The Portland Cascade added a champion to their outfield.
Ashton Maloney — a two-time national champion and one of the most accomplished outfielders in recent Texas history — has joined the AUSL’s Portland Cascade, and she has already made her return to Central Texas: Maloney entered a late-June game against the Texas Volts at Dell Diamond as a pinch-runner and saw brief defensive time, per the Austin American-Statesman.
Her arrival brings a five-year Longhorn résumé — capped by back-to-back Women’s College World Series titles and the program’s first Rawlings Gold Glove Award — into the professional ranks.
For Maloney, the move is the next chapter for a career .372 hitter, the school’s single-season hits record holder, and a defender Mike White once described as having “the best arm on the team, without a doubt.”
A five-year foundation
Maloney arrived at Texas from Liberty, Missouri, as one of the nation’s top prep outfielders — rated No. 7 in the Extra Inning Softball Extra Elite 100 and No. 64 in Softball America’s Top 100, per Texas athletics. At Liberty High School she batted .536 with 224 career hits, 18 triples, and 13 home runs, and helped Missouri’s 2019 Class 4 state soccer champions.
A June 2021 USA Softball Under-18 Junior Women’s National Team invitee, Maloney did not have a smooth college start. She redshirted in 2022 after tearing her ACL two weeks before arriving on campus, per Sports Spectrum, then returned as a redshirt freshman in 2023 and never looked back — ultimately playing four seasons across five years on the Forty Acres.
Across 255 career games at Texas, Maloney finished with a .372 batting average, 261 hits, 171 runs, 74 RBI, and 35 stolen bases, per D1Softball — production built almost entirely without power numbers. She never hit a collegiate home run in 702 career at-bats, yet she was one of the most difficult outs in the country from the leadoff spot.
Year by year
2023 (redshirt freshman): Maloney hit .382 with 58 hits in 60 games — the fourth-most on the team — and earned All-Big 12 Second Team and All-Big 12 Freshman Team honors. She was the only Longhorn to play all three outfield positions that season and finished conference play with a .372 average and a 1.000 fielding percentage, per Texas athletics.
2024 (redshirt sophomore): She posted a .381 average with 61 hits in 63 games, hit .410 with runners on base, and was named All-Big 12 First Team and NFCA All-Central Second Team. Texas reached the WCWS championship series but fell to Oklahoma, which claimed a record fourth straight national title; Maloney doubled in Game 2 of that final. The Longhorns’ breakthrough would come the next year.
2025 (redshirt junior): Maloney’s breakout. She set the Texas single-season record with 93 hits while batting .415 with a .456 on-base percentage and .934 OPS, per Texas athletics and D1Softball. She started all 68 games, led the team with 29 multi-hit games (including one four-hit performance), and went 11-for-12 on stolen bases. Honors piled up: All-SEC Second Team, All-SEC Defensive Team (right field), SEC Softball All-Tournament Team, NFCA All-Central First Team, SEC Player of the Week, and a No. 60 ranking on Softball America’s postseason Top 100.
Head coach Mike White put the hit total in perspective after the season.
“How she is not an All-American, she just doesn’t have the sexy home run numbers,” White told 247Sports. “But she set the season hit record with 93. That’s an incredible feat from the leadoff position, and she was steady all year for us. It was a big reason we won the national title, because she was so consistent for us.”
He added: “And also her outfield arm. She’s got the best arm on the team, without a doubt, and is formidable out there in right field for us. And Ashton is such a hard worker, a great kid, such a competitor. I mean, I thought I hated to lose. That kid really hates to lose.”
2026 (senior): Maloney hit .295 with 49 hits, six doubles, and four triples in 64 games as Texas chased a repeat. The average dipped from her career norms, but her defense reached a historic peak. She and catcher Reese Atwood became the first two Rawlings Gold Glove Award winners in program history — Texas was the only school with multiple recipients nationally that season, per Texas athletics and the NFCA.
Maloney posted a .979 fielding percentage with 39 putouts, seven assists, and a double play in right field. She was also named an NFCA Third-Team All-Central Region honoree.
When Oklahoma City called again
Maloney’s senior season ended the same way her redshirt junior year did: with a national championship. In 2025, Texas won the first title in the program’s 28-year history, beating Texas Tech in three games — Maloney was aboard for Mia Scott’s clinching grand slam, per Texas athletics. A year later, the Longhorns did it again.
In 2026, Texas became just the fifth team in WCWS history to lose its tournament opener and still win the title, per Texas athletics, rallying through the bracket to face Texas Tech in the best-of-three finals.
Maloney delivered in the biggest moments:
- Game 1 (June 3, 7-3 win): She went 1-for-2 with a triple and two RBI, driving in runs during Texas’ five-run first inning; her triple to left scored Kaiah Altmeyer and Hannah Wells, per Texas athletics and the official box score.
- Game 2 (June 4, 4-1 clincher): She went 1-for-3 with a run scored, opening the top of the fifth with a single — back-to-back with Kaiah Altmeyer — to start the rally that put Texas ahead for good in the repeat title clincher.
She finished her Longhorns career as a two-time national champion, a Gold Glove winner, and the owner of one of the most durable hitting resumes in modern Texas softball history.
Next stop: Portland
Maloney adds a proven leadoff bat and an elite right-field arm to a Portland club in its inaugural AUSL campaign. She has already crossed paths with Texas’ AUSL team, the Volts: the Cascade swept a three-game series at Dell Diamond in late June, and Maloney was in Austin for it — appearing against the Volts in her return to Central Texas, per the Austin American-Statesman.
For Maloney, the jump is less reinvention than translation: the same slap-hitting, run-scoring, defensively aggressive profile that made her indispensable in burnt orange, now in Cascade colors.
Anthony Rivera. Biographical details from Texas Athletics, D1Softball, and the Austin American-Statesman.