Utah Talons add second Razorback, making total four in fledgling league
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – In the world of professional softball in the United States, there are two ways to end up on an active roster:
1) Receive a golden ticket during the season which lets a player know she has been drafted.
2) Be added to a player pool and get called up by a specific team at some point in the season.
For Razorbacks utility player Kailey Wyckoff, who just recently wrapped up her season for Arkansas, it is the latter path that landed her a highly coveted spot with the Utah Talons. That immediately inserts her into the midst of a two-month season as part of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, a second-year organization with the firm financial backing of Major League Baseball to ensure it has the stability to grow, which it already has.
It’s initial season began with four team and was won by none other than Wyckoff’s newest home. Utah knocked off Chicago in, of all places, Tusacaloosa, Alabama in a championship game that aired on ESPN with a modest audience that came up just shy of 350,000 viewers.
For perspective, the UFL, a spring football league created by a merger between the XFL and USFL back in 2024, averaged just shy of a million viewers per game on ABC while games appearing on Fox and NFL Network properties ran around 650,000 viewers.
What the call-up earns Wyckoff is a base salary of $40,000-$45,000 per season according to several internet sites, an amount just shy of the starting salary for a first-year teacher in Arkansas. However, the official AUSL site lists the base closer to $35,000 and that doesn’t account for performance-based bonuses, which can drag total pay somewhere between $75,000-$80,000 for a particularly successful season which places compensation on par with educators in administrative roles in most school districts across the state.
Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) players earn an average base salary of $40,000 to $45,000 for the summer season. With performance-based bonuses, total compensation can reach up to $75,000 to $80,000.
The season begins right after the first week of June and ends with the championships during the final week of July, allowing plenty of opportunity for a player like Wyckoff to accept a coaching role with a college or high school while continuing to play pro ball each summer.
The league recently expanded from four to six teams this season. The Portland Cascade and Oklahoma City Spark join the original four teams in Utah, Texas, Chicago and North Carolina.
With Wyckoff’s elevation from the AUSL reserve pool, Arkansas now has four former Razorbacks actively allocated. She joins Bri Ellis (Utah Talons), Dakota Kennedy (Carolina Blaze), and Tianna Bell (Chicago Bandits) as former Hogs in the league.
She made her AUSL debut Sunday evening, appearing in the designated player spot while reaching base via walk during a 2-1 loss to the Portland Cascade.
As a senior in 2026, Wyckoff batted .342 with 53 hits, 10 doubles, two triples, eight home runs, 42 RBI, 22 walks, and 36 runs scored. She posted a .587 slugging percentage and a .439 on-base percentage while collecting 11 multi-hit games and 10 multi-RBI games as Arkansas pushed toward its first-ever Women’s College World Series appearance.
Defensively she was perfect, posting a 1.000 fielding percentage with 45 putouts, primarily appearing in right field. She drove in a season-high five runs and smashed her first career grand slam during a series finale win over UConn on March 22 to help the Hogs complete a sweep of the Huskies. She also drove in the first runs in program history at the WCWS by smashing a two-run home run off 2026 USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year Jordy Bahl-Frahm during the Razorbacks’ opener against Nebraska.
The Talons take on the Texas Volts in Austin on ESPN 2 this Thursday at 6 p.m.
