Holiday Havoc
On Saturday evening, Dianne and I went to Dayton for Holiday Havoc - a charity event scrimmage between the Cincinnati Rollergirls and the Gem City Rollergirls. We went up early and had dinner at bd's Mongolian Grill (thanks to Carla for the tip). It's a good, albeit Americanized, place for Mongolian bbq food.
The Holiday Havoc wasn't far away at the SkateWorld Kettering. The event had two scrimmages each lasting 40 minutes. The Gem City group has two teams (with some girls skating both events due to injuries) and the Cinci girls formed two teams as well. In both bouts, the Gem City girls edged out the Cinci girls by a few points.
It was a tough match with some hard blocking by the Gem City team. I happened to sit next to Ruff'n the Passer's mom. She is very nice and proud of her daughter - and rightly so! Ruff'n the Passer is a very good all around skater. She is good at jamming and a good blocker too. The best Gem City blocker was Fonda la Boom who gave hard shoulder blocks that knocked several Cinci girls off their feet. Another Gem City jammer of note was I Candye. She is light, but really sprints around the track.
Overall, the Cincinnati Rollergirls didn't look as sharp with their blocking as in past matches. We were sitting with a Cincinnati group and there were several times where folks couldn't believe how easily the Gem City jammer made it through the pack. As usual, Collier Mama was doing a good job blocking. Unfortunately, she got ejected after going down hard with a Gem City skater. I thought it was a very bad call as Collier Mama was crawling away from her opponent as the Gem City girl was kicking Collier with her skates. Go figure! Pantera....er, Kathy Killzone...was also doing well with blocking. By the way, I found the name change confusing. :^) Sk8 Crime went all out as usual with some hard blocks and take downs. Polly Rocket is hurting today after Sk8 Crime's tackle.
On the jamming side, even Ruff'n the Passer's mom was impressed with Sadistic Sadie's skill. She really kept the team in it during the second bout. In one jam, the Gem City jammer got an early jump on Sadie and she was waving her fist in the air through the turn to excite the crowd. However, she didn't have much of a jump and wasn't watching Sadie. Sadie caught up to her at full speed while the Gem City girl was waving and Sadie gave her a hard shoulder block that sent her into the crowd. That electrified the Cinci crowd.
A lot of Cinci skaters contributed as jammers as there was a lot of rotation. Emolition, one of the newer skaters, showed a lot of promise as a jammer. The Cincinnati crowd wasn't always sure of the scoring. There was one jam in particular where Gummilove was against the Gem City jammer in the penalty box for 3/4 of the time. The jam ended up Gem City 3 and Cinci 2. A Cincinnati fan behind me shouted "how is that possible?" We all agreed!
Despite the Cincinnati Rollergirl losses, it was a nice event. Thanks to all the Roller Girls from both cities for volunteering their time to put on the charity event.
6 comments:
Hey, thanks so much for coming up to Dayton to support us! It meant a lot to have CRG fans at our first away game. We'll be playing again on our home turf soon!
If only Sadie could have skated more during the first half of the match! Having to skate in all those jams back-to-back at the end looked brutal. It was like "Breaking Away" when they taped Dave's feet to the pedals to do the remainder of the race on his own... CUTTERS!
Thanks a million for coming out to our event. Losing all that time in the second bout killed us. We will be more organized the next time. Sorry if I offended anyone, I will try to behave next time.
Sadie, Your just being passionate and if someone kicked my friends in the head and back I would be pretty ticked off too. All the political correctness of "can't we just all be athletes and leave it on the rink" aside, they tried to hospitalize some of your girls on purpose. That has to be addressed if your ever going to play them again. Collier Mama got kicked 6 - 8 times in the back. That could have caused serious and life long damage. Ignore all the bogus calls if you must becuase that will all be seen as polititcs. However you cannot let them trying to purposely hurt your skaters pass. That is just a minimum requirement for you to skate with them.
Girl's roller derby is incredible fun! I am a big fan of the Atlanta Rollergirls. More specifically, I am a fan of the Sake Tuyas! Perhaps, they'd dig those sushi pillows!
Sadie-not sure what you're apologizing for here. I thought you did a great job as did a parent of someone on the opposing team. My description of your shoulder check was a compliment. It was a fair block and the Gem City girl fell gracefully, got up, and got back in it. In my mind, that's the sort of good show that Lauren was talking about.
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