Double Dip of Pain

On Saturday night, Dianne and I were among the 1000+ people at the pair of bouts hosted by the Cincinnati Rollergirls. The first bout was against the Bleeding Heartland Rollergirls (Flatliners) from Bloomington, Indiana. The second bout was a re-match against the Gem City Rollergirls from Dayton. Congratulations to the CRG skaters for decisive wins in both bouts!

The first bout was brutal for the Bloomington skaters. They were having a tough time against the experience and strong teamwork of the CRG group. With blocks like the one Black Rose is giving in the photo at the right, there were Flatliners falling all over the place. They are undoubtedly a sore group today. The tough blocking made it very hard for the Flatliner jammers to get through the pack. That led to lots of grand slams for CRG -- so many I lost count. The CRG blockers were also doing well clearing good lines for their jammer teammates. They helped the jammers a lot with whips like the boost Skinnie Minnie is giving Sk8 Crime in the photo here. Everything came together with speedy skating by Skates with Fists, Candy Kickass, Miss Print, and Sk8 Crime to give a final score of 118 to 44. See all the photos from this bout in my Flickr set here. At the break, I was stretching a bit and walked past Collier Mama sitting in the stands talking strategy with a Bloomington skater. That type of sportsmanship was amazing to see consider Collier was tossing players around right and left just a few minutes earlier.

The second bout against Gem City was full of action as well. Although behind from the start, the GCRG group battled hard the whole match. The GCRG skaters Ruff'n the Passer and Hannah Barbaric were tough jammers and got their share of lead jammer status. But it wasn't enough. Again the CRG team was firing on all cylinders with very tough blocking, excellent teamwork, and speedy jammers that were too much for Gem City to handle. The photo here of Junk N Trunk putting a hit on Polly Rocket is just one example of the hard hits that were exchanged in the pack. The way Junk is leaning and positioned with her skates perpendicular to Polly's, you know Polly went down hard. It was a hard hit right in front of us. I caught quite a few pictures of blocks in the photo set from this bout. As usual, it was amazing to watch Sadistic Sadie skating. But the second CRG group rotated quite a few skaters into the jammer position -- including Sk8r-Kinney who started as jammer when the Gem City jammer was in the penalty box. After establishing the jam and when the Gem City skater was about to get out of the penalty box, Kinney passed the jammer star to Sadie. Just another example illustrating how the CRG experience is resulting in good strategy decisions that help them succeed. There were also several grand slams for Cincinnati in the second bout. I think I'm only going to count double grand slams (two laps of the opposing jammer) from now on. The final score of the second bout was 150 to 84.

The least well thought out blocking strategy of the night award goes to Fonda La Boom who put a hard shoulder into Juwana Hurt and knocked her over backwards. Don't get me wrong -- it was a good block. But doing that to Juwana just puts a huge target on your back and you should keep your head on a swivel. Juwana got up quickly and skated full steam to catch the pack. You knew it was payback time for Fonda and sure enough Juwana caught her off guard going full speed. Everyone in the crowd felt Juwana's hit that knocked Fonda down and out of bounds. Ouch!

It was another well orchestrated event by the CRG -- although it was pretty toasty in the Gardens. As usual, after the match the skaters stayed to meet the crowd and give autographs. I was able to meet Juwana Hurt and Emolition. Dianne snapped photos of me with each of them. We're certainly lucky to have such a dedicated group of WFTDA skaters here in Cincinnati. It's a lot of fun to watch them skate! It has to be a thrill for them to be such a strong group skating in the Gardens! They're putting a lot of effort into developing their skill as well growing the events with publicity. And thanks to the Rollergirls for the URL listing in the program as well as the mention in the derby love! Quite a surprise.

If you haven't been to a match, check it out. The next CRG event is an interleague bout at the Cincinnati Gardens on September 8th. After that their schedule has the CRG All-Stars against the Burning River team from Cleveland. The question is can the Cincinnati Rollergirls All-Stars go undefeated this season?