The German Bundesliga 1.0

3 Leagues, 20 Teams and 40 Games later, suddenly the German national matches are so much more meaningful than before. We started out with the idea to give all the teams in Germany the opportunity to participate in a national ranking, no matter how new or how small they were. Most of the midrange level Teams in Germany played each other randomly anyway, so why not give these games a greater meaning. What's said was done and with the help of a handful of great people we created the German Bundesliga and it became so much more than that. Real Axt of the Stuttgart Valley Rollergirls was the brain of the system and my job as the Director Of Games, of the German Roller Derby Sports Commission, was to organize the whole thing. Later Jam Pain joined the team and gave me and Real Axt the push to keep going. Anyone who has ever founded a Bundesliga knows, in the first year we kind of forgot to think about everything, but please don't tell!

However without the great help we had, we couldn't have done it. First of all we had derbyposition. We needed a place to keep all the data about the skaters and all the dates of the games. But how do you organize about 400 skaters and their data? Google was never an option. Luckily derbypositon popped up right in front of my nose. Created by two Germans Roller Derby Germany had its own tool to work with. Cyberknut and Scarollina from the Munich Rolling Rebels agreed instantly to build a special part of derbyposition just for the Bundesliga. With great initiative they created the tool possibility for teams to register their games and skaters for the Bundesliga Games. And it's not a lie if I say derbypositon did most of the work during the season and it wouldn't have been such a great success without it.

Beside those two there was another group of people about whom we have to be exceptionally thankful for, the Head NSO's. My personal crew of super heroes. Their Bundesliga-Job was to make sure the games took place in the order of the Bundesliga system, like controlling that only registered players went on the track. And they did so much more than that. We all know that great NSO's are this certain kind of people, who love to look into the detail, who know all these small important Essentials that most of the skaters have probably never heard about and this was great help to us. So thank you to all those heroes in pink! Of course we are also very thankful for all the other officials, helpers and the work of the leagues, which made this possible. Thank you Roller Derby Germany!

Before I took on this position, I got a lot of people warning me, not to do this, because it's a very unappreciative Job. But the opposite was the case. Especially the leagues were so friendly and thankful, even when I had bad news for them and this is what kept me going, spending all this time. Roller Derby in Germany grew so tight together and so many small leagues had their first games. I am very proud to be part of this process.

The end of the season became more of a struggle. Bringing in the necessary changes for next season while handling the current season and being an active Roller Derby participant was pretty hard. Work-Life-Balance in Roller Derby is most of the time a Life-Derby-Balance and it became to be a League-Bundesliga-Balance. More People started to participate in the process, which I always see as a good thing, because new voices are what make us better. But as we all know more voices also make the process more complicated and more exhaustive.

But truly, this is just a small part about this season and it won't stop us from looking forward. I would lie if I'd say I am not tired, but it's a good tired, it's the kind of tired you feel when you go home from a great game, where every part of your body hurts and every move satisfyingly reminds you of the great goal you achieved.

Mirjam Bröhl | Mary Toothfairy