My comeback at the start of Season Five...

"You are absolutely brilliant! I am in awe of your prowess and I'm so glad to see you back at better than 100%" one of my teammates texted me at the end of Jet City Rollergirls Season 5 opener this weekend.   I was thrilled by my performance in my first regular season bout since 2010.  Though I had been back form my ACL injury for 6 months, I was missing my confidence and strength. My decision to not skate for the travel team at this time (due to work) gave me another opportunity to just focus on my recovery.  I had so much to prove this weekend - to myself.  And to my team.  2011 was not my ending - was not the one I had scripted for myself.  I learned an incredible amount watching from the sidelines and I was out to prove that I was still a force to be reckoned with.  

The starts of Season 5 was much like the start of every other season.  There were a few missteps in getting things rolling as we tried to remember how things were done the year before when we rolled up the floor for the last time in June.  While volunteers and skaters busied themselves getting the floor set up, I hung up sponsor posters, set up tables, helped Ivana with ticketing.   Just as we were finishing laying out the floor, the cold rain that had accompanied us up to Everett turned to fat snowflakes blanketing just about everyone and everything.  Then doubt started sinking in.  We were there.  We would make sure derby happened but would our fans come?  Would we filled the seats?  Would we kick of Season 5 with as much energy and enthusiasm as we did with Season 4?  In the snow novice Pacific Northwest, weather like this creates panic.  We texted; we Facebooked; we let everyone know that we would be there to skate and they should join us.

And they did!  We had a great crowd for our two bouts which were absolute nailbiters!  The Pistols and Harem bout came down to the wire as did the Carnie and Hula bout.  A local derby writer, who has seen more bouts than just about anyone I can think of, said these may have been his favorite bouts ever.   It was "epic" - truly.  The Carnies were down by a few points at the half and dipped down to a twenty point deficit.  The time outs were called at the right times.  We kept a cool bench for the most part.  At half time we made some changes.  What we needed to do to break up their walls and force on offense.  (I had mostly jammed to this point and would throughout the second half.  And though I wasn't always lead jammer - I always got out of the pack (thanks blockers) and was able to force the jammer to call it off.  And in spite of my injury, I was able to retain my characteristic stable jamming - I just didn't get knocked down that often.  I managed to pull off an amazing whip off our smallest blocker and sailed through on one foot.  It was awesome.)

At one point, Audrey threw away the line ups and made up two killer lineups that pulled us into the lead - barely.  But when it came down to the last jam we were in a bind that we hadn't been in a long time - we had only two skaters on the track - the jammer and one blocker.  Three blockers in the box - with one coming.  A gaggle of small errors lead us to this point and our goose was cooked as our jammer went to the box doing her best to stop the opposing jammer.  I lost my cool for a minute - I forgot how much I hated to lose - especially after working this hard as a team.  And though it stung - it wasn't as bad as it was in years past.  We were in a positive place. Our mistakes were recognizable.  We were close and cohesive.  The crazy chair was minimally occupied.  I got mad.  Got over it and skated our high-fives.  It felt so incredible to be back.

*punk rocker snowman with snow bunny in my neighborhood.  He is what greeted us when we aborted our plans to go to Columbia City for brunch with Arson.  We settled for yummy breakfast on Phinney with punk rockers.

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