Jocelyn Erickson Bandits AUSL Playoffs 2026
The Bandits are one win away from the AUSL Championship — and Erickson’s two Gold Gloves are exactly what a single-elimination game demands.
Sunday night, the Utah Talons beat the Chicago Bandits 3-1 and took the only thing Chicago needed — the head-to-head tiebreaker that would have guaranteed the No. 1 seed.
The Bandits finished one game behind Utah in the final AUSL standings. They came that close: co-leaders entering the final weekend, one loss away from the top spot. Now they are the No. 2 seed.
That means Thursday night at Davis Diamond in College Station, Texas. One game against the No. 3 Portland Cascade. Nine PM Eastern on ESPN. Win, and Jocelyn Erickson plays in the AUSL Championship Series — three games, July 25-27, on ABC, the first professional softball championship ever broadcast on network television. Lose, and the season ends before Saturday’s first pitch.
This is what Erickson came to the pro game to do. The Chicago Bandits took her with the No. 5 overall pick in the 2026 AUSL College Draft after she finished her career at Florida as the NFCA Division I Player of the Year and the SEC’s best player of the season. Before that, she won two Rawlings Gold Glove Awards — one at Oklahoma, one at Florida. She throws left-handed to second base, a genuine rarity at the catcher position, and she uses that arm to keep baserunners from getting comfortable.
She hit her first career AUSL home run July 13. Against Portland Cascade.
One win from the championship. Against the same team she went deep on six weeks ago.
What a catcher can learn from this
Single-elimination postseason softball is a catcher’s game.
The scoring comes harder. Every pitch carries more weight. The margin for error shrinks to almost nothing, and the player controlling more of those margins than anyone else on the field is the catcher — the pitch call, the read on the hitter, the block in the dirt in the seventh inning when a run scores on a passed ball instead of a strikeout.
Before your next game behind the plate, identify the one defensive thing that most consistently held you back. Was it the low pitch in the dirt? The ball up and away that skipped to the backstop? The runner you watched take second because the throw wasn’t there yet? That is your Thursday. That is the rep you run today.
Erickson is ready for hers. Is yours coming?
Try this at your next practice
- The one-game-playoff blocking set. Pick ten random dirt balls — low and outside, low and inside, dead center — and block them as if the game is on the line. No routine reps. Every one is the seventh inning with the tying run on third. Train the urgency, not just the technique.
- Pitch-by-pitch game plan. Before your next game or scrimmage, write down three hitters in the opposing lineup and two pitches you would use against each. After the game, check how often you went to those pitches. This is the game-calling drill in its most learnable form.
- The framing stillness check. Set up with a teammate or coach pitching on the corner. Your job: receive the pitch and show the umpire a still glove. No stabbing, no pulling. The stillness is what makes a borderline pitch a strike. Run twenty reps on each corner. Erickson’s Gold Gloves were built one still glove at a time.
Sources: Bandits Heat Up Heading Into AUSL Playoffs (Journal & Topics) · Bandits No. 2 Seed — Official (AUSL) · Talons clinch No. 1 seed (On3) · Ex-Gator Erickson hits first AUSL HR (WRUF/ESPN) · Bandits ink Jocelyn Erickson (AUSL official).
