YAKIMA, WA – The Early Bird Invite was held at the Gateway Sports Complex in Yakima, Washington on March 31 and April 1. There were six teams entered in the tournament, five from Washington and one from Idaho. DMW (Hayden, ID) came out on top to take home the championship.

The tournament format was a little different from most tournaments, because each team would play one another and it didn’t matter if a team won or lost. The champion was decided by how many runs a team scored and allowed against the other teams; the team with the most runs (DMW) won the championship.

With the cold and wet weather in the Pacific Northwest these past few months, this was the first tournament of the year for most of the teams. The team’s lack of practice was apparent in the first few games, but by the third game, all of the players were getting in sync and there was some exciting softball being played.

In their first three games DMW beat B&D Transmission (Yakima, WA) by three runs, AZM Plumbing (White Swan, WA) by one run and Heyl Pacific (Walla Walla, WA) by 10 runs.

After the first day, DMW played a few good games which continued to the second day of the tournament when DMW beat Speakeasy (Yakima, WA) by 10 runs. In their last game of the tournament they faced the tough Doghouse team (Green Acres, WA). Unfortunately for undefeated DMW, they were not able to pull off a win and lost by one run, but because of the total runs DMW scored throughout the tournament, the loss did not matter. In the end, DMW had more than 23 runs and took first place. Speakeasy came in second with a little more than five runs, and B&D Transmission came in third place.