Outfielder Korbe Otis was unfamiliar with Oregon’s reputation as a women’s sports hub when she was drafted to the state’s new professional softball team.

She had never been to Oregon before, the former softball standout at the University of Florida told OPB.

“I had no idea what kind of women’s sports presence was in Portland,” Otis said.

It took mere minutes for that to change. Quickly following her selection in December’s expansion draft by the Portland Cascade, an Athletes Unlimited Softball League team starting play in Hillsboro on June 18, Otis got a crash course in Portland’s historic support for female athletes.

Texts came in from college teammates, plus calls from friends, and then she took to Google.

Otis quickly learned she’d be part of a community that revels in women’s sports – as evidenced not only by high attendance at college and professional games, but by the success of businesses like the Sports Bra, the Northeast Portland pub that exclusively shows women’s sports on its TVs and is now franchising.

“Playing for a city that contributes so much to the advancement of women’s sports,” Otis said, “I think that’s a super special thing.”

The Portland Cascade joins Oregon’s growing number of women’s sports teams spanning from recreational to pre-professional to professional. In addition to the Cascade, this summer Oregonians welcomed back the Portland Fire WNBA team and launched a pre-professional women’s soccer team called the Cherry Bombs. The state’s NWSL team, the Portland Thorns, is playing its 14th season, leads the league in average attendance and is on track to make the playoffs once again.

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“Special” is a word Otis used a lot to describe the Portland Cascade and the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, or AUSL. Post-collegiate opportunities for softball players have been inconsistent through the decades, with a pro league operating from 1997 to 2001 and then another from 2004 to 2019. Despite softball’s more than 125-year history, it has only been included in the Olympics five times.

However, investment and media time for women’s sports have grown exponentially in recent years. Attendance and viewership are climbing.

For softball, Athletes Unlimited has emerged as the premier professional league thanks to a sustainable slate of investors and partners, including other major sports leagues and major media networks like ESPN. Excitement over expansion of professional play in the U.S. is buoyed by softball’s return to the Olympics in 2028 after being left out of the 2024 games.

Athletes Unlimited’s approach to professional sports

Athletes Unlimited runs professional women’s sports leagues for softball, basketball and volleyball, but the Cascade is the organization’s first team of any kind in Oregon. In May 2025, officials with Major League Baseball announced they were investing and partnering with AUSL, which includes distributing softball games on MLB platforms.

Jon Patricof, former president of New York City’s professional men’s soccer team, along with Jonathan Soros, investor and liberal political donor, founded Athletes Unlimited in 2020. Their idea was to start leagues with a focus on individual players, rather than on the teams they play for.

These player-focused leagues have athletes rack up points as individuals, while they rotate between teams. Fans could track their favorite players, and the sports were generally played at just a few locations with a focus on the television product.

That’s still how the basketball and volleyball leagues work, and how Athletes Unlimited softball started. However, in 2025, softball shifted to a traveling model. Four teams with static player rosters played in 10 cities.

This season is the first time Athletes Unlimited will have a city-based model. Its six teams with stable rosters of 16 players will travel to play each other over the next month and half. The average player salary is $35,000 with bonus opportunities to earn up to $80,000, according to the AUSL website. A championship game is scheduled for July 25 in College Station, Texas.

“This is a major step for the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, moving from a touring model to now a city-based model,” Kim Ng, AUSL commissioner and former general manager for MLB’s Miami Marlins, said at a January press conference in Hillsboro.

Ng said when looking at where to place the six AUSL teams, the league wanted to see three things: 1.) a strong softball tradition, 2.) proven fan engagement, and 3.) facilities ready to host professional softball.

“This market, Portland-Hillsboro, a market that embraces innovation, inclusion, and high high-level competition, was a natural fit for the AUSL and its athletes,” Ng said. “This market has shown it will support women’s sports on a large scale basis and quite simply, you all show up.”

New team adds to excitement in Hillsboro

The Cascade will play at the Gordon Faber Recreation Complex in Hillsboro, a recently renovated stadium that’s also home to the Hillsboro Hops, a minor league men’s team affiliated with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

“The Cascade is joining an elite family of athletes and athletic organizations that brings talent, fans, fun and excitement to Hillsboro,” Beach Pace, mayor of Hillsboro, said during the January event.

Pace, the first openly gay person and only the second woman to serve as mayor of the city, told the crowd she was “shaking a little bit” with excitement.

“In all the years of softball,” Pace said, a professional team “gets to come here now — I’m really shaking right now — and then we have the Thorns and the Fire. We are truly, Hillsboro, the Portland metro area, truly the epicenter of women’s sports.”

Hillsboro is also home to a new sports training facility that RAJ Sports — owners of the Fire and Thorns — is building to focus on female athletes.

For Otis, a starting outfielder in the Cascades’ first away game, she’s looking forward to learning more about Portland and Hillsboro — like where the best food trucks are and what community outreach opportunities exist. Otis said fans can expect her to be an intensely competitive player during games, but “goofy” off the field.

Otis said playing for a new team means the Cascade players and coaches get to build the culture and style of play “from the ground up.” Otis is also clear-eyed about the challenges of scaling up professional women’s softball so opportunities exist for the next generation.

There’s still a monumental gap between the level of investment and media time — which can help build strong fan bases — when comparing men’s baseball and women’s softball.

Otis sees her teammates, and all AU athletes, as working together to close that gap.

“Even though we’re competing against each other, and everybody loves their team and everybody wants to win, there’s always this undertone that we’re playing for something more,” Otis said. “We’re playing for the purpose to continue this league, to continue creating a platform for softball where hopefully, at some point, we can make a living wage and we can live out our softball dreams as long as we want to.”

The Portland Cascade host the Oklahoma City Sparks Thursday, June 18, at Hillsboro Ballpark. First pitch is at 6 p.m.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/06/13/women-softball-portland-cascade-hillsboro/