Her grandma was a Rockford Peach, now she's a star in the AUSL

Aubrey Leach is one of the best softball players in the world.

She played at the University of Tennessee from 2016-2019 -- finishing on Top 10 lists for career batting average, steals, on-base percentage and walks.

She competed in the AUX for the last four years, tallying the second-most points during the 2023 season.

And this summer, she's breaking ground, holding down second base for the Blaze in the inaugural, superstar-laden Athletes Unlimited Softball League.

But for Leach, breaking ground isn't a totally new idea. It's in her genes.

Her grandmother, Wilma Ann Williams-Leach, was a Rockford Peach -- a player on the best team in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.

One of the first, and most famous, women's sports leagues ever created.

"I don't think it hit me until high school when I was like, 'Wow, she was actually a big deal,'" Leach told me before a recent game in Wichita. "It was way bigger than what we talked about family-wise. Obviously, being old enough to watch "A League of Their Own," and understand what they did and how they traveled and the struggles they had in their own right was pretty cool."

Wilma Ann Williams-Leach grew up in Missouri and was a star volleyball player in high school -- leading her team to a district title for four straight years. She excelled in other sports, too, including softball, but there wouldn't be much available to her (or really any female athletes during that era) once she graduated in the early 1950s.

Still, there was one option.

10 years before, to make up for the loss of male baseball players leaving to fight in World War II, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League had been formed in the U.S. It was popular, it was successful, it gave talented female athletes the chance they deserved.

Williams-Leach jumped at that chance.

"She played volleyball, her team went undefeated and then the day after school ended, she drove with her brother to try out," Leach said. "She went from one sport to the next and was like give me all the sports opportunities possible."

The 17-year-old Williams-Leach aced the tryout in Chicago and joined up with the legendary Rockford Peaches for one season in 1953 -- the squad that won four titles, the most in AAGPBL history, in 1945, '48, '49 and '50. She hit .260 in 1953 for the fourth-place Peaches, well above the .230 league average. The league folded in 1954 and Williams-Leach went back to college at Arkansas State, participating in the lone sport offered to her: Cheerleading.

Williams-Leach died at the early age of 59 -- when her granddaughter Aubrey was just an infant -- but she was able to watch "A League of Their Own" just before she passed.

"She would talk about the movie and people would poke, 'So what's accurate, how was it really?'" Leach said. "She would say, 'Oh, we never went out, we never did those things.' And I'm like, 'Hmmm, yeah OK.'"

More than 70 years later, Leach has built on her grandmother's legacy on the diamond. In fact, all the Leach siblings have. Aubrey's younger sister, Kelcy, started for five seasons at catcher for Texas Tech and Tennessee. And her twin youngest sisters, Alannah and Gabby, are both sophomores for the Lady Volunteers.

Aubrey accomplished something else that would've been difficult for her grandmother to pursue in the 1950s: She got her law degree. You know, while being a professional softball player and a grad assistant at her alma mater from 2020-23. She's not currently a practicing lawyer, but she did help draft player contracts for the AUSL and aided players with any questions they had before signing.

"It was a lot of sleepless nights," Leach laughed. "It was a long three years, but I don't think I would've traded it. It was a super unique opportunity that not many people get. Being able to go to class Monday through Friday and then fly out on Friday nights for SEC series and then come back and do it all over again. It's crazy."

Right now, though, she's embarking on another unique opportunity: One of the leading hitters on her team, she's trying to get the Blaze out of the bottom of the standings and back into contention for a shot at the AUSL championship. A chance to be a history-maker in a first of its kind league. Sort of like her grandmother, but this time on a world stage with ESPN cameras, big financial backings and opportunities that Wilma Ann Williams-Leach probably never dreamed of.

"It's been so surreal," Leach said. "To see the connection. To watch softball grow from what she experienced to what we're experiencing now."