New year, new pro sports leagues for women
Basketball, volleyball, softball, track and soccer will all launch new enterprises in 2025
Reflections of 2024 certainly gave a sense that it was a big year for women’s sports. And of course, it was – from the Caitlin Clark phenomenon, the launch of a pro hockey league, a must-watch WNBA season, the return of a dominant U.S. women’s soccer team, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone making her 400 hurdle races look like they weren’t even a fair fight and suddenly people discovering and loving women’s rugby.
To quote those old TV commercials for a Pocket Fisherman or Mr. Microphone:
But wait … there’s more.
The new year is bringing new opportunities for female athletes. New leagues, new roster spots, new chances to see women’s teams on TV. What will survive? What will thrive? That remains to be seen but the fact is, the timing has rarely been better to be an athlete or fan of a variety of sports.
Volleyball
First up is volleyball, with a new league launching next week that will go head to head with a league that launched last year. For volleyball fans (who will get the pun), it’s a double hit.
Next Wednesday, Jan. 8, will see the debut of League One Volleyball, which goes by the acronym LOVB but is pronounced “love” (what is this, Gaelic?). It’s got some serious $160 million in funding from athletes (skier Lindsey Vonn, basketball players Candace Parker and Kevin Durant) and entertainers (Amy Schumer and Chelsea Handler) and a TV partnership with ESPN, which bodes well.
The league launches with six teams that include 17 Olympians, 10 from the U.S. team that won silver in Paris. Teams are in Atlanta, Houston, Salt Lake City, Austin, Madison and Omaha. Rosters, particularly in Austin, Madison and Omaha, lean heavily toward local college stars.
Two Iowa-connected players will compete in the league – Kayla Haneline, a 2016 Northern Iowa alum who will play for Atlanta, and Candelaria Herrera, a 2021 Iowa State alum who will play for Omaha. Herrera was a member of Argentina’s 2020 (2021) Olympic team.
The pro league is part of a larger LOVB organization, which was founded in 2020 with an infrastructure that also includes 58 junior clubs in the U.S., including three in Iowa.
Most of the league’s games will be on ESPN+ but an in-season tournament April 10-13 will be on ESPN2.
The league will go up against the Pro Volleyball Federation, about to launch its second season on Jan. 9. The league has eight teams: Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Indianapolis; Omaha; Orlando, Fla.; San Diego; and Las Vegas (you read that right, both leagues have teams in Omaha and Atlanta).
Last year, Omaha won the title in a season that saw an average attendance of 4,608 across the league. PVF’s TV deal is with CBS, with matches scheduled on CBS Sports Network and an all-star game Feb. 22 on CBS.
Former Ankeny Centennial player Devyn Robinson, who just finished her career at Wisconsin, was a first-round PVL draft pick and will play for the San Diego Mojo.
And like the Veg-O-Matic or the spray-on hair: There’s more. In the fall, Athletes Unlimited will offer its fifth volleyball season. AU sports bring in players in a unique format that mixes and matches team members over the course of five weeks in one location.
Basketball
If you need more than college basketball this winter, a new women’s 3-on-3 league will debut on Jan. 17. Unrivaled was launched by WNBA superstars and Olympians Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier, with financial backing from other top athletes from several sports.
Unrivaled features 36 of the U.S.’s top women's basketball players across six teams. Its 70-foot court is about three-fourths a standard basketball court and teams will play four 7-minute quarters. Its TV deal is with TNT, with games on TNT and truTV, and all games streamed on Max.
The teams don’t have a geographic location, the entire season will be played in Miami. All players will have an equity ownership in the league, which has a mission to keep American players from having to travel abroad to play beyond the WNBA season. League president Alex Bazzell told SB Nation that player salaries will average $222,222, well beyond the WNBA’s average of $119,950.
Former Iowa Hawkeye Kate Martin will play for the Laces, whose first game is Jan. 18 on truTV.
Des Moines native and Dowling Catholic alum Clare Duwelius will be the fledgling league’s executive vice president and general manager. Duwelius had been general manager of the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx.
Unrivaled’s first game is at 6 p.m. on Jan. 17 on TNT. It pits the Mist (featuring Stewart and Aaliyah Boston) vs. the Lunar Owls (featuring Collier and would-have-been 3-on-3 Olympian Cameron Brink).
Softball
Pro softball has had various fits and starts for decades, and this year Athletes Unlimited will augment its mix-and-match approach with a true team vs. team league.
Beginning in May, four teams will play a 30-game season that will tour six to eight cities before becoming a city-based league in 2026. The cities have not been announced but the teams will be called the Bandits, Blaze, Talons and Volts.
ESPN has signed on as a broadcast partner and Athletics Unlimited’s press materials say at least 18 games will be broadcast on the network’s main channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU). Neither tour schedule nor locations have been announced yet.
Track
Professional track has always had challenges in the U.S., for women or men. Last year saw a new chance for athletes to pocket some cash at the Athlos NYC all-women’s track meet, and they’ll get another shot this year with the new Grand Slam Track.
Forty-eight of the world’s best men’s and women’s track athletes will compete in four meets from April to June in Kingston, Jamaica; Miami; Philadelphia; and Los Angeles. At stake will be upwards of $400,000 for a runner who picks up points throughout the circuit.
Among the stars on the circuit will be former Iowa Hawkeye Brittany Brown, who won a bronze medal in the 200 meters in Paris last summer. Brown has been cashing in since, picking up $85,000 in September with a 200-meter victory and a second-place finish in the 100 at the Athlos NYC meet.
Also competing in the Grand Slam meet will be two-time Olympic silver medalist Kenny Bednarek. Bednarek, a past Drake Relays competitor, ran for Iowa Hills Community College in Ottumwa.
Soccer
Did you know Des Moines is home to a championship soccer team? The Iowa Demon Hawks, a men’s indoor (5-on-5) team in the Major Arena Soccer League 2 came to town in 2023 and last year won the league championship.
The league is a step down from the main Major Arena Soccer League, which has a women’s league that is adding a team affiliated with the Iowa Demon Hawks. Iowa’s MASL W team has its first game at Detroit on Saturday and its home opener, a doubleheader with the men’s team at Buccaneer Arena in Urbandale, is on Jan. 24 when they host Indiana United FC.
The Demon Hawks are one of 22 MASL W teams.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. She’s a past winner of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association’s Mel Greenberg Award for her coverage of women’s basketball. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese and Basketball: Stories From a Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
I’m happy to join fellow Iowa writers and journalists as part of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. The collaborative is 60 writers throughout the state - likely some familiar names to Iowa readers - publishing on topics ranging from politics to food to sports and so much more. A subscription (paid or free) gets you a Sunday roundup of all the writers’ work that week. One of my colleagues described it as “Iowa’s Sunday newspaper.”
Meet the writers here, and see for yourself the great variety the collaborative offers.