Merced’s Bubba Nickles adds 2024 AUX softball champion to her collection of accolades

Former Merced High softball player Madilyn “Bubba” Nickles, who went on to star at UCLA and with USA softball, has been crowned champion of the AUX 2024 season.

Nickles plays for the professional sports league called Athletes Unlimited (or AUX). The league features basketball, lacrosse, softball, and volleyball leagues for female athletes. Unlike regular professional sports leagues, Athletes Unlimited only has one individual champion at the end of each season.

Nickles ended the season with a .238 batting average, five home runs (2nd overall for home runs), 11 RBIs, and a fielding percentage of 1.000.

From AUX softball: “Honestly, all glory to God first and foremost,” Nickles said. “But secondly, I really feel like this medal was this team’s medal. We were talking about how we want to be the first team to win a doubleheader, and I feel like every single woman that’s been here has just been so helpful to each other and supportive and it’s really cool to be in this environment and just to be able to have recognition.”

The 2024 AUX softball season was June 10-25. AUX is Athletes Unlimited’s shortened softball season that has 42 professional softball players split into three teams. AU’s regular season starts July 22 through Aug. 25 featuring 60 professional players.

The season starts with three team captains (four for the AU regular season) drafting players to their teams. From there, these three teams compete against each other gaining points from team and individual performances. At the end of the week the top three players on the leaderboard are named captains and the whole process starts again.

Once the season concludes, the leading individual earns the title of AU or AUX champion.

This AUX season, Nickles earned 1,344 points. Of those points 890 were win points and 140 were MVP points. Players earn points through three categories: win points, game MVPs, and individual stats. To learn more about the point breakdown check it out here.

Entering Tuesday’s doubleheader, Nickles was trailing home run queen Jocelyn Alo by 200 points.

Game one, Team Nickles faced Team Mazon in a 9-inning battle. Team Nickles won 13-12 after a walk-off single from Nadia Taylor scored Nickles and Delanie Wisz, earning the team 90 win points.

Game two, and the final game of the AUX season, Team Nickles played Team Alo. Coming off of a game one high, Team Nickles scored six runs in the first inning and an additional two runs in the sixth with no response from Team Alo.

Finally in the top of the seventh Team Alo put two runs on the board but it wasn’t enough to walk away with the victory. Team Nickles won with a final score of 8-2, earning 110 win points and also making them the first team this season to sweep in a double header.

These 200 win points, along with her individual performance, put Nickles at the top of the leaderboard. Alo was just six points behind Nickles.

Nickles has earned a multitude of honors

In high school, she was named 2015-16 Gatorade National Softball Player of the Year and Gatorade California State POY as a senior. During her time at Merced High she also earned Merced Sun-Star POY honors, CCC Player of the Year honors, and helped the Bears earn their fourth-straight league title in 2016

At UCLA she has earned All-Pac 12 honors, NFCA All-American Honors, and helped the Bruins to their 2019 National Championship.

Nickles has also played for the USA Softball Junior Women’s National Team and earned a silver medal with USA Softball in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

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