Things learned and observed on 20th Pacificwide Open Softball Tournament Day 1.0

Musings, mutterings and the occasional schmahts as Ornauer makes the quick transition to the military sports mindset after spending nine months in Pacific high school sports heaven:

Some things that never change about the Pacificwide Open Interservice Softball Tournament, now in its 20^th edition at Yongsan Garrison’s Lombardo Field FourPlex:

-- Great stage and proving ground to see where your game stands, especially if you plan a run at one of 15 berths on your respective All-Service softball team.

Mike Jenkins of Osan Air Base, three times All-Air Force and twice All-Armed Forces, had heard of the Pacwide during his 16 years at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, "so I wanted to come and see what it’s about. Hopefully, I’ll get to do it again next year," said the 38-year-old master sergeant from Lakeland Fla. (Tigers represent!).

-- Great place to run into ballplayers you’ve not seen in a long time and meet those with whom you were only acquainted through a newsclip or a list of All-Armed Forces players on a Web site somewhere.

And they come from everywhere to play here. Winning the Frequent Flyer Miles award in this year’s tournament: Lynell McLeod, an Air Force staff sergeant assigned to Moody Air Force Base, near Valdosta, Ga. "Camaraderie," he says of the main attraction of the tournament. He hasn’t gone to the All-Armed Forces stage yet, he says, because he plays for a USSSA traveling team called Art Explosion, and the USSSA Military Worlds takes place the week after All-Armed Forces. That may change this year, he says.

-- Some of the names of players here read like a who’s who of All-Armed Forces softball. Chris Markey of Osan has gone to the show five times and made the All-Armed Forces team four of them. Gary Lafon of Hickam Air Force Base, Hawai’i, playing for defending men’s champion American Legion has been All-Air Force once and teammate Chadd Malin of Kadena Air Base has gone five times. Tina Cooper of Osan’s women’s team was named All-Air Force once; Lisa Webb of Okinawa’s Yard Busters is a three-time All-Marine.

-- For the first time in five years, not one player is visiting the tournament from Europe.

-- Perhaps the most pedigreed team is the Scrapalators, a collection of All-Army and All-Air Force players from throughout the Pacific and the States. Try this: A combined 49 All-Army and All-Air Force selections, 25 All-Armed Forces selections, 12 Amateur Softball Association national majors titles, 20 Military Worlds appearances, 23 gold medals … and 39 combat tours, most in Afghanistan and Iraq. Leading that parade are current All-Army captain Elmer Mason (12 All-Army, six All-Armed Forces), matched by his former All-Army teammate, retired chief warrant officer Andy Watts.

-- There was a reason why the Scrapalators wore pink shirts to the field on Friday. The shirts honored Mason’s wife, Val, who is battling breast cancer and is at Tripler Army Hospital in Hawaii, set to undergo surgery. The shirt reads: "Scrapalators vs. Breast Cancer. Val, we love you. We’re home and we’ve got the hammer. Bring it on!" Ma$e tells me that Val is holding up like a trooper and is in high spirits.

-- David Hill is back at the helm of Camp Casey’s women’s team after a couple years’ absence, and he insists that his current group of Lady Warriors is better than the Lauren Shaw-led Warriors of two years ago. Two players have gone All-Army; Hill plans to send five more to All-Army camp this summer, including Lisa Harris, an infielder who has played college ball for Elizabeth City State University of North Carolina. Check them out on Facebook at Lady Warriors Fan Club.

-- Drash, a military gear outlet based in Orangeburg, N.Y., has taken over sponsorship of this and the July 4^th Firecracker Shootout tournament on Okinawa. Primarily serving the military made the 20^th Pacificwide "a good fit" for Drash, said company representative Tommy May; he notes that a good 95 percent of Drash’s employees are either retired or former military. May himself is a retired Army master sergeant; the Branson, Mo., native turns 45 on Saturday and has been in Korea for five years.

-- Former Okinawa USO director Kevin Meade played in the Pacwide in its early days with Kadena Air Base teams; he was back at the tournament this week, and is now an information technologist with the 121^st Combat Support Hospital near the tournament’s site. It’s his first time at the tournament since 1998 and his first time seeing the newly configured Lombardo Field FourPlex. "It’s amazing how the fields and the people have changed," he said. "It’s a lot better now than it used to be."

-- Had a nice reunion with two folk who helped lay the foundation for high school football in Korea, longtime Korea Youth Activities Senior Division coaches Bob Collins of the Yongsan Dragons and Enrique Blanco of the Yongsan Raiders. Collins, affiliated with the league for 13 seasons, coached future part-time starting quarterback at Southern Methodist David Page in 1994-95; Blanco coached current Seattle Seahawks practice squad member Wes Mallard in 1994-95; Mallard was drafted in the sixth round by the New York Giants after four years at Oregon.

Collins, 60, recently retired as the C-5 Civil Affairs at U.S. Forces Korea, now lives in SongT’an, a short walk from Osan Air Base and is now with the Korea Institute for Maritime Strategy. He’s writing a book about North Korea to be published in about six months. His son Aaron, also a former Dragons quarterback, works at Yongsan and is married with two young children; the younger son, Erik, also a former Dragons quarterback, is an Army sergeant deployed to Afghanistan. Blanco, 57, has been at Yongsan since 1989 in its department of public works, roads and grounds division; his three children are grown and he has two grandchildren.

"The years that we struggled to make it a high school program, finally led it to become a high school program," Collins said. "For guys like us, it makes us proud to see these kids grow, serve the community, become family men; it means a lot to us. It’s very satisfying."

He calls Page the "best athlete who has ever come through here" and the fact that Page and Mallard played against each other was the ironic thing.

He has noted over the years critics of Korea’s youth football, particularly in Japan, who compared Page and Collins’ offense to a Western Athletic Conference team going up against a Southeastern Conference team. That Page went to SMU and Mallard to the NFL "are two facts that can’t be disputed," Collins said.

-- Geckos Glaciers, a group of Canadians better versed in hockey than softball, won their first game on the field in this tournament in four years, beating Support Battalion Korea (formerly 8^th U.S. Army) 16-11. They, among other teams in the tournament, wore shirts that said: "The drinking team with a softball problem." Geckos were brought back to Earth Friday evening 21-0 by Okinawa’s Club Red.

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