Super Roll Sunday II

On Sunday, Dianne and I went to see the Cincinnati Rollergirls’ SRS II (Super Roll Sunday) with Carla and her parents. We had a good time.

Overall, I thought the skaters showed noticeable improvement since the first event. Individually there was a lot of improvement and collectively there was more teamwork evident during the jams. The pace of the action has picked up and the skaters seemed more steady even with an increased amount of jostling and blocking. The pack skaters were making much more of an effort to help their jammers with whips and pushes as well as screening blocks. That made it a lot of fun to watch. There were some hard falls, but it didn’t seem there were as many casualties as at the first event. However, Junk n Trunk took a bad fall and had to be carried off the floor. It looked like the track boundary was a ridge taped to the floor that threw a couple people off balance. I didn’t notice that in Loveland; it seemed like a flat tape boundary there.

The first pairing between the Full Metal Corsets and the Riots was a blow out with the Corsets winning handily. Unfortunate since I was pulling for the Riots. I’m not sure why the Riots had such a hard time since a couple of their jammers (Miss Print and Gummilove ) skated with success in the second match of the day. By the way, you can read Miss Print's take on the match here. One reason the Corsets did well was their blocking. I think it was Collier Mama that was so good at blocking she stalled a couple of the Riot jammers. Incidentally, she has a nice post here and she should be proud. One of the craziest blocks of the match was a block on Bola del Fuego (I think) that pushed her outside when she was going fast on the turn. She went out of bounds, hit the bar on the emergency exit and popped the door open!

The second match between the Bloody Sundaes and the Dames of Destruction was very good. I was cheering for the Dames (by the way, their new logo at left is a huge improvement). They were all tied up at the half. However, in the second half a great effort by Sk8 Crime in one jam and Sadistic Sadie in another put the Dames way ahead. A final jam by Miss Print was icing on the cake for the Dames. The skating in this pairing was fast overall. Both Pantera and Sadistic Sadie did an especially good job zipping around the track and weaving through the pack without losing their momentum.

The event itself seemed better organized and I really appreciated the scoreboard changes. My one wish would be to have the refs show the whiteboard with the jam results to fans as well as the teams and the score table. The sound systems aren’t great and when the emcee talks too quickly, it’s hard to understand.

It was too bad the seats weren’t packed like the first event. The first Bengal game and a Reds home game with them looking for a wildcard spot probably didn’t help. You have a couple more chances to catch the Rollergirls this fall. Don't miss it! Check out their site for ticket info.

PS Sorry for the long post. That’s what you get when I have a 3 hour layover in Salt Lake City.

Super Roll Sunday - 1

It was Super Roll Sunday today – the first match for the Cincinnati Rollergirls. I’m sure you’ll be able to find out more on their website soon and see some better photos of the action there. Going in, I was pulling for The Riots (because of Lauren’s Roller Derby Diva blog and the Ithaca connection) and the Full Metal Corsets (just because I liked the team name and some of the member names). But alas, both of my teams lost by huge margins. Now that I've got a first look at some of the characters, I might have to rethink my favorites.

The first match was between the Bloody Sundays and The Riots. This was a blowout with the Sundays winning easily. The Sundays were good, but it seemed like the Riots beat themselves by running into each other and having their jammers lose momentum. My take was that Gummilove was their strongest jammer and Bola del Fuego seemed to do well. Miss Print had one good jam but also another where she got held up in the pack and didn’t score. Dianne commented that there wasn’t enough whipping or helping along of the jammers. It was hard to get a good picture, but here is an artistic view of one of the Sundays/Riots jams.

Watching the warm-ups, especially for the second match between the Full Metal Corsets and the Dames of Destruction, it was readily apparent which team had the best skaters. In that match, Sadistic Sadie of the Dames was far and away the best jammer. She really maneuvered through the pack well and she used her teammates to help her advance and score (sometimes by pushing them to the ground in order to stay in bounds and keep moving ahead). The Corsets took a beating with three players going down hard on separate occasions that stopped the match. That was no fun to see. Two of the girls (The Librarian and I believe Collier Mamma) seemed to be hurt bad and they sat out the rest of the match. The Corsets had some tough cookies on the team that were fitting into the bad girl mold, but not the best skaters. Among the bad girls was Sk8 Crime whose attitude or persona I didn’t care for. After some tough jostling with Sadie in the next to last jam, I was happy to see Sadie pull Sk8 Crime down from behind using her belt and then go at it. It was worth the penalty to put Sk8 Crime in her place.

All in all, I thought it was a good event. It seemed like the Rollergirls were having fun and many were playing to the crowd. The flat track style is different and takes more planning to work through the pack and stay in bounds. Most everyone was giving it their all and the blocking was tough. It also takes a lot of work from a lot of volunteers to put on something like this. I hope they can make a go of it! However, you could tell the league is young and they need to work out some kinks like scoring (having team names rather than home/visitors), timekeeping, concessions to handle the crowd, announcing, etc. Nevertheless, I’d go again and encourage anyone with a roller derby interest to check it out. Who knows, maybe I can talk Dianne into SRS II coming up in a few weeks.