The Wilson's: DRASH: Reforger Classic

       The biggest tournament of the year takes place in Grafenwoehr, Germany. It is called the DRASH: Reforger Classic. DRASH is a team of men, sponsored by Worth, that are all Vets or current members. They are the best of the best and do get paid to play softball. This is their tournament and it is HUGE! I think there were 16 mens teams, which is a lot for Europe, but only 4 girls teams. I was quite disappointed that more girls teams didn't make it to the tournament. I know travel for some teams (those coming from England and Italy) can be difficult and expensive.
       It was a 24 hour tournament for the guys and us girls got good hours to play. We only played three games each Thursday and Friday of round robin. All three games were played during the day. On Saturday the Double Elimination started. They paired us by seeding and we were the one seed so we played the 4 seed which was Spangdahlem. Our first game was at 9am and our second I think was at like 2 in the afternoon. We played a best of three series. We won both games and made it to Sunday where we played Grafenwoehr in a best of three series. We won both games, but the second was a close won. We were down most of the game and came back in the 6th inning to tie it, held them, took the lead in the 7th by 4 and held them again! It was awesome.
       After the round robin the guys were split into two pools. It's an Army tournament so the idea is to have an Army team in the championship. All of the Army teams and a few Air Force teams (not the stronger ones) are in one bracket together. This almost guarantees that an Army team makes it to the championship. In the other bracket are the strongest Air Force Teams, Micah's team the Wood and the Rams, along with the Scrapalators, which are the DRASH team. Ideally the Scrapalators and an Army team will be in the chipper.
       Micah's team played crazy hours, 11pm, 2am, 5am, 12pm. It was nuts. Poor Micah took a blanket and slept at the ball party almost every night only coming back to the hotel to shower. Micah's team lost to the Rams in the first game, putting then in the losers bracket. They eventually lost Scrapalators in the championship of the losers bracket. The Rams barely squeaked past the Scrapalators (who until we played them were beating teams 43-1 in two innings.) The Rams met the Scraps in the Chipper of their pool and won again! I lost my voice during their game! I couldn't believe it, I didn't think they could pull it off twice! On a side note a young girl went to the merchandise tent and asked if the sold Rams apparel because the Scraps suck. It was awesome.
       The Rams played Grafenwoehr's guys team in a best of three for the chipper and walked away with the victory. It was Rams and Lady Rams and Graf and Lady Graf in both Chippers. It was quite exciting! Not as exciting as the prizes we got though. We got rings. Holy cow they are huge!