We've received so many thanks from the DNN audience for our coverage of the WFTDA tournaments, but here was one of our favorites so far, from B-17 of the Nickel City Knockouts local team in Buffalo's Queen City league.

Every Sunday, the four individual teams comprising the Queen City Roller Girls (Buffalo, NY) are given an hour and a half each of practice time to themselves. Three are in the morning, but since we use a skating rink (Rainbow Rink, North Tonawanda), Sunday mid-day there is usually a big birthday party for children, so the fourth team has been given an evening slot. This year the Nickel City Knockouts have that evening practice slot, 7 pm.

This, of course, exactly coincided (given that we're on Eastern time and it's on Pacific) with DNN's live boutcast and streaming video simulcast of the final bout of the Northwest Knockdown. At first I was dejected at the prospect of missing it, but knew I couldn't miss practice -- our season bout schedule was announced today, and our first bout is against our deadliest rivals the Suicidal Saucies (who we haven't beaten in two years of trying), so we couldn't pause even for something so awesome as Nationals.

But it just so happens that my boyfriend is the QCRG Scoreboard Operator. (He also programmed the scoreboard, which he has made available on the Roller Derby Productioneers Yahoo! group and at http://david.kleinschmidt.name/qcrg-scoreboard/.)He's quite experienced at displaying things on the projection screens at the rink, and graciously volunteered a couple hours of his evening.

So, as you can see in the photo attached (sorry, blurry because we had the lights low to see the screens better), the Nickel City Knockouts got to skate a hard practice and watch awesome derby on screen at the same time. You'd be amazed how much attention you can spare during endurance drills. And when our coach wasn't yelling at us, she was staring transfixed at the screen... and getting evil, evil ideas.

The sound feed wasn't working well, and we couldn't get the wireless mike hooked up to the computer anyway, so we watched it with no audio-- and Justice Feelgood Marshall and the others' commentary scrolling by on a small window of the boutcast beneath the larger window of the video. So we could watch it and read the comments at the same time. It worked perfectly!

Unfortunately for me I injured my tailbone during a pack drill, so I'll have me a little souvenir of this experience for a while. Every time I try to sit down, I will think about Gotham and their amazing run to become the National Champions of the WFTDA. (I don't know if that's flattering to Gotham or not. They can decide that one.)

 At any rate -- thank you DNN and thank you to all the sponsors for making that broadcast possible. It was thrilling, awesome, exciting, and inspirational.

--B-17 and the rest of the Nickel City Knockouts, Buffalo NY

DNN thanks everybody who commented, hung out in the liveblogs, donated and visited our wonderful sponsors Broken Cherry and Sin City Skates. Gnosis, Hurt and I had as much fun bringing it to you as you did getting it. This community is the most amazing and vibrant one that any of us have ever been a part of, and we hope to bring you more derby action, wherever it may be happening, for as long as we can do it.