Derby Day - Special BIG TIME LIVE Edition (Now - Ongoing!)

Tonight, the Treasure Valley Roller Girls are bouting in the biggest venue they've ever been in. See, the Idaho Stampede (NBA affiliate) has worked a deal with them to cross-promote and allow the girls to use the Idaho Qwest Arena for a one time, see-how-it-goes bout during a prime-time weekday. Needless to say, everyone's more than excited ... and more than a little nervous!

This is a huge venue (well, huge for Boise, anyway), and we're really not expecting to come close to filling it up - but any halfway decent showing will have massive ramifications on the future of Roller Derby in the area. I expect my Tivo to pick up all sorts of local broadcasts tonight with colorful news segments featuring the on-the-spot girly reporter trying to skate in a circle before jokingly being "hit" by an actual TVR girl, "*Ouch!* Well, it's really harder than it looks.. back to you, Bob!"

Anyway, as head scorekeeper, I'll be dealing with the jumbotron and the logistics of adapting it to roller derby scoring nomenclature. And on actually working it properly. I'm sure it'll be a mess. Derby scoring is more constant than even basketball, and it takes a lot of communication with the officials to make it work smoothly. There are often corrections, too.. something you never like to see on a live scoreboard.

Well, it's sure to be an experience, at any rate... Oh! And a bonus of having such a large media machine behind this bout... You get to watch it!

That's right.. tune in here at 7pm Mountain (9pm Eastern) and watch a live streaming broadcast of a Treasure Valley Roller Derby bout! You'll certainly see the Roller Girl at some point.. and, if you're lucky and I'm actually on the floor, maybe even me!

If, for some reason, my embedding doesn't stick, you can watch from the TVR girls main page: http://www.treasurevalleyrollergirls.net

Hope you enjoy it! Now, I'm off to set up...

EDIT: I really can't believe it, but almost a month after the event, the above stream still works. So, if you're curious... you can still watch the entire bout, start to finish! And... it was a squeaker! Came right down to the last jam! An exciting bout, but a real busy one for us scorekeepers.

I'm not on camera at all, but the Roller Girl gets quite a lot of play time. I'm stuck sitting behind the camera wearing a headset and logistically talking with the guy who's announcing the stream (which starts after the Nation Anthem is sung). I did get to push the big arena horn button, which was a lot more fun than I though it would be.

Oh, and that floor ... that's plastic fiber tiles set over hockey ice. Very slick to skate on. You can see the trepidation some of the girls have to work through during the first few minutes before they really get going.