author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Hey hey! We won today! Boulder County: 260; Pikes Peak: 167. Our goal was 1. to win, and 2. by a bigger margin than last time we played them, and, hot damn, that's what we did. Good job, BCB! Live Bold, Bleed Gold!

I'm told we looked a lot more together, cohesive, calm, and strong today, but I suspect a lot of that has to do with the difference between playing a team ranked above you and playing a team ranked below. I know I've seen footage of future opponents getting crushed by highly ranked teams and thought, "Oh, look at those weaknesses we can exploit," only to discover those weaknesses not to be in evidence when we met those opponents on the track. Or, rather, our team was less able to create and exploit weaknesses in those opponents than were the teams in the footage. Similarly, this weekend I feel as though we were pretty much the same team yesterday as today, fought just as hard and brought the same solid strategies and skills, but were more successful doing so during today's more favorable match-up.

Happy Valley, by the way, went on to lose to the number 1 seed, Rocky Mountain Rollergirls, by only 100 points. There's another metric by which they were simply a stronger team than us right now. Having just now watched RMRG win their way through Calgary to tomorrow's championship game, I don't think we'd have done nearly as well against them as Happy Valley did.

And that would have been us playing RMRG if we'd won yesterday. And we would have lost. And then we would have most likely lost tomorrow to E-Ville. And that wouldn't have been as emotionally satisfying as today's win followed by our private afterparty at the hotel celebrating a veteran jammer who is retiring at the end of the season. After more than seven years with BCB and still more years than that in derby, she played her last game with us today. ALL THE FEELS were present in a big way. Also all the alcohol.

Omaha Rollergirls have been an amazing host league. Everything has gone swimmingly. Each day has gone according to schedule, and it has been clear at every moment where we needed to be. Each team was assigned a wrangler, and I can only hope the other teams had as amazing a wrangler as we did. Our wrangler was nothing less than an MVP. She took care of us in every way. She got our locker room set up, got our coaches and captains to their meetings on time, made sure we knew when our on-skates warm up was, found our bags when we lost them, high-fived us on our way out to the track, joined in with us for our silly pre-bout team bonding games and our off-skates warmup, asked us to teach her our cheers and then got led us in chanting them through the tunnels on our way to the track for today's game. She even made sure, by request, that the DJ played "Rock Lobster" for us during our on-skates warm-up. Then she boogied down on the side of the track with pompoms and red silicone lobster claws. Basically she was 100% on team BCB all weekend long. She went above and beyond to make our tournament experience not only positive but joyous. We felt so loved!

And so ends the All Stars' season, on a higher note than we could have dreamed. We've come a long way since that terrible Sunday night in June.

Tomorrow we get an unlooked-for rest day in which to relax in the stands and enjoy watching the final games of the tournament. You can watch too! (You can also listen to the live audio broadcast for free.) Then, after a little well-deserved time off, (how little will vary by the skater), the All Stars move into support mode for our Bombshells, who are preparing for our annual B-Team tournament in September--which this year is being presented as part of Denver Roller Derby's "Thin Air Throwdown," which showcases some of the very highest-level derby in the world. We'll be helping to host the three-day event, and before that, we'll be on the track at practice and scrimmage helping the Bombshells get the most out of their final month of training before playing their part in that season finale.

And after that the whole league segues into our off-season, with a lower-key combined practice schedule for all our skaters, lesser attendance requirements, and a chance to work on our skills outside of the pressure-cooker environment of the regular season when the next bout had been always just around the corner.

And next week, once I'm back in Boulder, I'm going to finally have a little time before the end of August for short story revisions and submissions. Yay!