Utah’s newest pro sports team has its sights set on winning another championship and elevating softball

When Cindy Ball-Malone saw Lisa Fernandez — the “G.O.A.T. of softball” as Ball-Malone described her — reached out to her, she had to double-check her phone.

Fernandez, the general manager of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League’s Utah Talons, wanted to discuss the University of Central Florida head coach becoming the next coach of the Talons. It was an opportunity Ball-Malone couldn’t refuse, she said.

“I’m just beyond excited to be standing here in front of you guys,” Ball-Malone told reporters Monday at the Talons’ media day.

Just over two months after her hiring, Ball-Malone will lead the Talons in the team’s season- and home-opener at the University of Utah’s Dumke Family Softball Stadium on Tuesday in a role she never imagined holding.

“When you pick up the ball and you play the game, you think you’re doing it for fun, and then all of a sudden you get to go to school for it, and then now, you get to make a career out of it,” she said. “I feel definitely blessed every day to have that opportunity.”

The growth of softball

At the Talons’ launch event in January, Fernandez noted that “there were very few that were able to continue to play this game” after college.

Now, the AUSL enters its second season, having added two additional teams this year to increase the total number of teams to six.

Like Ball-Malone, Fernandez, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, never thought “in a million years” that she’d be in her position either as the general manager of a professional softball team.

She’s taken to heart the words of her friend Dot Richardson, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, “to leave the game in a better place than where you started.”

“We’re in it,” Fernandez said. “We’re in it to make this succeed, and we’re going to do everything we can to continue to take this game to another level and I think this is the right time, right place.”

For Fernandez, “it’s about the kids that are coming next,” she said.

Talons catcher Sharlize Palacios said AUSL players have adopted the responsibility of taking the league to the next level.

“We really want to push it forward to see how far we can take it because there was people before us like Coach Lisa (Fernandez) that they were the ones that were pushing it forward for us,” she said. “So, we have to do our own job as well.”

In year two, the AUSL has partnerships with Sephora and Adidas and an expanded media rights deal with ESPN, which Palacios said is “going to help this league grow as much as it can.”

“I think my expectations of the league are very high just because we outpaced ourselves in the first year. I don’t think we expected ourselves to really blow up the the way that we did, and now having that deal with ESPN is huge,” she said.

The new season comes on the heels of the Women’s College World Series, which boasted record numbers on ESPN, including its most-watched opening Thursday and the “most-watched college softball game on record,” according to ESPN PR.

Women’s College World Series fans can now tune into ESPN to watch 50 AUSL games this season and see familiar faces from the collegiate level.

“We have a lot of high-profile players coming out of the college game who are playing in the World Series, who are playing postseason softball at a really high level, and so I think we’re just using that momentum for ourselves and learning and gaining and growing from what the college game is doing,” infielder Hannah Flippen said Monday.

Making Salt Lake City home

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In its inaugural season, the AUSL utilized a barnstorming model with teams bouncing from city to city. But in year two, teams now have permanent home bases, where players will live, train and play in front of home fans.

In January, Salt Lake City was announced as one of six markets for the teams, alongside Chicago, Portland, Oklahoma City, Durham, North Carolina and Round Rock, Texas.

Flippen, a former University of Utah star, told the Deseret News that it was “difficult” to be on the road every week of last season.

While she said it was “tremendous” the way softball fans showed up at every stop, “you want to see the familiar faces in the stands, you want to create those relationships with the fans.”

She’s looking forward to having home fans this season.

“To have a place that we can call home is really important. I think in the sport of softball, community is such a big thing, and to connect with fans, to connect with young athletes is really important to us,” she said.

The Talons stopped in Salt Lake City last season, and Flippen remembers the fan support fondly.

“In year two, I mean, this place was packed year one, and so I’m excited to see the fans show up again for us. I think we had great momentum last year, and so I’m looking to see more of that this year,” she said.

Not only is Salt Lake City home to a new professional softball team, it’s home to the inaugural reigning champions — and Talons players plan on defending their title.

In her first Zoom call with the team, Ball-Malone asked the players what goal they wanted to achieve this season. The answer: “reigning champs,” she said.

On the eve of the season opener, the players are still committed to that goal, according to Flippen.

“Expectations are to play a lot of really good, competitive softball and ultimately fight to win another championship,” she said. “We did that last year. We were first-ever champions, and so now we’re looking to be back-to-back champions. And I think we have the right team to do that, the right leadership to do that.”