Friday, May 28, 2010

Life Experiences: Roller Derby pt. 2

Stage Match

The opening bout was an exhibition between two Boston teams; the Cosmonaughties and the Wicked Pissahs. The team names were perhaps the least silly thing about the event.

My girlfriend and I arrived late, to a standing room only situation and a circus-like vibe, but instead of circus animals a guy in a rat mask and diaper tried futilely to get a wave going, while a lady in hot pants shattered a clipboard on the concrete floor. The announcers gave their all to try and excite the crowd, though they would have had a better chance if they didn't pronounce the team The "Pissers." It's a sport that thrives on puns, you'd think the color commentators could get it right.

The Pissahs took an early lead, but found them selves trailing late in the second half. In fact, the Cosmos took command in a very odd way, dominating like they hadn't been for the entire game. The jam before last, they had a 20 point lead.

To put that in perspective, a skater managing to lap an entire group, and the other skater going all out to do the same, scores you 5. Each jam is a max of 2 minutes. To overcome a 20 point deficit in one jam, the jammer would need to lap the entire group 4 times, once every 30 seconds, and then score an additional point. And the other team is allowed to slam into you.

And the Pissahs pulled it off.

Well Holy suspicious ending Batman, looks like we've just taken for a ride!

At this point you're all probably thinking, "hey, Rahhal, there's a guy in a gorilla suit priming the t-shirt cannon while the team managers are dressed in everything from 3-piece suits to leather chaps. The audience is a mix of Nascar enthusiasts and teenagers who obviously don't have anything better to do. And the whole damn thing looks like the depressing scenes from Academy Award nominated film The Wrestler. You're watching a staged game!"

Well I had higher hopes, okay? I allowed myself the naivety of believing that roller derby was all hard hits and competitive play. If someone told me I was going to see a choreographed series of events I would have adjusted my expectations accordingly. Well, P.T. Barnum wasn't there, but announcer Kevin-Up gave it his best.

Besides, the second bout, one between Boston's traveling team the Boston Massacre and Olympia WA's Oly Rollers was a bona-fide match. Because how entertaining is a beat-down in your own city, really?

Boston: Massacred
By now you see where I'm going with this. Boston got its ass KICKED. Feel free to read the lengthy recap of both these matches, but the long and short of it is, Boston got dominated. And honestly, I didn't mind. At least I knew I was watching a real bout. And to their credit, the Oly Rollers aren't 2009 defending champions for nothing. Their jammers can move, man!

All in all, I had a great time. I'm also fairly certain I won't attend another game, unless I'm A) with a large group of friends and B) boozed up something fierce. Because that's how it's meant to be seen.


Whip It: good?
Sure, if you liked Juno. Seriously. It was Juno on skates, complete with Indy soundtrack.

I won't get into a lengthy movie review here, because I've taken enough of your time. But I will say, when I left the Shriners Auditorium with plans to see the movie, I told my girlfriend, "I bet you $5 we hear at least 3 of the songs we heard tonight on this movie. At least one will be Thunderstruck by AC/DC.

I wasn't even close.

Jimmy Fallon filled the announcer role perfectly though.

Conclusion
I went into this expecting something wholly different from what I got. I've been self-sabotaged by my own high expectations before, and I'm not saying the whole thing was bad, but it was, among other things, a stark realization that my child-like perception of this once-distant and taboo activity is, in fact, just another excuse to get out of the house.

I wonder if curling is going to have the same feel?

1 comment:

  1. A roller derby game is played one jam at a time. Often you'll see a team get their act together and refocus after a time out or half time to come back and win. As you may have noticed we (massacre) were getting our tushes handed to us, but 15 minutes in started to control the bleed and make Oly fight for it.

    That last jam of the Pissah/Cosmo bout was intense for sure, but thats not the only time a team has come back from a sizable deficit to win a game. Its happened in tournaments before as well.

    I need to correct you about how points are scored. There are no points scored during the jammer's first pass through the pack; that pass is for "lead jammer" status which would give her the ability to tell the refs when the end the jam clock whenever she wants. (You do this to score your points, then end the jam before the other team's jammer can score.) so to score a 20 point jam, you'd need to make FIVE passes through the pack. But the pissahs were down by 20, and they won by 5, so they made six passes for a 25 point jam.

    The record points per jam in interleague play is 35 points.

    In addition, in the last jam of the bout you're saying was staged, the Cosmos had 2 blockers in the penalty box. In our rules, as soon as a jammer scores on one blocker on the track (by passing her hips), she immediately is awarded the points for any opponents in the box. You can only score 4 points per pass on opposing BLOCKERS, but if the opposing jammer is still trapped in the pack or is in the penalty box, then you are awarded an additional point.

    Soooo to how to make this win possible?
    The pissahs really wanted to win. They're aware of points per jam records. We've seen 25 point jams at our home bouts before.

    To make it as easy as possible for the Pissah jammer to make a lot of passes, the Pissah blockers had to control the pack speed and slow it WAY down. They accomplished this by keeping the two cosmo blockers separate and trapping the rear one. (likewise, the cosmo blockers would have wanted to sprint away to keep it fast but one was trapped so they couldn't.) The cosmos didn't help their cause at all when their jammer left the penalty box, she re-entered the track illegally and was sent back to the box immediately.


    With so few people on the track, its much easier for a jammer to skate through the pack.

    We practice sprinting, A LOT. One of the assessments that must be passed to play is skating a minimum of 25 laps in 5 minutes which would be 10 laps in two minutes. The travel team does 10 laps in 1:30. If a pack is slow enough (nearly stopped) it would be possible to score at least 45 points.

    Anyway, we practice too hard, too often and sacrifice too much of our lives for our little hobby to just give a win away for the sake of some orchestrated season or outcome. Maybe if we were professionals and got paid lots and lots of money we'd be okay conceding a loss. This matters too much for us, even if there's no big prize at the end. Even the national champions don't get a bunch of money. All they get is a package of wheels from a sponsor, a jacket, and to keep the trophy for the year.

    We play hard and want to win.

    If you don't want to come again, that's your choice but I can't let you show up in my google alerts saying we're fakers and not say anything about it.

    Next bout is 6/19.

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