Right off the bat I need to tell you that if you missed the first bout of the Rat City Rollergirls' 2008 season, you needn't feel like a chump ... though I gotta tell ya, you kinda look like one to everyone who did go. Just look at us insufferable jerks, pointing at you and laughing. Ha ha ha ho ho ho, laughing and laughing, on into the night.
"To hell with 'em," you think. "What do those people know?" They don't know the real you -- the gentle and caring soul who would have gotten tickets to this first bout if it weren't so close to Easter, or if it hadn't sold out so quickly. You'll show those fools by getting your tickets to the next bout [0] -- an April 19 dustup that will see the Derby Liberation Front battling the Sockit Wenches, Grave Danger facing off with the Madison, Wis., Dairyland Dolls and a halftime performance of the Buttrock Suites [1] -- well in advance of the bout. Like, say, right now. Here [2].
Now: Was that an amazing first match or what? I held my breath so often that I think I took perhaps 18 breaths total over three hours. Gone are the days when the four Rat City teams would play a tentative game after the winter break. No, my friends, this first bout was a reckoning. It was a meeting of titans -- like Kali and Artemis and Buffy and Milla trading body blows with each other while balanced atop the roofs of speeding muscle cars.
The outcome of the match between the Sockit Wenches and the Throttle Rockets was anything but a certainty until the clock ran down. The Rockets, to date the only team that hasn't won a league championship title, met the 2006 champion Wenches with a series of fast, hard-hitting and relatively clean jams. (Both the Wenches and the Rockets have a reputation for ... misbehaving. Yes, that's how I'd put it if I wanted to keep my teeth.)
There was excellent jamming from the usual suspects. The Wenches' Miss Fortune demonstrated once again why she's recognized as one of the fastest and most agile skaters in the league, while the Rockets' Blonde 'n' Bitchin' took another step toward league superstardom through a series of high-scoring jams. And in terms of defense, both teams were fiercely in step; it seemed like no jammer passed the Wenches' Anya Heels or the Rockets' Andromeda Sprain without paying at least one face-down visit to the floor.
The score stayed close all through the night. The first 11 minutes of the game passed without a single player being called for a major penalty, and the Wenches only led by three points at halftime. But despite the return of the formidable jammer and pivot Darth Skater III and excellent all-around skating by Crash Gordon, the Rockets fell to the Wenches 101 to 86. The Wenches, for their part, really earned the win. Jammers Wile E. Peyote and Arsenio Brawl racked up the points as if they were nothing, and pivot Shovey Chase checked more than one Rocket into orbit.
It was a fun match to watch, which I can't say of the Grave Danger/Derby Liberation Front matchup. I really like both teams (and I love one former Danger skater [3] to pieces), which made it kind of hard to watch them joylessly beating the hell out of each other. Fights broke out regularly, and the penalty box may as well have been mounted on a Lazy Susan for all the players rotating in and out of it. (That's a good derby name, innit? "Lazy Susan.")
At the best of times, the DLF is a hard team to beat; the 2005 champs have won much more often than they've lost, and they function as a hive mind; my derby girlie calls it their "mass-rad telepathic skills." But the cherry on the cake of the DLF's 108 to 85 win was former Philadelphia Rollergirl and new DLF jammer Summer Assault, a five-foot-twelve powerhouse with a long, fluid stride and a gift for scattering the Danger skaters like tenpins. She made seven- and 10-point jams nearly every time she stepped up to the line, and the beleaguered Danger defense never quite figured out how to box her in.
It reminded me of the first time I saw Grave Danger's Femme Fatale skate in 2005; she cut through the pack without effort, and she never lapped the track at anything less than a blur. (Femme is still that fast -- unless she's fighting with her sister, the DLF's mighty D-Bomb. The two looked daggers at each other from the get-go, and when the brawl finally came few were surprised. Off the flat track they may be sisters, but on the track, blood is merely something you hope to draw.)
Still, for all the rough play, both teams worked hard and parted friends. And it was particularly fun to see the DLF's Kitty Kamikaze and Punchin' Judy dishing out violence and Danger's Katarina Whip and Morning Gory returning fire just as fast as the DLF could reload. The DLF's Burnett Down skated her usual awesome game, Danger's Mona Lethal returned after nearly a year sidelined by injury, and Danger's Carmen Getsome proposed to her feller, who accepted. Derby and marriage -- this I tell ya, brother, you can't have one without the other.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
