Now that the Athletes Unlimited Softball League season in its entirety has passed, let’s take a look at a Lady Vol that competed on the big stage this summer. Tennessee softball assistant coach Aubrey Leach-Gartner competed in the AUSL for the Carolina Blaze and then in the All-Star Cup.
Leach-Gartner started in all 33 games between the Blaze season and All-Star Cup. She is one of the premier players in the league, and fits perfectly into Blaze general manager Dana Sorensen and head coach Kara Dill’s versatile philosophy.
“Aubrey Leach is a phenomenal second baseman,” Sorensen said prior to the season. “She can play center field, left field, right field.”
She recorded 28 putouts and 18 assists to just two errors for Carolina. At the plate, Leach-Gartner was a staple near the top of the order. Her ability to get on base proved to be a huge asset, when the Blaze were successful offensively.
She finished the regular season with a team leading 11 walks and 17 runs scored, third on the team with 18 hits, and led the team with two triples. In the All-Star Cup, Leach-Gartner finished with the fourth-best batting average of .304 with the second-most hits (7), in the 45 player pool.
This year, the USA Softball International Cup took place in Oklahoma City. Leach-Gartner, who is in the USA Softball Women’s National Team pool, helped the Women’s National Team to a gold medal. Leach-Gartner hit .429 with two RBIs and two runs scored in five games played.
The action isn’t over for the year, either. Team USA will compete in the WBSC World Cup Stage Event in Oklahoma City, Sept. 12-16.
Competing professionally pulls a coach away from the usual offseason work during those months. Leach-Gartner’s drive, though, is unmatched.
“Even though she’s still playing professionally and can’t go out and recruit in the summer, the work that Aubrey does for our program the nine months that she is fully present is probably worth the work of two or three people,” Weekly said in a June interview. “That’s just how good she is.”
The bigger benefit shows up in what she can pass on to the players chasing the same path she’s living. That summer of competition is a huge value to the Tennessee softball program.
“I think it’s important for our young ladies to have somebody on staff,” Weekly said. “It’s a real benefit to them to have somebody who is playing professionally and in our US National Team pool because so many of our girls aspire to that, and then you have somebody you can talk to about, okay, what’s that journey like? What do I need to do? Am I on track? What do I need to do different? So I think she has an expertise, and she’s living something right now that none of the other three coaches are.”
