There are professional women’s soccer, basketball, football, and lacrosse teams, but no baseball teams. Until now. The Women’s Pro Baseball League, or WPBL, plans to launch six teams in May of 2026. The new league marks for the first time in over 70 years a professional women’s baseball teams has been created. NEW LEAGUE: Women’s Professional Baseball League offers new hope for female athletes. https://t.co/SKXgqBPj0Q — WPLG Local 10 News (@WPLGLocal10) August 24, 2025 WSAW reported that tryouts are already being held: For the first time in nearly 70 years, America has a women’s professional baseball league. The WPBL is set to launch six teams in May of 2026, although the exact locations of those teams have yet to be announced. In order to fill the rosters, the Women’s Pro Baseball League held three days of tryouts in Washington, D.C., with the best female baseball players from 9 countries running drills at the Nationals Youth Baseball Academy. “We’re building a future, but we’re continuing that tradition and showing what’s possible,” explained league co-founder Justine Siegal. “Women have been great athletes all along. But now that everyone’s noticing it, you know, women’s sports is [moving] forward.” Hundreds of athletes signed up to try and secure a spot in the league. Each day of tryouts, players will be weeded out by skill and talent until an exhibition game on Monday at Nationals Park. Then, 150 will qualify for the WPBL October draft. One of those athletes hoping to make it is Victoria Ruelas, the first American girl to play in the Little League World Series. “Growing up it was the American pastime,” Ruelas said, “and to be told you couldn’t do it as a young girl, it just fired me up even more. To come back to it, to try out again is an awesome experience.” The tryouts reportedly have a huge turnout: Hundreds of women from around the world are in the nation’s capital this weekend to step up to the plate with the dream of earning a spot in the only professional women’s baseball league in the U.S. https://t.co/InLPacKfV4 — WTOP (@WTOP) August 23, 2025 ABC News shared more details on the league and how it was birthed: Victoria Ruelas was 12 years old when she made history as the first American girl to play in the Little League World Series. That was in 1989. And while Ruelas is proud of how far women in sports have come since her childhood, she can’t help but wish there were more opportunities for them to shine. Especially in baseball, where opportunities beyond youth leagues have so often required girls to take unusual paths, most of them alongside men. “We keep saying how much strides we’re making,” Ruelas said. “But they’re so slow in coming. It just should be faster. “I get excited when I see girls playing and getting to go to the Little League World Series every year. But to still be one here, one there — that’s upsetting to me. There’s so much more of us out there that play.” Ruelas and many other women have carved out their own spaces in baseball over the years. Now, the wait for something more unifying is on the horizon with next year’s launch of the Women’s Professional Baseball League. The league is holding its tryouts in Washington D.C. While baseball stars like former Little League phenom Mo’ne Davis and USA baseball women’s national team player Kelsie Whitmore are already signed to the WPBL, the league’s tryouts are open to all women.