GPLS names scholarship after P.A.’s Bruce Vance

May 6, 2022 | 3:20 PM

Prince Albert’s Bruce Vance did a lot for Girls Prairie League Softball (GPLS). He was one of the founders of the competitive weekend league, involving teams from all over Western Canada.

Now, the league is paying back as they announced a scholarship in Vance’s name. The Bruce Vance Scholarship will award $1,000 to one post-secondary student each year who volunteers as a minor girls softball coach.

“The league has become a very big entity in Western Canada, I’m very proud of how it’s going, how it’s grown. And for them to name a scholarship in my honour, it’s quite the moment. I was very struck at the moment. I was at a loss of words,” Vance told paNOW.

Back in 2010, Vance’s Prince Albert Aces played an exhibition game against a club from Lloydminster. Lloydminster’s coach was Brett Harvie, who had an idea to make the weekend games against teams from other provinces an ongoing thing. Vance and Harvie talked throughout the offseason, before launching the first Girls Prairie League Softball season in 2011 as co-commissioners. It had 21 teams then and now features 115 at the start of the 2022 year.

After the first few years as its co-commissioner, Vance took on other roles like as a Saskatchewan representative for the league, before eventually stepping back.

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“It’s gone gangbusters,” Vance said. “I’m so proud of the league for how much they’ve grown.”

Since its creation, Vance said the GPLS helped develop the Aces’ players even more as they were getting valuable experience from not only the extra games but also the increase in competition.

“It took our teams to a new level. They learned how to play difficult games and difficult situations. They also learned game management, too. We had a couple of weekends with rain delays and the girls just absorbed that. I remember one year at Westerns, there was a rain delay, and the team we were playing just froze when they came back because they had never been through anything like that. Our Aces just excelled and won the game.

“The league prepares teams to be ultra-competitive, and a lot of teams have done well at provincials, westerns, and nationals coming from GPLS,” added Vance.

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Jeff.dandrea@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @jeff_paNOW

by Jeff D’Andrea

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GPLS names scholarship after P.A.’s Bruce Vance

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