What is GGSL?

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Creative Commons usage rights GGSL plays at the Jackson River recreation and sports center in Covington, Virginia.

Near the ending of winter or beginning of spring, more sports seasons approach. Ranging from baseball, golf, tennis, and soft ball. There’s a lot of softball players choosing to play for our school, Greenbrier West Highschool: The Lady Cavaliers. While there’s tryouts for the teams school, some choose not to play for the school, they would rather play for a travel team called Greenbrier Girls Softball League or GGSL. 

There are a bunch of opinions about playing softball for the school and not playing for the school.  Few choose to play GGSL  because there’s no tryouts to make the team, you go to sign ups, fill out a form and pay and you’re on that team. The teams can range from having 10-15 teams you can possibly pick from.  In , there’s two tournaments they have, one is at the beginning of the season, it’s called Early Birds and then there’s another one towards the end of the season, called post tournament. These tournaments are held at  Jackson River Sports Complex, the tournaments are usually the second weekend in April and May. The complex consists of 5 fields, there’s four of them in a circle with a concession stand and the scoreboard boxes in the center. The 5th field is used for the younger league, it’s not part of the circle of fields, it’s off to the right.  

4 softball fields
Creative Commons usage rights. The softball teams play on these fields.

As our school softball team has all grades(9-12) on the team and having JV and varsity, but with GGSL there are age groups. The youngest age group in GGSL is pixi 7U (coach pitch), Pigtail 10U (8-10), Ponytail, JR 13U(10-13), and Ponytail senior 18U (14-18). There’s multiple teams for each age group and they’ll play against each other.

Besides the tournaments, there will be actual games between the two teams, or having a doubleheader (one team plays a team and then having another game against a different team afterwards).   Sometimes, as practice there would be a scrimmage, which is a practice game or if it’s supposed to be an actual game, but there aren’t enough players.  With these games and not playing for the school, you still have a chance to get a scholarship, if there is a recruiter watching you play. 

This soft ball group is another way to get our softball girls to play, even though they don’t want to play for a school. There’s no tryouts to stress them out over and they’re able to build a new type of sportsmanship with playing other teams from other places of Greenbrier County.