.
“I didn’t want to tell anybody, to be honest, because I don’t want anybody to look at me differently. I’m still able to compete,” Denham said.
And she did. Denham recorded a 2.65 ERA, fifth-best in the league, across 34.1 innings. Strikeouts were fewer than her typical numbers, and the opponent’s batting average was elevated.
“It wasn’t my best, Denham said. “People could tell by the end of it. All of my friends knew, and it was crazy to see everybody rally behind me.”
Once the season concluded, Denham announced her retirement on social media. She had a surgery looming over her head that awaited her when she returned home to Houston. Doctors told her this is a surgery they usually perform on people in their 50s and 60s, but she was only 26 years old.
It seemed like one of the best pitchers in pro softball was stepping away from the game.
Turning her arm in a circle
“No, you can’t say that.”
That was Cat Osterman’s immediate response when Denham told her she would never play again.
The two were teammates for the first time back in 2021 during the final All-Star Cup that Osterman competed in, but their connection predated Athletes Unlimited. Denham is the youngest of four sisters who all played Division I softball, and her older sibling Jessica grew up playing travel ball against Osterman in the Houston area. Even their coaching overlapped – Denham and Osterman both worked with pitching coach Bobby Smith throughout their youth.
Outside of pro ball, both coached in the Texas Bombers organization, collaborating and working together. Osterman, with her fiercely supportive attitude, would not let Denham accept the end of her career so quickly. Not at least without trying.
“You have to go get fixed. Then you can reevaluate, and let’s see what happens from there,” Osterman told Denham.
Denham wrestled with the thought of playing again, but had bigger obstacles to face first.
“What scared me about coming back and playing is if this was my body telling me no… I eventually want to have kids one day. I want to be a mom. But on the flip side of it is that I have big dreams still, you know?”
In November 2024, Denham had surgery. Her procedure was a spinal fusion cage, a prosthetic device inserted between vertebrae. The cage serves as a space holder between the affected vertebrae and allows bone to grow through it, eventually becoming a part of the spine. They made three incisions: two down her back and one across her abdomen, similar to the location of a C-section.
For the first three months after, no bending, lifting, or twisting. In March, she began doing squats and movements with a 25-pound weight restriction. After months of watching longingly as those around her at physical therapy ran, she jogged for the first time with 60% of her weight.
Five months after the surgery, Denham was released with no restrictions. She attended physical therapy three days a week for nearly two hours while working full-time as the softball development representative for BSN Sports. By then, she’d become completely focused on her routine and taking incremental steps to get well.
One day, her physical therapist asked, “Do you want to try to turn your arm in a circle?”
A simplified question to a complex movement she’d built her whole life around: pitching a softball.
So Denham “turned her arm in a circle.” It wasn’t the heat of 65 mph she’s accustomed to or the drop ball that causes batters to swing out of their shoes, but “I knew from then… Oh yeah, I’m gonna play again,” she said.
Home Team
Denham trained in the fall with a new goal in mind: the AUSL Expansion Draft.
The league was growing from four to six teams, and the additional franchises opened up more roster spots for athletes. Denham went to a game during the inaugural season; she watched the Bandits face the Volts in Sulphur, Louisiana. Seeing it in person, she knew something special was happening for pro softball. The league recorded 22 sell-out crowds during its 2025 summer, drawing crowds at each stop of the AUSL’s cross-country tour.
Denham was consistently one of the top arms in pro softball for the four years before the AUSL’s launch. The league was taking off, and while her friends took the field, she was working to get back in the circle.
“I have to go play. I have to go play with my friends who took care of me and loved me through probably one of the hardest parts of my career.”
Someone who was there through those hard parts was Osterman. Denham documented every step of her recovery process, and once she was back to throwing bullpens, she’d send the videos to Osterman. With the perspective of a former teammate, mentor, peer – but mostly importantly, a friend – Denham wanted to know, ‘How does this look? Do I look the same? What do you think?’
“She has been driven to make this comeback from the second she realized that [she] is going to feel normal, and it’s been fun to watch,” Osterman said.
There was just one last circle to complete.
Osterman is the general manager of the Texas Volts. On December 1, 2025, she selected four athletes to add to her team in the expansion draft, and with her second pick, Osterman called out Denham’s name.
“It’s a testament to if you want something bad enough, you’ll figure out how to make it happen. And she’s able to do that,” Osterman said.
Just over two years after her back surgery, Denham was on a pro softball roster again.
She’s most excited to be back on a team with the mentality of chasing a championship together. Denham trains in Houston, Texas, and throws into a net in her garage with a Volts banner hanging on the wall. In just a few months, she’ll take the field at Dell Diamond playing for the new home team in her home state.
“It’s an extreme blessing to get to play,” Denham said. “So it’s going to give me the opportunity, I think, to play the freest that I’ve ever played.”
Denham and the Volts will open up the 2026 season on the road on June 9 and will debut to their Texas fanbase at home on June 18.
Savanna Collins is the Senior Reporter for the AUSL. You can follow her on X @savannaecollins.
