Nine Chicago Bandits players take the field in Rosemont this weekend as the Athletes Unlimited Softball League kicks off its All-Star Cup. This four-week individual competition swaps out team standings for a live points leaderboard. The opening game is set for a 6 p.m. first pitch Saturday at the Stadium at Parkway Bank Sports Complex, with Team Rachel Garcia facing Team Georgia Corrick to start the tournament.
The tournament, first reported by WSPY News, features 45 professional players competing for the individual All-Star Cup championship rather than a traditional team title. Rosters get redrafted before each series, with the top three players on the leaderboard becoming the next round's team captains. Players accumulate points based on team victories, inning wins, personal statistics, and MVP honors, and the player sitting atop the leaderboard after four weeks is crowned champion.
Bandits Players Scattered Across Multiple Rosters
Chicago's roster depth shows up across several of the All-Star Cup teams. Team Garcia, captained by Texas Volts player Rachel Garcia, includes Bandits selections Skylar Wallace, Sami Williams, and Ailana Agbayani. Team Georgia Corrick, led by Utah Talons player Georgia Corrick, features Bandits players Lexi Kilfoyl, Bella Dayton, and Mary Iakopo. At the same time, Team Ricketts, captained by Carolina Blaze's Keilani Ricketts, rounds out the Bandits' representation with Kat Sandercock, Amber Fiser, and Morgan Zerkle.
That spread means nine Bandits players in total are featured in the competition, per the same report, giving Chicago fans plenty of rooting interest even without their own team on the standings board. The format's structure rewards individual performance over roster loyalty, so those nine players will be competing against — and alongside — each other depending on how the weekly drafts shake out.
Coming Off a Runner-Up Finish
The All-Star Cup arrives just weeks after the Bandits wrapped their 2026 regular season as runners-up in the AUSL Championship, falling to the Utah Talons in the title series, according to Wikipedia. Chicago infielder Sami Williams capped that season by being named the league's 2026 Hitter of the Year, posting a .427 batting average with 32 hits, 7 home runs, and 34 RBIs, as reported by the Iowa State Daily. Williams now enters the All-Star Cup as one of Chicago's headline names on Team Garcia's roster.
Rosemont has been the Bandits' home market since the league moved from a traveling touring model to permanent host cities on January 13, 2026, per MLB.com. The Stadium at Parkway Bank Sports Complex, a 2,000-seat venue that opened in 2011, was built as the first facility in the country designed expressly for women's professional sports, according to the Village of Rosemont. Located in Rosemont's entertainment district off I-294, the stadium has hosted Chicago professional softball for over a decade.
League Backing From MLB and ESPN
The Bandits franchise traces back to 2005 and won four National Pro Fastpitch championships in 2008, 2011, 2015, and 2016 before that league suspended operations in 2021, according to Wikipedia. Athletes Unlimited later revived the Bandits name as part of a broader buildout that now includes financial backing from Major League Baseball, which acquired an equity stake of more than 20 percent in the AUSL in May 2025 — MLB's first direct investment in a women's professional sports league, as noted by Sports Illustrated.
Former Miami Marlins general manager Kim Ng, the first woman to serve as a general manager in North American men's major professional sports, took over as AUSL Commissioner in April 2025. The league also expanded from four to six city-based franchises for 2026 with the additions of the Oklahoma City Spark and Portland Cascade, growing the talent pool now on display in Rosemont. A multi-year ESPN distribution deal covers roughly 50 AUSL games per season across ESPN's linear networks, ABC, CBS Sports Network, and MLB Network.
For Bandits fans, the shift from team standings to an individual leaderboard changes how they will watch this month's action. Rather than tracking wins and losses for one club, the storyline now follows nine familiar names scattered across three different rosters, all chasing the same individual crown over the tournament's four-week run.
