Entry 3 – 10/18/2018

**Cue Queen’s We Are The Champions in the background**

There is a sort of electricity in the air as I walk through the streets of DC to work. It has been four months since the Washington Capitals bested Las Vegas for the Stanley Cup, but the excitement and buzz still lingers. I was born in DC and raised in Bethesda, MD. I have been a lifelong DC sports fan and I have endured one of the longest championship droughts in the history of professional sports. It has been 25 years since DC has won a championship in any of the four major sports. The only city to have us beat is Minnesota. For as long as I can remember, I have been saying that all I want in life is to see a championship parade roll down the streets of Pennsylvania Avenue and to be engulfed in the surrounding joy of millennial-aged fans seeing this for the first time in their lives. Well this past June, my dreams came true. When I think back on my journey as a DC fan, this one painful image always comes to mind – I am sitting in my living room with the TV on watching the Wizards, Capitals, Redskins or Nationals make it into the playoffs and lose in a nail-biting game 5 or game 7 of the second round. I can vividly picture myself too angry to even yell at the TV as I hit the power button on my remote, throw off my blanket, and curse the world as I regretted staying up till almost midnight knowing that I would wake up in the morning with a losers hangover. But now, I can safely say that DC stands for District of Champions.

I attended the outdoor viewing parties at Capital One Arena for the Caps championship run, I was there for the championship parade, I saw Ovi raise the cup in front of a crowd full of pent up, championship starved fans. There is almost no city in the country that needed this win more than DC. As a city that is trying to return to its former glory, the Stanley Cup was a breath of fresh air that brought the city back to life. Critics were starting to call my generation of DC fandom the lost generation because the last time a major sports team won was 1992 (Redskins) and that was the year I was born. Lost no more because the curse is broken and DC is in a renaissance period of food, sports, culture, art, industry, tourism, etc. Now all I hope for is that I do not have to wait another 25 years to feel this feeling of euphoria again. Here’s to hoping for more W’s DC sports.

PS: Dan Snyder, please resign and sell the team.

#ROCKTHERED

All the best,

Colin Hautman