From a dance-studio floor to a rulebook
A lunchtime boxball game at a Miami performing-arts school, played in a studio because there was no gym, becomes a codified team sport.
Press & media
Press
& Media
Everything you need to write about Gridball and the National Gridball League™: the facts, the story, approved images and logos, and who to contact.
Where things stand: the first Gridball exhibition is being planned at a local gym or campus facility. The date and venue are not confirmed, and no NGL match has been played yet.
01 · Fact sheet
Gridball
at a glance.
- Organization
- National Gridball League, LLC (Florida)
- Founder
- Jaylon Ballard
- Formalized
- 2025. The first Gridball rulebook was drafted in 2024.
- Origin
- A taped boxball court in a seventh-floor dance studio at New World School of the Arts, Downtown Miami
- Sport
- Gridball, a co-ed team sport evolved from four square
- Contact
- nglgridball@gmail.com · nglgridball.com
- 24 × 24 ft
- The Grid: four quadrants, Prime, Major, Minor and Entry
- 2 v 2
- Players on the Grid, rotating along the Z-path
- 14
- Per roster: 7 male-identifying, 7 female-identifying; no gender requirement on the Grid
- 1 · 3 · 7
- Points: Elimination, Grid Hold, Gridlock
Status, October 2026: the first exhibition is in planning, with date and venue unconfirmed. No match has been played, so there are no results or attendance figures. Clubs, arenas and championships shown in NGL imagery are concepts.
02 · Boilerplate
About the
National Gridball League.
Use either version as the "About" paragraph in a story or release.
Short · about 70 words
The National Gridball League (NGL) is the founding league of Gridball, a co-ed team sport evolved from four square. Two players per team share a 24-by-24-foot Grid of four quadrants, rotating along a Z-shaped path and scoring 1, 3 or 7 points. Every roster has 14 players: seven male-identifying and seven female-identifying. Founded in Florida by Jaylon Ballard, the NGL is planning its first exhibition. Learn more at nglgridball.com.
Long · about 190 words
The National Gridball League (NGL) is the founding league of Gridball, a co-ed team sport evolved from four square. Gridball is played on the Grid, a 24-by-24-foot court divided into four quadrants: Prime, Major, Minor and Entry. Each team has two players on the Grid at a time. Players must return the ball after one bounce; a miss is an Elimination, which scores 1 point for the other team and moves players up a Z-shaped rotation. Holding Major while four rounds end earns a Grid Hold (3 points), and holding Prime earns a Gridlock (7 points). Every roster has 14 players, seven male-identifying and seven female-identifying, with no gender requirement for who takes the Grid.
The game traces back to a taped boxball court in a seventh-floor dance studio at New World School of the Arts in Downtown Miami. The first Gridball rulebook was drafted in 2024, and National Gridball League, LLC was formalized in Florida in 2025 by founder Jaylon Ballard. The league publishes its Official Rulebook (Version 3.6), a Quick Play Guide and a Game Officials Handbook at nglgridball.com, and is planning its first exhibition.
03 · Founder
Jaylon Ballard.
Jaylon Ballard is the founder of the National Gridball League, LLC.
Gridball is built on the foundations of a childhood playground pastime: four square. Its roots are in the boxball games played on a taped court in a seventh-floor dance studio at New World School of the Arts in Downtown Miami, where P.E. classes were held and where students from across the school lined up to play, at lunch and during P.E. After the Paris Olympics brought the idea back into focus, the first Gridball rulebook was drafted in 2024, and Jaylon formalized the National Gridball League in Florida in 2025.
Since then the league has published its Official Rulebook (Version 3.6), a Quick Play Guide and a Game Officials Handbook, and is planning Gridball's first exhibition.
04 · Logos
The approved
NGL logo.
Vector (SVG) and 2000 px PNG files below. The logo pack adds 1000 and 4000 px PNGs, the mark on its own and a one-page usage guide.
Do
- Use the supplied files, SVG where possible.
- Use on-light for light backgrounds and on-dark for dark ones.
- Scale proportionally, with clear space of at least the ball's radius.
- Place it on a plain, high-contrast area of a photo.
Don't
- Retype, redraw or trace the logo.
- Stretch, rotate, crop or recolour it, or change the red of the ball (#EA0C27).
- Add outlines, shadows, glows or 3D effects, or separate the ball from the letters.
- Use it to suggest NGL sponsorship or endorsement without written permission.
05 · Images
Approved
images.
Free to use for coverage of the NGL, credited "National Gridball League". Please keep each caption's label with the image. No game has been played yet, so there are no event photos.
Concept renderings must be captioned "Concept rendering · not a real event". They are visualizations made with image-generation tools: the players, clubs, kits, crowds and arenas in them are not real.
Concept renderings
Diagrams
Officiator signals
From the Game Officials Handbook. Four Officiators run every match, one per side of the Grid.
NGL scoring software
The league built its own scoring system because Z-rotation and quadrant scoring don't fit a standard scoreboard. These screenshots use the software's built-in demo match, with generated names.
Archive video
A 2008 video posted on YouTube by NDFYF, "NWSA Box Ball Competition", shows one of the seventh-floor boxball games Gridball grew from. It is third-party footage, not NGL material: it is embedded with credit on our story page. Embed it from YouTube with that credit; please don't download it, clip it or take stills from it.
06 · Story angles
Stories worth
telling.
Co-ed by design
Every roster is seven male-identifying and seven female-identifying players, but who plays on the Grid is a coaching decision, with no gender requirement.
Building a sport in public
The rulebook, Quick Play Guide and Officials Handbook are published before the first exhibition, which will test them with real players.
The playground game, grown up
Four square with teams, a Z-shaped rotation and 1, 3 and 7-point plays. Anyone can try it with tape, chalk and a playground ball.
A league that wrote its own scoreboard
No off-the-shelf system tracks Z-rotation or quadrant scoring, so the NGL built its own arena display and stream graphics. See an illustrative match page that applies the same rules (sample data, not a real match).
07 · Press releases
News from
the NGL.
- Coming soonFirst Gridball exhibition announcement
Releases are posted here first. To receive them by email, write to nglgridball@gmail.com.
08 · Official documents
The sport,
in print.
PDF · 54 pages
Official Rulebook
The complete ratified rules, with clause numbers, example scenarios, all 19 signals and the glossary.
Download
PDF · 2 pages
Quick Play Guide
A printable handout for marking a court and playing your first pickup game.
Download
PDF · 42 pages
Game Officials Handbook
For Officiators: positions and coverage, calling the game, all 19 signals and match-day forms.
Download
A plain-language summary is on the rules page.
09 · Media contact
Talk to
the NGL.
Jaylon Ballard
Founder, National Gridball League
nglgridball@gmail.com
For interviews, images in other formats or fact checks, email is the best way to reach us. Please include your outlet and deadline.
Partnership inquiries: see Partner with the NGL.