We may be 80 miles to the south, but Lewis County is part of Greater Seattle, which I learned over the weekend while attending our granddaughter Brooke’s basketball games at the NW Sports Hub in Centralia’s Historic Borst Park.
Dozens of girls’ and boys’ basketball teams from Western Washington — Vancouver north to Gig Harbor and points beyond — played games over the weekend at the NW Sports Hub in Centralia and W.F. West High School as part of the Chehalis tournament.
But when we wandered through the doors past the bathrooms, we left basketball behind and saw three baseball games underway inside netted courts and a booth with a www.gsl.com banner overhead.
“What’s GSL?” I asked my stepdaughter.
Amanda Reeder of Woodland shrugged, but a voice from the booth popped up: “Greater Seattle League.”
The voice belonged to Dylan Kilmurray, tournament coordinator, who educated me about the Greater Seattle League Tournaments, which offers 17,000 baseball players between eight and 18 the opportunity to play in 4,000 amateur games year-round, including three tournaments during January and one in February at the NW Sports Hub in Centralia. Last year, GSL hosted more than 2,500 teams.
“Our primary goal is to help young players fall in love with the game and to promote their continued participation and development in baseball,” states the website for GSL Tournaments, which was founded in 2011.
During the third weekend in February, boys playing in GSL Tournaments for the first time will share NW Sports Hub “fields” with girls playing softball through West Coast Premier Tournaments, a Portland-based organization founded in 2017.
“So Centralia is part of the Greater Seattle League?” I asked.
“It’s better than Seattle,” Kilmurray quipped.
The GSL also hosts outdoor baseball games in Centralia and Chehalis during the summer. In fact, Kilmurray said, the GSL runs a huge event in July at the Fort Borst fields called the College Showcase with 90 teams of 16- to 18-year-olds playing before 130 college scouts from throughout the United States.
“We have a lot of commitments come from those,” he said. “A lot of conversations start from those. It’s a good experience for those kids to play in front of a lot of coaches at one time.”
I hadn’t been inside the NW Sports Hub since shortly after it opened in 2014, when I attended a home and garden show there. I wasn’t quite sure what to think after the Lewis County Public Facilities District’s focus shifted from an equestrian center near Winlock to construction of the NW Sports Hub.
Fast forward eight years, and on most weekends, the 76,500-square-foot NW Sports Hub with 70-foot-high ceilings draws Pacific Northwest tourists from north of the U.S. border in British Columbia south to Portland and other Oregon communities. Four basketball courts and eight volleyball courts have been added since it was first built.
As we returned to the car through the packed parking lot, we passed a half dozen cars with British Columbia license plates. Given the number of vehicles parked at the nearby Centralia Middle School and occupying nearly all the spots for the NW Hub, I imagined hearing cash registers ding as Lewis County’s hotel-motel tax coffers filled.
The NW Sports Hub, which is operated by Dale Pullin and owned by the Lewis County Public Facility District, City of Centralia, Centralia School District and Northwest Sports Hub LLC, has requested and received hotel-motel lodging tax money. In late 2021, the Twin Cities Sports Commission requested $100,000, and the Lodging Tax Advisory Committee approved $47,355.
I asked Kilmurray how the NW Sports Hub, which holds eight full-size basketball courts or 14 volleyball courts in addition to indoor baseball and soccer fields on synthetic turf surfaces, compares to other venues where the GSL hosts tournaments.
“So the rest of our facilities are all outdoors,” said Kilmurray, who grew up in Bonney Lake and lives in Federal Way. “This is like the only indoor one that I know of in Washington. If there are any others, we don’t use them.”
People sat on metal bleachers watching ballgames. Those who were hungry stopped at the onsite Hub City Grub and Sportsbar or ventured into the Twin Cities for meals.
The outdoor complex includes six full-size baseball fields, two Little League fields, eight softball fields, six tennis courts, four full-size soccer fields, and a track stadium with seating for 3,500. About half of the fields are lighted.
In the future, the NW Sports Hub may host Esports Tournaments, or multiplayer video game competitions, if its broadband internet qualifies.
Looking at the Sports Hub’s website, which lists the square footage at 75,000, I saw listings for hotels in Centralia, Chehalis, Grand Mound and Rochester, and activities throughout the Northwest. Even if we are considered part of the Greater Seattle area, it would be nice to add https://discoverlewiscounty.com/, which links directly to hotels, campgrounds, and activities throughout Lewis County.
It’s exciting to see plans laid more than a decade ago sprout and bear fruit to the tune of at least $157 per person who visits the indoor arena. What a boon to the local economy.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
