I thought that mathematically speaking, since I had friends on four of the sixteen teams participating in the fifth annual Beast of the East tournament, that there was a pretty good chance that I'd be cheering on at least one team with friends on it as they made there was to the championship trophy. Alas, the fates were not on my derby-fan side this day. Not to say that it wasn't an action-packed and incredibly dramatic day.

First the Slaughter Daughters had to defeat a Montreal team with one of our beloved former team-mates on it (Assassinista on FDR). The game had so many back n fourths and was so close that I did not breathe for a large portion of the bout. Another couple of similarly stressful bouts were to follow, and next thing you know we were in the Championship bout for the second year in a row. As I wrote yesterday, I won't go into the exact play by play, but we did not win the day. Not out of direct laziness, but watching so many bouts in such a small period of time makes the whole day a blur. There was so much cheering that I kind of lost my voice, I may have choked back tears on a couple different occasions, and I ate delicious vegan taco's and pastries.

The crowd cheered the Slaughter Daughters on to their acceptance of the 2nd Place Trophy. Coming in 2nd out of 16 teams on a year when you've got a bunch of new players and won the year before is not something to be ashamed of. Plus, the 2nd Place Trophy had a dinosaur skeleton in derby attire on the top of it, which is pretty awesome. We all know dinosaurs are great...but winning a dinosaur skeleton wearing roller-skates and a helmet trophy is a prize to be proud of.