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Before we can talk about the latest and greatest softball league in the US, we have to talk about Athletes Unlimited.

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Unrivaled is a women's basketball league, founded in 2023 by pro ballers Napheesa "Phee" Collier and Breanna Stewart. The league is based in Miami, Florida, where they own and operate their own practice facility and arena, and currently consists of 8 teams.

Players participate in three-on-three games spanning a short, two-month season, with games happening on weekends from Friday through Monday. After the regular-season, they hold three single-elimination playoff rounds to crown their champion. The top four The first team to win the championship in 2025 was Rose BC.

Thanks to its unique systems, Unrivaled basketball is exciting and easy to digest. Unlike in typical five-on-five basketball, Unrivaled teams hold rosters of only seven players. Instead of four 15-minute quarters, Unrivaled plays three 7-minute periods, followed by a fourth period that shifts gears to an untimed "first-to" system. During this period, they add 11 points to the highest score, and the first team to beat that score, from their existing point total, wins the game. So, if a team is losing 50-42 after the third period, they can still win if they make it to 61 before the other team does.

The craziest thing about Unrivaled is that it was made by the players, for the players. Despite what other leagues might want us to think, running a league really just takes money and values. If you have a great plan and the financial backing to make it happen, you can make a company that serves its staff well, and that proves true for Unrivaled. The facility in Miami has everything the players could want or need to take care of themselves and their families and improve their game. To top it off, the league has performed so well thus far that they're actually paying their players even more than what they initially estimated would be possible! They even claim that their average player salary is the highest in women's sport, reportedly sitting at over $200,000. And that's for a league that only runs from January to March!

Additionally, the league hosts mini in-season competitions for cash prizes. In February, they play a one-on-one tournament, open to players voted on by the fans. The top four at the end of the tournament split a prize pool of $300,000, with the champion taking home a hefty $200,000. And that isn't all: there's even a free-throw competition that spans most of the season, where the most reliable player at the line (most FTM with the highest FT%) wins another $50,000. Plus, every member of the championship team wins $50,000! So, theoretically, a player could win up to $300,000 in cash prizes, on top of their six-figure salary. Ho-ly!

Now, I know my whole page just screams "Philly is the best," but they held the first ever Unrivaled tour in Philadelphia on January 30th, 2026. That game broke the record for the highest attendance at a regular-season professional women's basketball game with 21,490 fans, so. Tell me I'm wrong lol you cannot convince me that Philly is not where it's at.

Anyway, time to tell you about my faves! Of the 8 teams, my favorite is Phantom BC. I love their colors and vibes (ghost gang!), as well as their 2026 roster! My favorite players of the 48 in the league are Natasha Cloud, Courtney Williams and Natisha Hiedeman (the StudBudz), Chelsea Gray, Brittney Griner, Aliyah Boston, Kahleah Copper, Kelsey Plum, Li Yueru, and Rhyne Howard :]

You may be wondering, Orion, if you love women's sports so much, and actually watch basketball from time to time, then why didn't you list the WNBA?

For those unaware, the Women's National Basketball Association was established in 1996. It is partnered with the NBA, which is largely what brought it success over its now-long-defunct competitor, the American Basketball League (1996-1998). Besides superior funding and tv deals to entice star players to their league, the WNBA also benefitted—and still benefits—from being a summer league, which allows them to operate in NBA venues during the men's off-season.

This all sounds pretty great, and it is. So, what's the problem?

Throughout the years, the WNBA has been considered "unprofitable" by countless sources. Granted, in the 90s and 00s, it probably was, but the one thing that set it above the ABL is part of why the league has been said to "make no money." When you have to pay your investors more than half of the money your company brings in, it's really hard to turn a profit. The NBA alone gets a 40% cut, and there have been more recent investors since. I'm not going to get into it in detail, because there are way better sources of information out there, but if you're someone who believes that the WNBA doesn't make money, just ask yourself: why would anyone invest in a company that doesn't make money?

Now that that's out of the way, there's another problem: a company that has to meet crazy profit margins really would rather not pay their employees properly. WNBA players have been getting paid the bare minimum for decades, and they're pretty much done with it. The Player's Association (aka union) and the league have failed to negotiate a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA, aka contract) to cover the upcoming season. If they continue without one into the spring, the players will still be on strike when the preseason begins.

The WNBA is basically pretending that none of this is an issue, but please try to pay attention if you haven't been already, because this is a huge deal. If the players get what they're asking for (which really isn't much, all things considered), it will be a monumental win, especially considering the playerbase is largely composed of black women. Women's sports have absolutely been blossoming these last few years, and it would really be a shame if the WNBA had to miss out on an historic year over weights and measures.

So, yeah, until the league pays the players what they're owed, I will not be writing any posts here about the WNBA, what teams I follow, the upcoming Philadelphia team, etc. It just does not sit right with me at all. Good luck to the Player's Association in the ongoing negotiations!

Before we get into it, this one is gonna need some background.

Despite what you may have been led to believe, women play baseball. They have been since the 19th century, although most people in the United States have only ever heard of the "league of their own" era around World War II. During this time, women played professionally while the MLB pros were away at war. However, this is far from the only era or place where women could be found on the diamond.

Take, for example, the Little League Baseball. Girls have been on Little League Baseball rosters around the world for decades, although Little League had banned girls from participating in 1951. Years later, in 1972, Maria Pepe being the first girl to start a game after this ban, and although she was forced out of the league, she attracted the attention of the National Organization for Women (NOW). NOW supported a court case on her behalf that eventually led to girls being allowed to play Little League again.

Since then, there have been 24 girls to appear in the World Series, the first being Victoria Roche (Belgium) in 1984. Easily the most famous, though, was Mo'ne Davis. A Philadelphia native, she competed with her team representing the Mid-Atlantic region in 2014. There, she became the first girl to pitch a win and a shutout in the World Series.

Now, the fact that I'm telling you about the Little League World Series may have hinted at what's coming next. If you guessed that I'd start talking about professional women's baseball outside of the US, you're right!

I'm physically restraining myself from going into crazy detail, so I will simply finish this section by talking about the Women's Baseball World Cup :) This is an international tournament that has been running every other year since 2004. It's been sitting at a record high 12 participant nations since 2016, and has represented 16 total nations! These include the reigning 7-time gold medalist Japan; 2-time gold USA; 2-time silver Canada; 1-time silver Chinese Taipei; 1-time bronze Venezuela; and non-medaling participants Cuba, Dominican Republic, France, Hong Kong, India, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, and South Korea. China and the Philippines were also slated to participate in 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cup was postponed and eventually cancelled.

So, now you know that women and girls play baseball, but with all this high-end talent from around the world, what if there were a league where the best could compete every year?

The Women's Pro Baseball League was founded and announced in 2024. Its goal is to commence play in the summer of 2026, and it will hopefully serve as the first sustainable women's baseball league in the United States since the 1950s. The four inaugural teams based in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and San Fransisco will compete at a neutral site: the historic Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois. This is where the first women's baseball game, for which the players were paid and fans were charged admission, was played back in 1875.

Since the league is still in it's infancy and has yet to start their first season, let's talk about the process of building this league. Things really started to ramp up in 2025. Open tryouts were held in August at Nationals Park in Washington, DC. Over 600 players registered for the tryouts, and the league narrowed their draft-eligible list to 130 viable pros. One of these pros was—surprise!—Mo'ne Davis, from Philadelphia!

In October, the league announced their teams, and a virtual player draft was held in November. The first overall pick in the draft was famed women's baseballer and Banana Baller Kelsie Whitmore, selected by San Fransisco. Interesting note on Whitmore: she and several other players selected and signed in the WPBL will be continuing to play Banana Ball with their respective teams leading up to and following their season, because Jesse Cole is a saint.

The tentative schedule and format for the season is as follows: starting in May, there will be a 4-week regular season, with teams playing two games per week. Then, there will be an all-star game, and finally a 2-week postseason tournament. Hopefully, all plans run smoothly!

Now, to name my faves :) I think I will be rooting for Los Angeles, as they have drafted and signed my favorite players: Mo'ne Davis (obviously), and Ashton Lansdell (another Banana Baller!). I also appreciate that New York is running with the tradition of professional women's sports teams based in NYC wearing liberty teal. I think it's fun!

And... that's all I've got for you, so far! I hope to add more to this as more happens (team branding? the season? playoffs? expansion?). Until then, I hope you enjoyed!

Banana Ball is amazing, and I need more people to know about it.

The Savannah Bananas started as a collegiate summer baseball team in 2016. They were fairly successful in the Coastal Plain League, winning three championships through 2022, but D-class college baseball isn't what got them 10.5M followers on TikTok. Starting in 2018, the team developed an alternative rule set for baseball called "Banana Ball." From then on, as popularity grew, the team started functioning as two different teams playing two different sports, with Banana Ball happening primarily in the off-season.

The rules of Banana Ball are similar to regular baseball, but the differences are quite stark. The main quality of Banana Ball is the emphasis on "trick plays," which is why the Bananas get compared to the Harlem Globetrotters so often. A trick play is when a player executes a normal play (such as throwing a pitch or catching a fly-ball) while putting some sort of extra spin on it. Common tricks include backflips, throwing behind the back, or dribbling the ball in various ways.

There are also changes to the rules themselves, 12 in total. Rather than collecting points in the form of runs, the team that scores the most runs in an inning wins a single point for that inning. There's also a two-hour time limit on the game, and once the last playable inning is reached, every run scored during that inning counts as a point (like in normal baseball). Any fly-ball caught cleanly by a spectator (which would normally be a foul ball) is considered an out on the field. The batter is not allowed to bunt or step out of the batter's box, but they are allowed to steal first base at any time. Also, instead of walks, Banana Ball uses a "four-ball sprint" system, where after ball four, the batter may advance as far as they want around the bases until every fielded player has touched the ball. There are some other rules, too, but I will end with the "Fan Challenge," allowing fans to call for a review on the previous play once per game.

This might sound overwhelming in text-form. I know that just reading the Banana Ball rules can make even my head hurt, but I promise it's a lot less serious than it seems. At it's roots, Banana Ball is a version of baseball designed to be entertaining and engaging for the fans.

So, back to the history. In 2020, due to the shortned CPL season, the Bananas debuted the Party Animals, an opponent team for home games in Savannah. In 2021, the Bananas played in their "One City World Tour," where they barnstormed Hank Aaron Stadium in Mobile, Alabama, and sold out both nights. Then, once the 2022 CPL season had ended, the Bananas announced that they were folding their collegiate program and diving into full-time Banana Ball. With this, the Bananas expanded their "world tour" to 14 cities.

From there, Banana Ball has continued to grow exponentially. They officially formed the Banana Ball Championship League in 2023. The Party Animals became a proper team in 2024, along with the addition of the new Firefighters team. From there, they added a development team called the Visitors, and then the new Texas Tailgaters. Then, in 2025, they unveiled two new teams, the Loco Beach Coconuts and the Indianapolis Clowns (based on the real Clowns, who were an entertainment baseball team in the Negro Leagues and were around from the 1930s to the 1980s!).

The main thing I want to express here is that Banana Ball gets bigger and bigger every single year, and the owners, Fans First Entertainment, really understand what it means to put out a quality sport entertainment product. They ensure that their merchandise is affordable, their tickets are distributed fairly, and their on-field product is always going to be something you've never seen before. These are the key points that founder Jesse Cole is always preaching, and he lives up to it. It's truly amazing to see the growth of something like this in such a short span of time!

For my favorites, I can't really say! I just love watching the games and seeing whatever they're going to do next. I'm hoping to get to go to one of the games this upcoming season, and if I do, I just know it will be absolutely spectacular! As for players, though, I do love to see Ashton Lansdell and Kelsie Whitmore tearing it up, plus Dakota "Stilts" Albritton, who is just delightful (he bats, fields, and pitches on stilts and is listed at 10'9").

Anyway, I urge you to watch a game or check out their social media if you've never done so. And check out the teams on their website, as you'll be sure to see some fantastic characters. Banana Ball is a blast!