I know some of you have seen the news. I am very excited and very humbled to be a part of the announcing crew which was announced today for the WFTDA Division 1 tournament coming to Charleston, WV the first weekend in October. Now, for those of you who have NO clue what I just said, Ill give you a quick primer. For derby people you can skip the next paragraph(lol). The Womens Flat Track Derby Association(WFTDA) is the governing body for the great majority of flat track derby leagues worldwide. Every year they have a series of tournaments involving the best 40 derby leagues in the world(10 teams per tournament in 4 separate locations), with the 12 best surviving teams meeting in a separate location to determine ONE world champion. Individual leagues bid on the right to host one of these tournaments. The Chemical Valley Roller Girls from Charleston landed the final Div. 1 tournament before the Championships weekend(in Nashville this year), and it will be held Oct. 3-5 at the Charleston Civic Center. I have known about this since it was announced several months ago, thought it would be nice to go see some of the action that weekend, but that was about it. Then when WFTDA announced that they were looking for derby announcers(both for the on-line streaming WFTDA.tv, and for the announcers for the crowd in the Civic Center) several people tagged me on fb to alert me. I thought, what the heck, the worst will be that they say no. I also sought the advice of a very small amount of skaters from different leagues(whose opinions I value highly, and who have skated in many different venues with many different announcers). Did they think I could do something like that? They were all very encouraging, and so I applied, made the first cut, and then waited. This all began maybe a month ago and I am not the most patient Bear, but sometimes all you can do IS wait. The people in charge asked all of us not to discuss this until all decisions were made, is dotted, and ts crossed. We were advised late last week as to what decisions were made, and asked to wait until WFTDA released the news first(which they did today). I am listed as an alternate announcer(one of 2), but we will not be sitting outside of the Civic Center waiting for the call from the bullpen, we are considered part of the announcing team. Although it is true that like the first runnerup to Miss America-If for any reason Miss America cannot fulfill her obligations then you have the important duty of being ready to fill in, I have been told that I will have several different roles to play and that my voice will be heard. I know its 2 months away but I am VERY excited to be a part of this, and I look forward to working with(and learning from)some of the best derby announcers in the business. I do want to thank several people who helped me go after this(they know who they are, and how much I appreciate them), plus 2 other announcers who agreed to be references for me. I am sorry that more people were not in the loop on this(including most of my Ohio Valley Roller Girls), but I had to keep it to a small circle until this time. Believe me, youll get sick of me talking about this over the next 2 months(lol). Thank you all!!!!-Bear
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 03:05:37 +0000
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