Beast of the East 2010

Spending 2 whole days in and around an arena filled with derby girls, watching my team play without me, feeling a vicarious derby high, all while knowing that I'll never play this wonderful sport again, was rather heart-wrenching... as I had predicted it would be. However, I did not run out of the arena in tears. And an even greater accomplishment of mine was that, all day Saturday, I only had a twinge of a headache despite the loud arena and, all day Sunday, I only had 1 major headache which I was able to placate by napping in the grass for a good 15-20 minutes. My brain is clearly healing more quickly than my previous concussions.

My team totally rocked the Beast. We came in 2nd. 1st, 2nd and 3rd place went to the 3 Montreal teams (FDR in 1st, La Racaille 2nd, and Ditas 3rd). The level of general competition was higher than it was last year. It seems though that Montreal Roller Derby is still a few steps ahead of all the southern Ontario teams.

I really love my team and my team says I'm Racaille for life, so YAY! But as of today, I've got to start mentally preparing myself to switch from derby girl to derby ref. I probably shouldn't be on skates just yet, so that gives me time to brush up on the rules, learn the ref hand signals and let myself get used to the idea of becoming "one of the boys" in this primarily female sport.

BEAST of the East champions!!!

After a 2 day roller-derby tournament in which your team makes it all the way to the finals (and maybe even wins), I have to say that if you don't feel like you got hit by a bus, you just didn't give it your all.

16 teams. Mostly from Quebec and Ontario. 12 hours of roller-derby on the Saturday and then another 6.5 hours of roller-derby on the Sunday. That's an insane amount of derby.

My team, La Racaille, fought valiantly until the end. Sunday morning, we faced our local foes Les Filles du Roi and they won, but since we were as of yet undefeated, we were not yet eliminated. So we continued on. And later in the day, we found ourselves face to face with FDR once again for the semi-finals. This time we played harder and smarter and were victorious. This bought us a ticket to the championship game. And guess who we got to face off with at the championship, none other than Montreal Roller Derby's other team The Contrabanditas. Playing against another team from our league made the whole event just so much more exciting for us. The Ditas gave us a run for our money. They proved to be pretty fierce competition. At one point, I even took a hit to the head from the lovely and talented Boxcar Bethy. Despite being tired from 2 long days of derby, we'd found our team's thunder and we came out victorious in the end.

La Racaille: 2009 Beast of the East Champions!!!

I am so very proud of my team.