Brighter, still

“It feels as though we live in an age of constant calamity,” Chris Jones writes this month in Esquire, summing up a sentiment to which we can all relate.

Which is why we need our silly games more than ever, even amid their blingy, hare-brained, idiot moments.

So grab a cup of nog and settle in with this simple trilogy of holiday follow-ups:

The Pioneer

You may remember Ella Wood, the quiet kid with missiles for legs and a bit of good old-fashioned gridiron grit. All the seventh-grader wanted last year was to play flag football for the Sequoyah School in Pasadena, for which she was totally suited. Yet the league said, “No go, no girls allowed.”

Despite going 8-0, the team was forced to forfeit every win because Ella played (her male teammates in full support).

Ella’s story provoked a certain outrage, and the league finally relented. This season, with her playing both offense and defense, Ella’s team won the Foothill Sports League championship.

“Throughout the season we saw other girls playing on other teams, and Ella felt so good, knowing her stand had made a difference,” her mother Sophia says.

This isn’t just an “atta-girl” for Ella, though she deserves most of the credit. This is a salute to all the readers who contacted the league on her behalf, folks who’d never met Ella but wouldn’t stand for such silliness.

Way to go.

The Ice Princess

You may also remember figure skater Ekaterina Gordeeva, also known as “Katia,” also known as the fairy princess who had it all, then didn’t.

She and skating partner Sergei Grinkov were a striking couple -- good Russian cheekbones and dance moves like Nureyev. They had grown up together, won two Olympic golds in pairs skating in 1988 and ‘94, fallen in love, married and started a family.

“I was the luckiest girl on Earth, wanting for nothing,” she said of that period in her life.

But soon Gordeeva would suffer the sort of gasping loss no one but the Brothers Grimm could ever conjure. Gordeeva and Grinkov were training when he collapsed and died of a heart attack at age 28, leaving her with no one to cling to but their toddler daughter, Daria.

Gordeeva was 24.

“I had huge support from a lot of people,” Gordeeva says today from her rink in Lake Forest, where she trains young Olympic hopefuls, including a second daughter, 12-year-old Liza. “I had huge support from people who gave me work.”

It was the skating that kept her sane -- her safe place, the activity she needed.

Skating was also how she met Ilia Kulik, another champion skater.

“I felt an aura and an energy from him,” she recalls. “I think I fell in love with him almost right away.”

Now, seven days a week, 12 hours a day, she and new husband Kulik run their rink, where skaters as young as 4 learn leaps and toe turns and maybe a little bit about how to get up when you fall really hard.

“It’s a special training environment,” she says.

At 42, Gordeeva is still performing herself, starring in “Broadway on Ice,” at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts. You can catch her Friday and Saturday, a sampling of real Olympic glamour a month before the next Winter Games.

And an elegant example of how to get up when you fall really hard.

The Prancer

Speaking of getting back on your blades, you definitely must remember Bill Iffrig, the wiry old coot who scrambled to his feet after getting blown to the pavement in the Boston Marathon bombing.

All elbows and table legs, the 79-year-old runner managed to take the final 15 steps to the finish line -- his 45th marathon -- amid the smoke and mayhem.

“I’m doing great,” he says now from his home in Lake Stevens, Wash. “We’ve had a little snow up here so we’ll have a white Christmas.”

The retired carpenter and avid runner says a quad muscle he tore in Boston healed a little funny, but it doesn’t bother him. He ran a 12K a week ago, finishing in about an hour on a very hilly course.

He says Boston officials have not contacted him about a return, and he’d be more inclined to go the next year anyway, when he’d qualify for the next age group up.

“I look back at it,” he says of that fateful day. “When you’re running a marathon, all you’re thinking about is finishing.

“Maybe I should’ve just laid there a while,” he says with a chuckle.

But, Bill, you didn’t.

And someday, I want to be a wiry old coot just like you.

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chris.erskine@latimes.com