AUSL Photo Director Brings Future of Women’s Softball Into Focus
Jade Hewitt has captured the sport for USA Softball, two pro leagues, and brand partners including Adidas and Sephora
Like a Maya Brady home run, a 72-mile-per-hour Karlyn Pickens rise ball, a Skyler Wallace break on a stolen base, or Sierra Romero’s recently concluded 11-year professional career, sometimes softball’s seven innings go by too fast to savor their essential moments.
For nearly 20 years, Jade Hewitt and her camera have slowed the game to a halt and allowed fans, teams, and sponsors to linger on the valuable minutia skimmed by game broadcasts and social media clips.
Currently the director of photography for Athletes Unlimited, Hewitt just wrapped up her second season documenting its Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL). In the league’s first season with six teams, established home cities, and Major League Baseball investment and partnership, Hewitt has helped the AUSL and its partners keep core supporters in the game while showing new fans around the bases.
“We got to work with a MLB photographer [who] came and shot for us for a few games up here in Chicago this season, and he texted me after the game and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, softball moves so fast!,’” Hewitt said. “You definitely fall into a rhythm, but he was like, “Oh my god, the game moved so quickly,” and I said ‘Yeah, in softball, we’re trying to get you in and keep your attention.’”
The AUSL made more fans than ever keep their eye on the ball this season. Games were broadcast on MLB Network, CBS Sports, and ESPN channels, the latter of which averaged 375,000 viewers per game—a 150% uptick from 2025. The league sold out 25 games—with its Portland expansion club accounting for nearly half of those full houses—and saw merchandise sales grow 110% from a year earlier.
Through the league’s 450 million social impressions, Hewitt’s photos received nearly twice as many views as they did last year.
“That first year [in NPF] with the Dallas Charge, the training table was on the back side of the dugout in full view of the stadium, like in travel ball where you hang all your bags,” Hewitt said. “We had so many rental car trips crossing state lines after games and late nights, so to look at AU and where we’re at with ESPN and Adidas, I can’t believe we’ve come that far in a pretty short amount of time.”
Background to foreground
Hewitt’s softball story began when she was four years old, sporting a blue jersey with a local dentist’s logo on the back for her local tee ball league in Louisiana—wondering if she could match Babe Ruth’s mark after hitting her first home run. After realizing that running more than 60 feet at a time wasn’t for her, she dropped her early dalliance with soccer to dedicate herself to travel softball as a defensive-minded presence at catcher and third base.
At the same time, Hewitt developed a love of the family photo albums that she’d grab from her house when the family would evacuate from hurricanes. Determined to document images and memories herself, she picked up her dad’s large over-the-shoulder VHS camcorder and began making movies in the streets with friends and, eventually, softball recruiting videos for high school athletes who wanted to play in college.
When Hewitt reached college herself, she not only played four years of softball at Mississippi’s Millsaps College, but picked up her first DSLR camera and earned a degree in studio and digital arts, following it up with a masters in film production from the University of New Orleans. In 2015, she took her first professional job with National Pro Fastpitch—creating media under commissioner and future Athletes Unlimited VP Cheri Kempf and meeting future AUSL stars including Sierra Romero and Hannah Flippen—who Hewitt photographed during her first practice in 2017 while fielding hits off a fungo bat at third base.
“I got to hang out with Hannah last night at the field, and working with someone like [her] for so long, when she jogs out to the field in between innings, like to go play defense, I can look at Hannah and [stretch] that means I’m gonna take pictures of you getting defensive reps, make sure you kind of elongate and give me like a nice defensive throw,” Hewitt said. “I got to work with Sierra Romero for 10 years, and got to recreate an image that we took 10 years ago in her rookie year, so those relationships are what I value the most.”
Those ties to veteran players that stretch back to previous leagues or Athletes Unlimited’s earlier, single-location, points-based softball incarnations have helped Hewitt not only create an in-season rapport, but reach out to rookies like Portland Cascade infielder Grant or the Carolina Blaze catcher Reese Atwood. Knowing that Cascade veteran Tori Vidalis will be up to take pictures if asked—or that Blaze utility player Aubrey Leach will high-five an opposing team after an All-Star Cup game and immediately come around the pitching circle for a group photo—makes it more likely that their rookie teammates will follow their lead.
I got to work with Sierra Romero for 10 years, and got to recreate an image that we took 10 years ago in her rookie year. Those relationships are what I value the most.
Jade Hewitt
The more comfortable players are around each other, Hewitt, and her camera, the more relaxed the final photos tend to be. While that creates a better experience for fans—who Hewitt guides through her edits and creative process on Instagram—it’s also provided some context for AUSL partners looking for their place within the game day experience. Previously, Hewitt took the photos that helped AU and Topps create the league’s first trading cards. Now, brands including Adidas, Goodr, Rawlings, Franklin, Mizuno, and Sephora work their way into AUSL culture through OKC Sparks star Maya Brady’s ads for Easton bats, fans’ trip to the Sephora braid bar or Hewitt’s photos on the Adidas Dugout social platform.
“I feel like every time I open up my feed, I see [Blaze infielder] Baylee Klingler and the Franklin [batting] gloves,” Hewitt said. “It’s been so great to see these partners making softball a huge priority, and I’m really excited for the athletes because they go off and do shoots with them in the off season or at training camp… it just seems like we’re getting better year after year.”
Zooming in
After more than a decade telling the story of women’s professional softball through photography, Hewitt sees continued opportunity to not only help the league and its partners, but to use her images to sell the sport itself.
Hewitt has shot women’s volleyball and basketball leagues for Athletes Unlimited, but continued returning to softball to capture elements she couldn’t find in other sports. Her favorite shot in the game is of a slap hitter dropping their bat just behind the ball and sprinting all in the same frame. At softball stadiums, meanwhile, fans are on top of the field and join an atmosphere of dugout chants and crowd rituals that bring a stadium to life at crucial moments.
Gauging the speed of the game and the energy of the environment allows Hewitt to present a complete picture, catching both the action on the field and the kids watching intently from the fence line.
“That 10 year old that’s out there watching [Portland’s] Sis Bates play or Sam Landry pitch, that is the equivalent of a little boy going out there or a little kid going out there and watching Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa when I was a kid,” Hewitt said. “That’s what it is now, so capturing that feels a little bit more magical.”
It’s a task that takes on added importance as the 2028 Summer Olympics approach and Oklahoma City prepares to host the games’ softball events at USA Softball’s facilities. Hewitt accompanied the U.S. team’s 15 athletes to Japan during the last Summer Olympics in 2021, and noted that the experience was a distilled version of what she’s experienced more recently with the AUSL—focusing on one team, but the same core elements that draw her to the sport.
That 10-year-old out there watching Sis Bates play or Sam Landry pitch — that is the equivalent of a little kid watching Mark McGwire or Sammy Sosa when I was a kid.
Jade Hewitt
As the Olympics approach, Hewitt said she continues to see and capture something unique to women’s softball that should be of interest to new fans and partners alike: Sisterhood. While she’s shot AU’s volleyball and softball leagues, she’s taken in by little moments in softball like players occasionally catching themselves cheering for friends on another team. In “a game of failure,” she regularly takes shots of players walking off the field arm-in-arm, smiling, or, in the case of actual sisters Sydney and Sierra Romero, sitting on the field together watching fireworks just before one of them finishes their final season.
“I care about pro softball probably more than a regular person should, and so I would hope that when you’re trying to capture and when you’re trying to capture those big moments, that comes through,” said Hewitt, who met her fiancee at an AU softball game four years ago and proposed between AUSL seasons. “I want to put our athletes and to put these women in the best light that makes them look and feel amazing… and there’s not many pro softball games in the past 11 years that I haven’t been at because I want to be there and I want to capture their journey, and it means a lot to me. My fiancee would probably tell you that it means more than it probably should, but I can’t help it.”
