Crosstown Knockout

I’m not a basketball fan. In all our years in Cincinnati, we’ve never been to a Crosstown Shootout event where the local basketball teams from Xavier and the University of Cincinnati compete. On the other hand, a Crosstown Knockout can’t be missed. Dianne and I went to the Black-n-Bluegrass Rollergirls’ Crosstown Knockout bout where they hosted the Silent Lambs team of the Cincinnati Rollergirls. The event was held at Sportsville in Florence.

The BBRG team, the Moonshiners, came out strong and controlled the first few jams to hold the Silent Lambs scoreless and jump out to an early lead. It was pretty obvious from those early jams that the BBRG jammers Morgue Ann le Slayer and Petal to The Metal (in photo at right) were speedy skaters with good ability to find holes, slip through the pack, and get lead jammer status. They made the Lambs’ blockers work especially hard all evening – both when jamming and blocking. Perhaps it was early bout jitters or maybe it was getting used to the basketball court surface, but the Silent Lambs settled in after those first few jams, chipped away at the early Moonshiner lead, and ended up +18 by the end of the first period. Early on the usual Lamb jammers Dr. McDerby, Miss Print, and Cherry Choke were scoring, but several skaters including Maim E. Van Gore’n, Shirley Temptya, and Bex Pistol wore the jammer star during the match.

As Miss Print discussed in her pre-bout post, there are several former CRG skaters now with the BBRG. Undoubtedly that added a little tension to the match, but in general it seemed everyone skated with good faith intentions for fair blocks. Nevertheless, there were some friendly jabs being tossed about that added to the crosstown rivalry. The Moonshiners had a poster above their bench that said “Sheep – it’s what’s for dinner.” Pretty funny. Quite a few of the CRG’s Black Sheep were sitting in the suicide seats, cheering on their CRG teammates with specially made posters. The photo at the right shows CandyKICKass holding a couple of them during a break.

In the second period, the scoring was fairly even and at the end of the period the Silent Lambs were ahead by approximately the same margin as at the end of the first period. I’ll guess that the relatively slick surface and some fearless blocking both contributed to a lot of falls during the bout. The photo at the right shows Miss Print falling on her knees after a block. BBRG blocker Buckhead Betty was tough and gave some hard blocks, although she did receive her fair share of penalties associated with that effort.

In the third period, the Silent Lambs once again picked up the scoring pace to widen their lead. I wasn’t tracking penalties, but it seemed like the BBRG team had a few more and a couple that involved their jammer and that hurt them. The whole Lamb team was contributing to blocking and seemed especially focused on controlling the inside line at the front of the pack. The Silent Lambs ended up winning the bout by a score of 92 to 66. Congratulations to all the Silent Lambs.

After the bout I had a chance to meet Geez Louise, who made several hard hits during the match to open up holes and slow the BBRG jammers. Dianne got this photo of me with Geez Louise. You can see all my photos from the event in this Flickr set. Below you'll see one of the better photos I got when Miss Print fell on her knees after taking a hit.

This was the first time for us at a BBRG event. We enjoyed the air conditioned Sportsville arena and the lighting was fantastic for a derby event! I can’t wait to see Jason and Jeff’s photos from the bout. With all those extra photons to work with, I’m sure they’ll have some especially interesting photos. As BBRG grows their league, I’m sure they’ll start drawing larger crowds and will refine their logistics to put on better and better events. They have some talented skaters and a lot of potential that will lead to some interesting Crosstown Knockouts in the future. They have one more home event on September 20th, so check them out.

I believe this was the last of the regular season bouts for the CRG teams. However, they do have some tournament battles coming up. Good luck to the Black Sheep in that effort. Check their site, Miss Print’s blog, and the Flock message board for more info on the post-season and off-season activities.