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!)
