Reese Atwood Leads AUSL All-Star Vote After Hot Pro Start
Reese Atwood’s early Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) numbers are striking!
Reese hit a home run in her first professional at-bat. That was three weeks ago, and she hasn’t stopped. The Carolina Blaze catcher is slashing above .450 through her early games in the AUSL — a number that would turn heads for any rookie, at any position. — But the real story is what she does when she’s not hitting.
Atwood is doing it behind the plate, where she has posted 10 putouts and two assists while committing just one error. The AUSL’s All-Star Cup fan vote closes June 30. Among catchers, Atwood leads it. Across the entire league, she and Blaze pitcher Karlyn Pickens sit at the top.
The vote is a popularity contest in the way every fan vote is. What separates Atwood’s lead from a social media surge is the production underneath it. She was the first catcher drafted in the 2026 AUSL College Draft — seventh overall, by Carolina, on May 4 — after a college tenure at Texas that produced two consecutive national championships, the National Fastpitch Coaches Association, NFCA Catcher of the Year award, the Johnny Bench Award, which honors the nation’s top Division I catcher, and Texas’ first-ever NFCA/Rawlings Gold Glove Award. She arrived in Durham carrying more credentials than most catchers accumulate in a career. Three weeks in, she is making them look right.
The AUSL is six weeks old. The league opened June 9 and runs through July 20. There is time for the leaderboards to move. But the early story of this season has already included a debut home run off NiJaree Canady, a lead in the fan vote, and a rookie catcher from Lubbock who made the jump to professional softball look less like an adjustment and more like a destination she had been heading toward all along.
What a catcher can learn from this
Watch what Atwood does when she is not hitting.
She receives the pitch. She blocks the dirt ball. She calls the game. She communicates with the umpire and holds down the running game — all at a professional pace, against hitters who have studied the strike zone for years, alongside pitchers working new sequences on new opponents. There is no visible hesitation. Her skills and training transferred to success at highest level.
That does not happen automatically. It happens because the skills she built at Texas — receiving at the correct angle, moving her feet early on a block, reading a hitter’s stance before the sign goes down — were not only Fastpitch skills, they were the building blocks of elite professional catchers.
The best catchers at every level practice habits that will outlast the level they are at. A 12-year-old who stays athletic in the squat is not just preparing for travel ball. They’re building the same portable tools Atwood runs at professional speed.
The level changes. The habits hold. Reese Atwood is Solid what’s the vote is really for?
Try this at your next practice
- Athletic squat drill. Start in your catching stance without a glove. Have a coach toss a ball to either side — your job is to shift, block, and stay balanced without popping fully upright. Five minutes, 20 blocks. The goal is to make the squat feel natural at every angle, so the position is your foundation, not a starting point you have to leave.
- Pitch presentation reps. Have a pitcher throw 10 pitches on the low outside corner, 10 on the low inside corner. Receive each pitch and hold it for two counts — long enough for an umpire to see your glove. Work the framing: bring the glove in slightly at the edges, stay quiet with your wrist. Atwood built this at Texas. It transfers.
- Game-calling simulation. Set up a pitching chart with a “hitter profile” — fastball count, weak spot, what she chases — and call a five-inning game off it. No pitches thrown; just think through the sequence pitch by pitch. Building the habit of reading batters before they step in is the same mental work Atwood does behind the plate in the AUSL.
Sources: Carolina Blaze Rookies Karlyn Pickens, Reese Atwood Top AUSL All-Star Voting (Just Women’s Sports) · AUSL All-Star Cup Fan Vote: Halfway Update (theausl.com) · Reese Atwood – Blaze – AUSL (official player page) · Reese Atwood reminds the AUSL and NiJaree Canady who’s boss with first pro hit (Hook ‘Em Headlines) · Texas catcher Reese Atwood signs with Carolina Blaze (theausl.com)
