Joint Base Balad Rollout Racquetball Tournament Wrap-Up
December 12-18, 2009
by SPC Broeker
It started off as a small idea to coordinate an event that allowed fellow racquetball players deployed at Joint Base Balad, Iraq to meet likeminded individuals. This small idea quickly grew as we recognized there was a great demand for a tournament on Balad; and it grew even quicker when we started making contacts back stateside who were excited about helping us out. After many hours of searching for email addresses and phone numbers, I ran across the Military Racquetball Federation. I want to give a special thanks to Steven Harper, Hank Marcus, and Kevin Brylski for forming the foundation of what would turn out to be an amazing experience. With their help we were able to hold the first MRF sanctioned racquetball tournament in Iraq! But we didn’t stop with only the MRF. We also want to say thank you to Pat Bernardo of Racquetworld.com, Jonathan Clay of Rollout Racquetball, Jen Tranchilla and Dan Whitley of Vetta Sports-Concord Fitness and Racquetball in St. Louis, Mo, Ektelon, and E-Force for providing a ton of prizes and give aways to the players and winners. Without the help from those back stateside this tournament would have not turned out near as well as it did. The service and support these individuals and organizations showed to the military men and women stationed in a war zone will always be remembered.
The tournament started on 12 December 2009 and concluded on 18 December 2009. In total there were 36 hard fought matches. We like to think the Joint Base Balad Rollout Racquetball Tournament to be the largest and most successful racquetball tournament in Iraqi history! Hopefully once our deployments are up and we all get to go home, another racquetball enthusiast steps up and continues to promote racquetball here in Iraq. Thanks again to all those who helped us out in this endeavor and we hope to continue this great partnership!
SPC Broeker
90th Sustainment Brigade
Joint Base Balad, Iraq
The results for the tournament are as follows:
Advanced Bracket- Intermediate Bracket-
1st Place – Gus Sanchez 1st Place – Russell Harris
2nd Place – Angel Rodriguez 2nd Place – Michael Johnson
3rd Place – Josh Mater 3rd Place – Shaun Broeker
Check out pictures from the tournament by...[CLICKING HERE]
