Cincinnati Rollergirls vs. Gem City Rollergirls

Last night Dianne and I drove up to Dayton to watch the Cincinnati Rollergirls (CRG) take on the Gem City Rollergirls (GCRG) in the “We Got the Beat (Down)” bout at the Nutter Center. The final score shown at the right says it all. Congratulations to the CRG team on the win! They had a lead of 15-20 points most of the match.

The GCRG group has some good skaters. Ruff’n the Passer, Polly Rocket, Hannah Barbaric, and Toma Hawk all stood out as strong skaters and jammers. The blocking was tough from their whole team. It was no picnic for the CRG skaters to get through the pack. Nevertheless, GCRG got behind after the first couple jams and stayed there the whole match. They kept fighting back the whole time, but just couldn’t put a group together that would let them score a lot of points against Cincinnati. Even when GCRG was able to score a lot in a jam, Cincinnati usually matched them.

The whole CRG team was in sync and it showed with solid jams from multiple rotation sets of players. Every skater seemed focused and was contributing. Everything came together for the group and it was really fun to watch. The CRG blocking was amazing! There was a lot of coordination in the CRG pack and many hard blocks that made it very tough for the GCRG skaters. There were a couple jams where the GCRG skater couldn’t make it through the pack. We were surrounded by GCRG fans and you could hear the frustration in the tone of their voice. There were a few times where the lead CRG blockers got more than 20 feet from the pack and had to let the jammer through. The GCRG fans behind exclaimed “there she made it through easy!” I don't think they understood the 20 foot rule and that the blockers had to let her through.

The hard block moment of the night goes to the hit that Juwana Hurt put on Seoul Sister. I don’t know how she does it, but Juwana Hurt gets in position in front of a skater and makes a sharp cut to slow down quickly and lay a hard shoulder block into the opponent. Juwana's hit on Seoul Sister made her fall over backwards and she landed hard. Seoul Sister had to leave the match after that one. I hope she wasn’t seriously hurt, but I’m sure she is sore this morning. The photo here shows Juwana (the blurred #74) doing the same move earlier in the match. Click on the photo to see a larger version. She was putting a lot of hits on opponents. The GCRG fans behind us said they wouldn’t want to be the jammers trying to pass Juwana. Although they didn't like her, they appreciated her blocking ability.

The CRG jammers were strong as well. The hard CRG blocking and the speedy skating of Roseanne Scarr yielded two grand slams for her (when one jammer laps the opposing jammer). Those jams gave a lot of points to Cincinnati. Dianne got a photo of me with Roseanne after the match. Skates with Fists, Gummi Lov, and Miss Print were jamming and scoring as well. There were two jams where Miss Print was jamming against Ruff’n the Passer. In both of those jams, Passer focused on blocking (in effect becoming another member of the pack) to slow down Miss Print and stop her from scoring. Even that strategy wasn’t entirely effective as the CRG group used blocks, screens, and whips to help jammers through. It was a great performance and the Cincinnati Rollergirls have to be very proud of their victory.

The Nutter Center is a very good location for a roller derby match. I was a bit surprised at the size of the crowd (smaller than I expected) and the lack of crowd intensity. At the start of the first jam, it was so quiet you could practically hear a pin drop! I’m probably biased, but the orchestration of the event wasn’t as elaborate as the matches hosted by Cincinnati. However, one interesting feature the Gem City group had was a wireless microphone on the head referee (Harry Brawls). It was like the NFL head ref mike that’s used to explain a call or a timeout. I found that very nice – the sound quality was good and it was interesting to get the info first hand.

I posted a few pictures from the bout on Flickr. Jeff was there and I’m sure he’ll have some great photos posted soon. The next CRG event is August 25th at the Cincinnati Gardens. One of the bouts at that event is a rematch with GCRG. Don’t miss it!

CRG -- Scars and Stripes

On Saturday evening, Dianne and I went to watch the Cincinnati Rollergirls' Scars and Stripes event at the Cincinnati Gardens. It was a match between the two CRG teams -- the Dames of Destruction and the Full Metal Corsets. Not sure of the exact final score, but the Dames won pretty decisively.

Just by chance, Miss Print's parents ended up sitting next to us along side the track. Her dad was busy taking photos as she predicted. However, Miss Print's mom wasn't covering her eyes. She did shout "that was mean" when Miss Print fell a couple times after some hard blocks. That comment was immediately followed up by "she's so little." I suppose taken together they fall into the eye covering category. Miss Print had some good jams and her parents were proud to see her scoring against the tough Dames team. It was great her folks could see a match in person (and get a break from work at the new house).

The Dames did very well right from the start. Sadistic Sadie was on fire as usual, making jamming look easy and scoring a lot. There's a reason she was asked to join Team Awesome at RollerCon. Roseanne Scarr was doing a lot of jamming for the Dames as well. Not perfect, but I like this picture of Roseanne taken during the warm-ups. The Dames' blockers, led by Panterrorize and Arche Enemy, were tough. Blu showed her skill as a pivot for the Dames.

I thought the Corsets were doing well at the various positions, but things just didn't click together for the whole team. Even though the Corsets fell behind early, they didn't give up and seemed to pick up the pace to stay about 40 points behind the Dames for the rest of the bout. Sadie was doing some taunting of the Corsets and apparent "trash talking" while skating. It's fun for the crowd and I'm sure motivational for the Corsets. Juwana Hurt and Sk8r-Kinney stood out as blockers for the Corsets. And it was good to see Collier Mama back in there skating, at least for a while until she was ejected. I missed what led up to that. EMolition was doing a lot of the jammer work for the Corsets and scoring quite a bit.

Hits and misses from the match? Both a hit and miss was the "half time" entertainment from Dante's Gypsy Circus. They were good, but it ran a bit too long. Other hits -- easy to see names and numbers on the new Corset shirts; the use of spotlights for intros and half time was a good addition; and as always the Rollergirls play to the crowd and that makes it fun. The extra effort -- things like staying for autographs and photos (me with Rocky Balrolla of the Corsets), Morgan Donor tossing out organs, and Sk8 Crime's super soaker are just a few examples. That effort (along with increased publicity) explains why last night's crowd was large! I believe Matt or Private announced there were approximately 1100 people! A minor Miss -- no one skating around with the last jam total score on a white board. Fortunately the announcers were good about reading the jam score -- and the real time scoring helps too.

I posted some photos from the match in a Flickr set you can see here. Plan ahead for their next match at the Gardens on August 25th -- a double header!

Update on 7/24: The jam score was a miss on my part! Thanks to Menace for politely pointing out in her comment that the jam score was on the giant scoreboard over the main floor (when she was really thinking what a goofball, all he had to do was look up!)

Minnesota 121, Cincinnati 140

Last night Dianne and I went to see the Cincinnati Rollergirls take on the Minnesota Garda Belts at the Cincinnati Gardens. As expected, it was a hard hitting battle. But unlike my cousin Brenda's (who lives in Minnesota) prediction on my pre-bout post, The Cincinnati Rollergirls kept the lead from start to finish and defeated the Garda Belts. Check out my photo set from the match here.

The Cincinnati Rollergirls' All-Stars team really did an excellent job as a team. The jammers did get a workout, as the Minnesota blockers made it tough to get through the pack. Sadistic Sadie, shown above with Desicration (Minnesota in green), did a tremendous job jamming. Another big jamming contributor for Cincinnati was EMolition. She is shown here wearing the jammer star with Panterrorize blocking. Just like last month for the Corsets, she had some great jams. There was one jam in the third period, when the score was fairly close, where EMolition scored a lot of points to help seal the victory. I caught this photo as she passed the Cincinnati bench during that jam after easily slipping through the pack. All the jammers, including Sk8 Crime, Roseanne Scarr, and Gummi Lov were working hard and contributed as well and added depth to the Cincinnati team.

It was a tough bout and there was a lot of hard blocking going on. This shot shows Sadie going shoulder to shoulder with the Garda Belt jammer around the turn. I caught this photo just before Panterrorize gave a block to the Minnesota jammer. One reflection of how difficult it was in the pack is this photo of the penalty boards the end of the match. The refs were using this to track minor/major penalties. In general, it's those folks in the pack that were blocking hard that had the most stickers. Just like the last Cincinnati match, I'd say Panterroize, Juwana Hurt, Arche Enemy, and Sk8r-Kinney all stood out. But just like with the jammers, all the pivots and blockers were contributing to make it hard for Minnesota to get through the pack. There were quite a few tumbles to the concrete during the bout. Several folks went down hard including Sk8 Crime, Sadistic Sadie, Ji Spot, and a couple other Garda Belt skaters. Hope there were no serious injuries.

One again, the whole Cincinnati Rollergirl organization made the bout a fun event. Many of those not skating against the Belts were circulating in the crowd, involved with the demo, passing out surveys, or otherwise helping with the event. The half-time prize contest involving the skaters and random people from the crowd was a nice idea. The Minnesota group even brought their team mascot, Tom the Leprechaun who added a little flair. Like last time, the skaters stayed after the event to meet the fans (me pictured here with Sadie) and they also had an after part at the Gardens. At this match, Dianne and I had the honor of sitting trackside on the VIP couch. It was exciting sitting in the "suicide seats" area and it was nice to meet and talk with some more of the group!

Finally, I think the biggest improvement at last night's event was the sound. The announcers were very clear and understandable. Being able to hear easily added a lot to the event.

The Rollergirls must be proud to have won their first match against an out-of-town team -- and to have done it while skating in the Gardens makes it all that much more impressive! Pretty cool! Looking forward to the next match on July 21st.