Longtime pro and former Oregon Ducks great Gwen Svekis announced this week that she is retiring from professional softball after six years.

Her accomplished playing career concludes this weekend as the Athletes Unlimited pro season wraps up with her final game to be played tomorrow, Sunday, August 25, at 1 pm MT at the Parkway Bank Sports Complex in Rosemont, Ill.

Gwen will be on Team Ocasio in the game against Team Kilfoyl which will be live streamed on ESPNU.

In an article written and published Thursday by Alexandra Lewis for the Athletes Unlimited website site, the standout catcher’s pro career was recapped along with her time with the University of Oregon.

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Here’s the text of that article courtesy of Athletes Unlimited:

Catcher Gwen Svekis is retiring from professional softball after six years…. Here are some of her career highlights including her All-American career at Oregon:

Athletes Unlimited (2020-2024):

Svekis was an original member of Athletes Unlimited Pro Softball, becoming the second player to sign with the league in November 2019. She was a part of the Player Executive Committee from 2020-21.

Svekis has competed in every AU Pro Softball Championship season and its 2022 AUX competition.

She placed in the Top 15 four times, including two 5^th-place finishes in 2023 and 2020. She has a career .252 batting average with 52 hits, 12 home runs, and 35 RBIs heading into the final week of the 2024 season.

National Pro Fastpitch: (2018-2019):

Svekis began her pro career with the Chicago Bandits of the National Pro Fastpitch League in 2018 and earned All-NPF recognition the following year.

Japanese Diamond League (2023):

She competed with the Toda Medics of the Japanese Diamond League in 2023, posting a .312 batting average with 24 hits, including six home runs and three doubles. She also helped Team USA to a first-place finish at the 2023 WBSC World Cup Group A event in Dublin, Ireland. ‘

Oregon Ducks (2015-2018)

Svekis had a .337 career batting average with 45 home runs and 169 RBIs at the University of Oregon from 2015-18.

She is among Oregon’s career leaders in RBIs, home runs, and walks. She was named the 2018 NFCA Catcher of the Year and received All-America 1^st Team honors that season.

As a Duck, she was a three-time NFCA All-Region honoree and two-time All-Pac-12 Conference performer. She holds the Oregon single-game record with nine RBIs and ranks second on the single-season list with 17 home runs set in 2018.

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On an Instragram post this week, Gwen noted:

“I don’t know if I’ve ever thought about what it would feel like to actually close this chapter of my life. For 21 years, I’ve played this game. Talk about playing with house money!! I have a million “thank you”s to say over the course of my last weekend gearing up, but let me start with thank you to this little girl. Your choice to play this game gave us everything…. It’s so hard to say goodbye, but we did it all! We played for fun, played for a national championship, played for our country, played professionally domestically and abroad… the cup is overflowing… time for the next chapter- the best is yet to come.”

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