Members of Congress were set to swap suits for cleats Wednesday night at Audi Field in Washington, D.C., as the 18th annual Congressional Women's Softball Game was scheduled to bring lawmakers together for a cause that has quietly become a Capitol Hill staple. The game, scheduled for Sept. 23, has spent nearly two decades raising money and awareness for young adults facing breast cancer.
The event was scheduled to be held at Audi Field, according to congwomensoftball.org, marking a return to the venue for the 2026 edition. Spectrum News reported the first pitch was set for 7:30 p.m. ET. Proceeds from the night were set to benefit the Young Survival Coalition and women navigating breast cancer, per the same Spectrum News report.
A Game Born From Personal Loss
The tradition traces back to 2009, when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. Susan Collins launched the game together, according to monumentalsports.com. Wasserman Schultz co-founded the event after her own breast cancer diagnosis at age 41, the outlet reports. What started as a bipartisan show of solidarity has since grown into a fixture of the D.C. sports and political calendar.
Since its founding, the game has raised nearly $5 million for the Young Survival Coalition, according to walb.com. That figure builds on the $4.3 million total reported ahead of the 17th annual game in 2025, monumentalsports.com noted at the time. The Young Survival Coalition supports breast cancer survivors and people still battling the disease at age 40 and under, per Spectrum News.
A Survivor's Story Behind the Cause
Kim Vandermeer, who is Korean American, was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer at age 40, according to Spectrum News. She underwent chemotherapy and radiation, along with a double mastectomy, and later attended a Young Survival Coalition summit in 2024, the outlet reports. Vandermeer has said she hopes to see more early-stage breast cancer diagnoses and fewer stage-four diagnoses going forward, per Spectrum News.
Separately, ihadcancer.com reports that Vandermeer was diagnosed with Stage II hormone-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer after an irregular mammogram led to a biopsy. She completed three months of chemotherapy at the end of 2023 and had a double mastectomy that December, according to the same account, before being declared in remission the following January.
The Broader Push for Early Detection
The game's organizers have long framed the event as more than just a night of softball. It raises awareness about the prevalence of breast cancer in young adults and highlights the importance of early screening, according to monumentalsports.com. That mission has taken on added weight as the game has grown from a small Capitol Hill matchup into a nationally recognized broadcast event, with the Congressional Women's Softball Game continuing its partnership with Monumental Sports Network for the 2026 game, per congwomensoftball.org.
The rivalry at the heart of the event dates back to 2010, when the Member Team first invited women of the Washington, D.C. press corps to join as opponents, according to monumentalsports.com — a matchup that has continued in various forms ever since. For the players and organizers alike, the game has become a way of turning a shared diagnosis history into an annual public reminder: breast cancer doesn't wait for middle age, and neither should screening.
