Sasaki leaving president spot after watching growth of IGSA

Greg Sasaki has been president of the Irvine Girls Softball Assocation.

Greg Sasaki has wrapped us his stint as president of Irvine Girls Softball Association but he still has some coaching to do.

Sasaki led the Irvine Girls Softball Association 10-and-under Gold all-stars to a third place finish at the USA State Tournament. Now the team competes in the Western Nationals Championship Tournament in Camarillo today through Sunday.

The team’s finish tied the highest finish in IGSA history, last accomplished by the 2011 10-and-under Gold team.

• RELATED STORY: IGSA team finishes third in state

When his coaching stint with IGSA is completed, Sasaki, 49, plans to get involved with travel ball in the city. He remembers when he first started out.

“I was a new kid on the block and they saw that I had a little baby,” Sasaki said. “The vice president left so they needed to vote someone on and so they voted me on as vice president. So I’ve been one of the presidents for over 10 years.

“You basically run all the board meetings.  If there is a tie, then I decide it. So I manage the meetings and make the motions and I count the votes when we vote on things.”

With Sasaki at the helm and with the help of the board, the league has maintained a steady number of teams each year.

This year, there are 36 teams from 6-and-under to 14-and-under.

“The numbers have stayed around 400 to 450,” said Sasaki, a 1987 Irvine High graduate. “Softball in general throughout the county, has gone down but Irvine has stayed the same.”

Players in the league play most of the year, starting with fall ball, which has practices at the end of August.

“That can go through November and if you want to play a Christmas tournament, you’re playing into December,” Sasaki said. “Then you start to do the email process for the spring season in January and pick your teams. As soon as the spring season ends, usually the first weekend in May, you’re picking the all-star teams for the all-star season.

“If you keep winning, you will play all the way through the first week of August.”

Sasaki has had two girls go through the IGSA program, including Hannah Sasaki, who recently wrapped up a successful career with Woodbridge and is headed to University of Illinois on a scholarship.

“She had a great career, she was recruited because she runs fast and her best attribute is her speed,” Sasaki said. “That’s one of the benefits of doing all this volunteering is that you get to spend a lot of time with your kid.”

He is also proud of his other daughter Abby Sasaki, who has been on the IGSA 10-and-under Gold team that also won the district title for the second year in a row.

Sasaki also coached the 8-and-under team that won the district title the year before.

“Abby’s team has really been incredible,” said Sasaki.

But in the early going, there were struggles. Sasaki jokes about the first team he coached which he affectionately calls the, “perfect team.”

“We lost every single game,” he said. “From that core group, we just kept getting better. I think the next year we won six games and then the next year we were in double digits. We won like 10 and then the next year, we won 30. So it was the first IGSA team to make it to Western Nationals.”

Sasaki, an adaptive physical education teacher with the Walnut Valley Unified School District, received a personal honor in May when he was named to the Wall of Recognition by the City of Irvine. The plaques of all the recipients are on display at Bill Barber Park.

“It was quite an honor because I feel like I’ve just been fortunate to be part of some good teams and to be part of a good organization, IGSA,” he said. “There have been a lot of good people that have gone through the same route as me and not been recognized.

“I get to get the pat on the back a lot of times, but I had a lot of help. I made sure they put Irvine Girls Softball on it (the plaque)  because I wanted to make sure that the league got some representation, it was the league filled with a lot of good people that allowed me to get it.”

Sasaki takes great pride in the league, which he notes is the only youth softball league in the city.

“I would say 90 percent of the girls in Irvine high schools came through here in one way or another,” he said.

Sasaki said he will be still be a part of girls softball in Irvine and will be around should new league president Sarah Weitzman have any questions.

“I’ll still be around and I’ll still be available for IGSA,” he said.